Consumer Building Guide NSW – Signing the Contract and Cooling-off period

You are ready to sign the contract,  once you have made sure the contract contains everything required by law, and you feel confident in your understanding of what you are agreeing to, who will be doing the work and how much it will cost.

If the contract price or the market cost of the labour and materials is more than $20,000 you have cooling-off rights. This means that you have the right to cancel the contract if you change your mind, but you must do this within 5 business days.

A cooling-off period for residential building contracts was introduced into the Home Building Act 1989 to allow time for consumers to have their legal representatives review the contract and if necessary cancel the contract if it is deemed to be unfair or unsuitable.

The cooling-off period is available to you for 5 days: after you have been given a copy of your signed contract or after you become aware that you should have been given a copy of the signed contract, but did not get one.

You may exercise your cooling-off rights and cancel your contract by giving written notice.

You must give this notice: to the holder of the contractor licence personally or by leaving it at the address shown in the contract as the address of the holder of the contractor licence or by serving it on the holder of the contractor licence in accordance with any notice or service provision in the contract.

If you do cancel your contract after having paid the builder or tradesperson any money, they may keep an amount of that money for reasonable out-of-pocket expenses incurred under the contract before it was cancelled. All other money paid must be refunded in full. You can waive (or cancel) your cooling-off rights if you wish. To do this you need to: ask a solicitor to give you a certificate that states that you have given up your cooling-off rights and add a statement into the contract which says that you have waived your cooling-off rights.

If the contract was supposed to state that a cooling-off period was included, but this was not, you may cancel the contract within 7 days of becoming aware that it should have contained a cooling-off period. You may be liable for any costs that the builder has incurred on the project that you will be the beneficiary of, up until the contract is cancelled.

Reference- NSW Fair Trading viewed 15/2/12, image source google

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