Real Time Sales Register

[Jurgs]

Just a thought I have had - wonder if anyone would care to comment as to how or if this might work:

What would happen if we had an online system where all Sales & Purchase agreements had to be registered to become 'live' or 'in-play'. Where you could search a title and and see if it were under offer. and what the status of the offer was/is. Obviously price details and conditions etc would be private and invisible.

Offers could be withdrawn or rejected , resulting in them being 'closed', or just left open, in which case a searcher could see that there was an offer in play. If the agreement becomes the subject of an ongoing negotiation and is ultimately successful, then it is marked as sold, and the sale recorded against the sale and purchase agreement. The system could easily be linked to LINZ or other offical systems to allow easier faster admin throughput.

If this system were a legal requirement of the offer process, it would go a long way to creating better transparency in the property transaction as a whole. Double settlements would be obvious, as would a quick flick. It would give the buyer more tools and less scope for being ripped off.

The Sale & Purchase agreement is a particularly powerful document and can be misused in a number of ways - I wonder if this would help eliminate some of the negative outcomes.

[mortgage broker]

I did see a property finder developing this system a while ago, I wonder what happened. It could be a very worthwhile system. Only a matter of time before someone works out a way of making a lot of money from it.

[Wayne]

you would have to wonder why it would be required - to make it a legal requirement?

[Jurgs]

I imagined it as a legal requirement. Specifically because the Sales & Purchase document can be used in a number of ways, and has been the instrument used in many a fraudulent and or misleading transactions. For example, we have seen many situations where a party buys a property, completely unaware that that it has already been sold in advance on the same day they are intending to settle. It seems to me in the interests of a transparent market that this info should be available.

I believe the process should be as transparent as possible, and that withholding info from a buyer is just disguising a rip off. I believe privacy around prices offered and conditions etc should absolutely remain. but whether an offer is in play or a property is already sold - if that were live and available information, alot of fraud and deception and RE nonsense could be avoided. There's a different story about this stuff in the paper every week right now.