One huge convenience of living in a digital world is being able to rid ourselves of the annoyances of paperwork. Never again will we need to worry about filling out forms in triplicate or making sure those sheets of carbon transfer paper copy everything onto the yellow and pink sheets of paper below them. One area of life that was especially notorious for its baffling level of paperwork was property transfers. Finally, property exchanges can take full advantage of available technology to significantly reduce the amount of paperwork involved.
Property Exchange Australia Ltd, or PEXA, aims to reduce the manual work involved in property exchanges and thereby reduce the amount of errors and failures in real estate transactions. PEXA is already live in Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia. By the end of 2015, all states will have joined the platform.
PEXA gets rid of one of the most annoying aspects of exchanging property, the need to coordinate with everyone involved so they can physically attend the settlement. Beyond the added convenience, PEXA allows practitioners to pass on to their customers the savings from the reduced paperwork, errors, and costs traditionally associated with physical settlements.
But is online property exchange software reliable and safe? First of all, PEXA isn’t software, but an entire network that can provide property exchange services to all states and financial institutions. There’s no need to worry about the platform crashing during a transfer because PEXA’s backup servers are immediately activated in the unlikely event of a crash. The process will continue seamlessly with no delay. Even if your office loses power during a settlement, you can simply access PEXA from another location that has power and internet access. None of the work will be lost.
PEXA also allows for changes and delays in settlement at the discretion of the practitioner. For example, if one party chooses to stop settlement during the process, the settlement time simply needs to be rescheduled. The other parties will be notified of the change and will have to agree on the new time, but there won’t be any reason to start everything over from the beginning.
Because it is linked to the Land Registry database, the platform will eliminate the need to writing down or retyping information as you get it from different sources. Instead, all of this information will be preloaded. In fact, the system is so automated, that there is no need for the parties involved to be in front of a computer when the settlement is taking place. The settlement will go through automatically at the scheduled time and date. If for some reason there is a problem, the practitioner will be notified via email or text message and the settlement can be rescheduled.
Most importantly, the platform is secure. Because only certified Conveyancers or Property Lawyers or can use PEXA for transactions, and PEXA checks their identity and qualifications before providing access, you can be sure that everyone signed into the system is who they claim to be.
