Buying, selling and moving

The services you'll need, and your responsibilities

Whether you're buying, selling or leasing commercial or industrial property, you'll need to consider whether the standard water and wastewater services are enough. You may need additional services. You also need to understand your responsibilities and know what charges apply. You can learn more about out standard service levels in our Customer Contract (6MB). 

Buying property

To find out which services and charges apply to a property you want to buy, you need our certificates, documents and diagrams. You can buy them online at Sydney Water Tap in or from one of our Property Link brokers.  

It's also a good idea to find out if:

• other customers share your private water and wastewater pipes
• your pipes go across your neighbours' land. If they do, ask your conveyancing agent if there's an easement for the pipes. An easement will give you a legal right to access your pipes to repair or maintain them. It may also stop other landowners from building over your pipes.
  

If your new property has a joint, encroaching or extended private service, you'll have extra obligations around maintaining your service. These may include cooperating with neighbours to manage joint services and making sure you have permission to access land when you need to maintain your pipes. 

Take a look at our prices to see all of the charges for your business and prices for other services.

Using services at a new property

If your new property has standard services covered by our Customer Contract (6.4MB), you can use them as normal. You don't need to apply for services already connected at the property, such as standard water services.

Standard services include normal connections to gravity sewers without pumps or tanks, and normal connections to water services at standard pressure and without pumps or extended lines of private pipe.

If there are non-standard services at the property, such as a pressure sewer connection, we'll send you a new additional services agreement when we know the property has changed hands. Ask the seller's agent and your conveyancing agent if we have any connection conditions you should know about.

If you need a new type of connection on a property you've bought, apply at Sydney Water Tap in.  This includes applying for permission to discharge commercial or industrial trade wastewater for your business.

See the types of connections you can apply for and find out about our application requirements. You can also apply for permission to discharge trade wastewater online at Sydney Water Tap in. 

Take a look at our prices to see all of the charges for your business and prices for other services.

Selling property

You must notify buyers of special connection conditions:

• Always tell buyers if there's a Sydney Water connection that may affect them. For example, you may need to tell a buyer if there's a restricted water service or a pump to sewer arrangement as it might affect their business operations.
• Always tell buyers if the property has any joint, encroaching or extended private services. These services affect obligations around maintaining your service and may affect any plans to redevelop or subdivide.

You don't need to disconnect services when you sell your property.

Understanding your role

You have responsibilities whether you're a tenant or a landlord.