1,358 contracts. More than 266,000 pages. Thousands of clauses. And some surprisingly common risks.
Most buyers only read a contract when they're ready to buy.
By then, they’re often standing in an agent’s office, bidding against other people, or staring at a deadline to sign.
That’s not the best time to discover that the property has a restrictive covenant, the finance clause is blank, or the renovation out the back may never have had the right permit.
So, we decided to look at the contracts themselves.
Between February and August 2026, Prepared property lawyers reviewed 1,358 Victorian contracts of sale, assessing each one across roughly 90 legal topics.
Not what could be in a Victorian contract, but what was actually there.
And some of the results challenge the way buyers think about contracts.
A Victorian contract of sale can look like an intimidating stack of paper.
Our sample averaged around 92 pages.
That's a lot to ask a buyer to read, particularly when you're also inspecting the property, organising finance, comparing prices and trying to work out whether you want to live there.
But here's the important part: You don't need to understand every word on every page.
You do need to know which parts could change your decision to buy.
After reviewing thousands of contracts, we see the same themes come up again and again.
Here are five that you should know about.
75% of the contracts we reviewed had standard finance conditions available to opt in, but left blank.
This is one of the easiest things for a buyer to misunderstand.
A buyer may think:
"I'll need finance, so obviously the contract is subject to finance."
Not necessarily.
The finance condition needs to be included in the contract correctly.
If it isn't, getting your loan approved can become your problem, rather than a condition of the purchase.
And the timing matters.
A buyer who discovers this before signing can potentially fix it.
A buyer who discovers it after signing may have very different options.
Never assume the contract protects you simply because you need finance.
Check the finance condition before you make your offer or sign.
It's a small section of the contract that can have a very big consequence.
9% of the contracts disclosed building works where the appropriate building permit wasn't in place.
Think about what that means in the real world.
You inspect the house. The extension looks great. The deck is finished. There's a converted garage, a new bathroom or a renovated kitchen.
Nothing looks unusual.
Then you discover the paperwork doesn't quite match the building.
This doesn't automatically mean the property is a bad purchase.
But it does mean you need to understand what happened, what approvals exist, and what responsibility may fall to you as the new owner.
A problem with previous building work doesn't necessarily stay with the previous owner.
Some obligations and risks can follow the property to you.
That's why building approvals are something worth investigating before you become the owner, rather than after your builder discovers something during your renovation.
26% of the contracts contained a restrictive covenant.
A restrictive covenant is essentially a rule attached to the land.
It can restrict what you can do with the property, including certain types of development or construction.
That's where something that sounds like boring legal language can become very relevant to your plans.
A covenant could affect what is possible.
In our review, 61 contracts included covenants prohibiting excavation.
For a buyer dreaming about a pool, that isn't just a footnote.
It's potentially a dealbreaker.
Don't ask only whether you like the house. Ask whether the title lets you use it the way you want.
The contract tells you what you're buying.
The title can tell you what you may and may not be able to do with it.
58% of the contracts we reviewed disclosed an easement.
That isn't particularly surprising.
Easements are common in residential property. They can allow things such as drainage, sewerage or other services to run through land.
The more interesting finding was this:
27% of the contracts disclosed an implied easement that wasn't registered as an ordinary dealing on the title.
This is where a buyer can get caught by a very reasonable assumption:
"I've looked at the title. There's nothing there. We're fine."
Not necessarily.
Other documents and searches can reveal information about infrastructure or rights affecting the property that aren't immediately obvious from the title itself.
The title is important. But it's not always the whole story.
When you're buying property, the right question isn't simply:
"What does the title say?"
It's:
"What rights, restrictions and infrastructure could affect this land?"
Across our sample, we analysed 243,732 pages across 2,638 contract versions, averaging about 92 pages per contract.
Nobody wants to spend their Saturday night reading 92 pages of legal clauses.
Infact, most buyers shouldn't have to.
The trick isn't reading everything equally.
It's knowing where the important stuff is hiding.
Depending on the property, that might include:
The exact combination changes from property to property.
That's why a good contract review isn't simply someone telling you that the contract is "standard".
The value isn't in reading every page. It's in knowing which pages matter to you.
None of these findings are particularly exotic.
That's actually the point.
A restrictive covenant isn't some once-in-a-lifetime legal oddity.
Neither is an easement.
Neither is a blank finance clause.
These things appeared frequently in the contracts we reviewed.
Which means the biggest risk for a buyer isn't necessarily encountering something unusual.
It's encountering something completely ordinary without realising what it means.
That's an important distinction.
For one buyer, it might make no difference whatsoever.
For another, it could prevent the extension they've been planning for years.
For one property, it might be little more than something to be aware of.
For another, its location could affect where you can build.
A cash buyer may not care.
A buyer relying on a loan absolutely should.
That's why we don't think a useful contract review should simply produce a long list of legal observations.
The real question is: "What does this mean for you?"
There's a pattern behind almost every issue we've identified.
The earlier you know, the more options you have.
That's why we believe a contract shouldn't be treated as paperwork you deal with once you've decided to buy.
The contract is part of deciding whether you should buy in the first place.
Before you offer or sign, ask five simple questions:
Don't assume. Check the finance condition.
Look for covenants, easements, planning restrictions and other limitations.
Extensions, decks, garages, renovations and other works may need further investigation.
This is often where important property-specific terms appear.
You don't need to become a lawyer.
You just need to know what deserves a closer look before you commit.
After reading more than 266,000 pages of Victorian property contracts, our biggest takeaway isn't that contracts are full of problems.
It's that buyers are being asked to make very expensive decisions using documents they aren't expected to understand.
And that's backwards.
You shouldn't need to know what every legal clause means.
But before you spend hundreds of thousands, or millions on a property, you deserve to know:
That's what a contract review should help you answer.
You don't need to read 90 pages of legal language to work out what matters.
Send us the contract.
A Prepared property lawyer will review it and give you a clear explanation of the important risks, unusual clauses and things worth understanding before you offer or sign.
Because knowing what you're buying shouldn't be the hard part.
This analysis is based on 1,358 Victorian contracts of sale reviewed by Prepared property lawyers between February and August 2026.
The properties are located across metropolitan Melbourne, with the sample weighted towards Melbourne's eastern and north-eastern suburbs. The sample should not be treated as representative of regional Victoria or other Australian states.
Each contract was assessed against approximately 90 legal topics using Prepared's structured review process.
A finding was counted where a qualified reviewer identified the issue and it appeared in the published review.
The figures represent information disclosed in the contracts and associated documents reviewed by Prepared. They do not represent an independent physical inspection of the properties.
Categories overlap, meaning a single contract may appear in multiple categories.
We'll update this analysis quarterly as our dataset grows.