Selling and buying on one day: simultaneous settlement in Queensland

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Kooky

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Most people who buy a home in Queensland already own one. They are not making one transaction but two, and the second cannot be paid for until the first has produced its money. The neat answer is to settle both on the same day: the old home is sold in the early afternoon, its proceeds pay for the new one an hour later, and the household moves once. Conveyancers call this a simultaneous settlement.

This guide looks at the day from the middle position: why people line two settlements up, how the two contracts can be tied together, how the sale money becomes the purchase money, what an extension or a default in one contract does to the other, how the move itself fits in, where bridging finance sits as the alternative, and the points worth settling with a solicitor before either contract is signed. It describes the general position under the standard contract published by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland and the Queensland Law Society. The result in any one pair of sales depends on the words of those two contracts.

REIQ answers to members' questions on the settlement extension clause, published with its contract webinar of 18 January 2022 (questions 5, 10 and 12).

Why two settlements are lined up

The reason is money first and convenience second. For most owners the equity in the present home is the largest part of what will pay for the next one. Moneysmart, the federal government's consumer finance site, defines equity as the value of an asset such as a house, less any money owing on it. Until the sale settles, that equity is a figure on paper. It cannot be handed to anyone.

The alternatives each have a price. Selling and settling first gives certainty about the sum available, but usually means temporary accommodation and a second move. Buying first means finding the whole purchase price before the old home has produced anything, which is what bridging finance is for. Settling both on one day avoids the second move and the second loan. What it asks in return is that two separate transactions are ready within the same few hours.

Spot On Conveyancing, a Queensland conveyancing firm, wrote on 7 September 2026 that simultaneous settlements are among the most stressful events in its field, because trouble in the first transaction is carried into the second.

Two contracts and a person in the middle

Three households are involved. The mover is selling the old home and buying the new one. The incoming buyer is purchasing the mover's old home. The onward seller owns the home the mover is buying, and may well be a mover in a chain of their own.

There are two contracts. In the sale contract the mover is the seller and the incoming buyer is the buyer. In the purchase contract the mover is the buyer and the onward seller is the seller. The incoming buyer and the onward seller have no contract with each other, and neither owes the other anything.

That is the central fact of a simultaneous settlement. The link between the two transactions exists in the mover's finances and in the mover's plans, but not, by default, in law. Each contract has its own settlement date, conditions and remedies, and each is enforced without regard to the other unless somebody writes a connection into them.

How the two contracts are tied together

There are four common ways of connecting a sale and a purchase, and they give very different levels of protection.

Matching dates are the lightest form and the most common misunderstanding. Hunter Galloway, a Brisbane mortgage broker, put the point plainly in an explainer it reviewed on 12 September 2026: "Simply putting the same date on both contracts does not create that link." Two contracts with the same date are two independent deadlines that happen to fall together.

A subject to sale condition is the best known link. It is a special condition, since the standard contract has no clause of its own for it, and it makes the purchase conditional on the buyer's existing home being sold. It protects the mover against the old home not selling. It is not, unless it says so, a rule about the day of settlement.

A simultaneous settlement condition is aimed at that day. Spot On Conveyancing describes it as a contractual provision that requires two or more property transactions to settle concurrently, often used where a seller is also a buyer, so that the sale money is in hand before the purchase money falls due. There is no standard version in the printed terms. It is written for the deal.

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland addressed the drafting directly when the settlement extension clause was introduced. In its published answers to members' questions after a contract webinar on 18 January 2022, it said that parties who intend other contracts to settle at the same time should take legal advice first, and that their solicitors can draft a special condition so that an extension of the earlier contract does not cause the later one to fail. In practice that means a clause in the purchase contract that moves its date when the sale's date moves.

Staggered dates are less a link than a buffer. Spot On Conveyancing describes scheduling the sale three to five days before the purchase, with temporary accommodation or short-term finance covering the gap.

How the sale money becomes the purchase money

On the day, the connection that matters is a financial one, and electronic settlement has a term for it. One of the electronic settlement network operators set out the vocabulary in an article of March 2018. A linked settlement, it said, occurs when destination funds from one settlement are used as source funds in another: the two dealings are unrelated from a lodgement perspective but connected in terms of funding. A simultaneous settlement, in the same article, refers to workspaces settling at the same time on the same day.

One word describes the timing and the other the money. In a linked pair, the line in the sale that would ordinarily pay the mover's bank account instead feeds the purchase, where it appears as one of the sources of the price.

The order follows from that. The sale has to produce its funds before the purchase can use them, so the sale is first in logic even when the two are run together. Inside the sale, the mover's own lender is paid out and gives up its mortgage. What is left is the mover's. In the purchase, that remainder is joined by the mover's new loan and any savings, and together they make up the balance owed to the onward seller.

A worked example shows the arithmetic. The figures are invented and leave out adjustments, duty and fees. Assume the old home is sold for $780,000 with a deposit of $39,000, so the balance paid by the incoming buyer at settlement is $741,000. The mover owes a lender $310,000 on that home. After the payout, $431,000 remains. Assume the new home costs $950,000 and the mover paid a deposit of $47,500 from savings when that contract was signed, leaving a balance of $902,500. The mover's new loan is $480,000. The purchase therefore needs $422,500 from the mover, and the sale has produced $431,000. The purchase is covered with $8,500 to spare.

Two things in that example deserve a second look. The purchase deposit was due when that contract was signed, weeks before the sale produced a dollar, so it had to come from somewhere else. The Brisbane broker's explainer makes the same point: equity in a home is not cash in a bank account, and the earlier deposit needs a funding plan of its own. And a surplus of $8,500 is easily absorbed by transfer duty, legal costs and adjustments, which is why the figures are worked out in full and not from the two prices.

The people who have to be ready together

A single settlement needs two representatives and usually two lenders. A linked pair roughly doubles the list.

In the sale there is the incoming buyer's representative and lender, and the mover's representative and outgoing lender. In the purchase there is the mover's representative and new lender, and the onward seller's representative and, if that home is mortgaged, a fourth lender waiting to be paid out.

The mover's solicitor or conveyancer is the only participant who sees both sides. That firm coordinates the two settlements and holds the mover's instructions on extensions. The operator's 2018 article quoted an experienced conveyancer's advice to think a linked transaction through as it would have run on paper, with one meeting following another, and warned that not every participant in a workspace has completed a simultaneous settlement before.

The broker's explainer distinguishes a loan approval from a lender being ready to settle: an approval says the money will be lent, and readiness means documents returned, the payout of the old loan calculated and the settlement booked. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland's 2022 answers were candid about how often this is the weak point. They list late payout figures and an incoming bank that is not ready among the usual causes of delay, and note that banks may not guarantee readiness even when a settlement has been booked.

Where the two are formally linked, the broker's explainer says, the funding stands or falls together: if one transaction cannot complete its financial settlement, neither proceeds, and both are rescheduled. That does nothing, the same explainer adds, to move a deadline in either contract.

When the first settlement runs late

Queensland's standard contract makes time of the essence. Clayton Utz, in an analysis published on 12 May 2022, explained what that means in this state: the times and dates for performing obligations are essential terms, so a late settlement is ordinarily a breach serious enough for the seller to terminate and keep the deposit.

Against that strictness the contract has had, since the editions released on 20 January 2022, a settlement extension clause. The Queensland Law Society's journal, Proctor, reported at the time that it was introduced after contracts had been falling over because of financier delays, and that it lets both the buyer and the seller obtain a short extension for that or any other reason. The clause was numbered 6.2 in those editions, and the short extension it created remains a feature of the residential contract in use in 2026. ABKJ Lawyers, a Gold Coast firm, set out its terms on 5 September 2022: either party may, at any time up to 4pm on the settlement date, extend that date by a notice naming a new one, which must be no later than five business days after the scheduled settlement date. No reason is needed. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland's answers add that notices may be given more than once and by either side, but the total cannot pass five business days from the original date.

Suppose both contracts are due to settle on a Thursday, with no public holidays near. At 3pm the incoming buyer's lender is not ready, and the incoming buyer's solicitor gives notice extending the sale to the following Tuesday. The incoming buyer is not in default. The institute's answers are clear that after a valid notice the balance of the price is not due until the new date, so no penalty interest can be charged, and that the contract gives the other party no right to compensation for the delay.

The mover, however, is still due to pay the onward seller by 4pm that Thursday and no longer has the money. The remedy is the same clause in the other contract: before 4pm the mover's solicitor gives notice in the purchase, extending it to Tuesday as well. The institute's answers confirm that a party has until 4pm on the settlement date to give notice even where settlement was booked for an earlier hour. A mover who learns of the delay at 3:50pm has ten minutes.

What the extension clause cannot do

The matching notice solves a short delay. It runs out in three situations.

The first is the fifth day. If the incoming buyer uses all five business days and still cannot settle, the incoming buyer is in default in the sale. The mover, who has used the same five days in the purchase, is in default there at the same hour. The institute's answers state the rule for any contract: if settlement has not occurred by 4pm on the fifth business day, the party unable to settle is in default and the other may terminate.

The second is an agreed extension. Anything beyond five business days needs both parties' written agreement. If the mover agrees to give the incoming buyer a further fortnight, nothing obliges the onward seller to give the mover the same.

The third is a contract that has changed the clause. The institute's answers confirm that the extension clause can be given up by a special condition amending the standard terms, and add that agents should not advise on doing so because of the financial consequences. A mover whose purchase contract has removed the extension, while the sale contract keeps it, is exposed to a delay with no matching relief.

The second row is the one movers least expect. The onward seller has the same right to extend as anyone else. If the two settlements are not linked and the sale completes while the purchase is pushed out, the mover has handed over one home and cannot yet enter the next. The broker's explainer describes this outcome for an unlinked pair.

This is the reason for the special condition the institute described in 2022. A clause in the purchase contract saying that its settlement date moves with the sale's, within stated limits, replaces a scramble before 4pm with an automatic result. Clayton Utz's advice in 2022 ran the same way: allow for a delay of five business days and consider whether special conditions are needed.

Moving day, read against the contracts

At the old home the mover is a seller and owes vacant possession. Spot On Conveyancing's account of Queensland practice is that failing to give vacant possession at the agreed settlement time is a fundamental breach, with the buyer entitled to refuse to settle or to delay. The house therefore has to be empty before the sale settles, not after.

At the new home the mover is a buyer and has no right to enter until the purchase settles. Keys are released once settlement is confirmed, usually through the agent, who coordinates access. The mover is also entitled to a pre-settlement inspection of the new home and must allow the incoming buyer the same at the old one, so two inspections have to be fitted into the last days.

Put together, there is a period on the day when the household's belongings are out of one house and not yet allowed into the other. Usually it lasts an hour or two and the truck waits. When a settlement is extended, it can last days, and the institute's answers are blunt about who bears that: the contract gives no compensation, and each party's solicitor should explain the risk of arranging a move on or near settlement day.

Spot On Conveyancing mentions one way to soften the gap: a licence to occupy, under which a buyer is allowed into the new property for a few days while the settlements are completed. It needs the onward seller's agreement.

Bridging finance, the other route

The alternative to lining the two settlements up is to separate them and borrow across the gap. Moneysmart's glossary, last updated on 24 October 2024, defines bridging finance as short-term finance that covers the period between buying a new property and selling an existing one. The buyer owns two homes for a time, and a loan carries the cost.

How such loans are structured is a matter for each lender. The Brisbane broker's explainer, summarising terms that lenders publish, says bridging periods commonly run for six to twelve months, that the lender typically assesses the peak debt across both properties against their combined value, and that interest during the period may be added to the loan or paid monthly depending on the lender.

The comparison is between two kinds of risk. A simultaneous settlement adds no borrowing and exposes the mover to the chain. Bridging finance removes the dependence on the incoming buyer's settlement date and replaces it with interest on a larger debt and uncertainty about when, and for how much, the old home will sell. Which a household can better carry depends on its own finances. Nothing in the standard contract favours either.

What to settle with the solicitor in advance

Nearly everything that protects a mover is decided before the contracts are signed or in the weeks before the day.

• Whether the purchase contract contains a condition tying its settlement to the sale's, and what that condition says about extensions.
• Whether the extension clause is intact in both contracts, or has been altered in either by a special condition.
• Whether the two settlements will be linked for funding on the day, so that neither completes without the other.
• Standing written instructions to give an extension notice in the purchase if one is received in the sale, so that no telephone call is needed before 4pm.
• Where the purchase deposit is coming from, given that it falls due before the sale settles.
• Complete figures for both transactions, including duty, costs and the payout of the old loan, and what happens if they fall short.
• Where the household and its furniture go if either date moves by up to five business days.

A mover is a seller in one contract and a buyer in another, and the law treats those as two separate people unless the paperwork says otherwise.

A same-day sale and purchase rests on three things: a condition that makes the two contracts answer to each other, a funding link that stops one settling without the other, and a household that knows where it will sleep if Thursday becomes Tuesday.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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