No cooling off period for sale of property

I'm interested in putting an offer for a 25 year old house in Sydney that I inspected. There seemed to be a lot of interest in the open inspection on the weekend. The house is single storey and is well maintained and I could see some small issues, but nothing that I was worried about. I did not see signs of movement or any cracking.

The vendor has provided their own building and pest report via BeforeYouBid. The building report did not note any defects except for a crack in a window frame and crack in the corner of a gutter. Timber pest report noted it to be a a medium risk and recommended a termite treatment, however the house seemed to be steel framed construction judging by the steel trusses for the roof when the inspector did the inspection. I spoke with the inspector and he mentioned that it was a good house and that the only thing he would recommend would be to fix the cracked gutter and to replace the roof insulation which was blown-in.

I asked the agent if I could arrange for my own building inspector to have a look and they refused citing that due to the level of interest, that they did not want everybody interested in the property to do their own building inspection.

I am FHB and have a pre-approval with ANZ and was wanting to put in an offer. The deposit is 10%. However the agent says they will have no cooling-off period with a 66W certificate.

It is marked as for sale, there was no mention of auction in the ad and the agent did not mention auction during the inspection. However I received a document from the agent today titled "Bidder's Guide". Some exerpts:

"The property will be sold to the highest offer". "All final offers to be submitted...by date..." : "To be considered, offers need to be submitted with the following: Signed contract at your best and final price, 66W Certifciate signed by acting solicitor."
Is this normal practice to have no cooling off period for a sale of a property? Should I be wary of this?

 

Wow now that's aggressive selling.

It's basically an auction buy without the theatre. Once you sign, If your offer is highest then you bought it. No cooling off. Only sign if you are more than happy to purchase it under auction conditions.

 

Essentially the property is being sold by tender under auction conditions without the actual auction taking place. To my knowledge this is perfectly legitimate and perhaps warranted (from the vendors perspective) in this market with multiple purchasers interested in the select few properties available.

As for inspections, once you have entered into the contract the vendor is legally obliged to do everything reasonable to enable you, subject to the rights of any tenant, to have the property inspected to obtain any certificate or report reasonably required. Unfortunately, at this point in time you have already entered into a contract with no cooling off period so you will have no rights or ability to renegotiate as to any issues as to quality that may arise from these reports. Surveys or building certificate applications can also be made after entry into the contract.