Handover is the moment you've been working toward — the day you collect the keys to your new home. It's also the last point at which you have significant leverage over your builder. Here's exactly what happens, what documentation is exchanged, and how to protect yourself at every step.
What Practical Completion Means
Practical completion — sometimes called substantial completion — is the point at which your builder considers the home complete and ready for handover. Practical completion does not mean the home is perfect or defect-free. It means the builder believes the home is ready to occupy.
Your building contract will define what constitutes practical completion. Most contracts specify that practical completion is reached when the home is complete except for minor defects that do not affect liveability.
The Sequence of Events at Handover
Step 1 — Builder notification. Your builder notifies you that the home has reached practical completion and proposes a handover date, typically 5 to 10 business days from the notification.
Step 2 — Independent PCI. Book your VG Inspect PCI as soon as you receive the notification — before the proposed handover date. The inspection must take place before you sign the handover certificate.
Step 3 — Report review. Review the inspection report. Identify the defects that must be rectified before handover versus those you are prepared to accept on a written rectification schedule.
Step 4 — Defect negotiation. Present the inspection report to your builder's site supervisor. Agree in writing on which defects will be rectified before handover and which will be addressed on an agreed schedule after settlement.
Step 5 — Sign the handover certificate. Only after defects are rectified or a written rectification schedule is agreed — not before.
Step 6 — Key collection. Collect your keys. Take dated photographs of every room.
What You Should Never Do at Handover
Never sign the handover certificate before an independent inspection has been carried out. Once you sign, the legal burden of proving defects were pre-existing shifts significantly. The leverage you had as a buyer disappears the moment you sign.
Never accept verbal promises about defect rectification. Every agreed rectification item must be documented in writing — email from the builder's site supervisor is sufficient.
Never sign a document that waives your right to make claims for defects discovered after handover. Review every document you are asked to sign.
Book your PCI before handover. QBCC licence 1318443.
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