One of the issues that members of UYDEC have often raised is the need for some kind of system that provides better details about a property to prospective purchasers prior to purchase.

We have in the past discussed changes that could be made to the Sale of Land Act, in particular Section 32 which covers a 'Statement of matters affecting land being sold'. It details all the information that must be provided to the prospective purschaser prior to the sale of the land.

A glaring ommission has been that it does not require that any of the environmental characterstics of the land or property be assessed and included. This results in a situation where prospective purchasers are poorly informed about the environmental characteristics of their land and can often have unsustainable and unrealistic expectiations of what they can do with this land upon purchase.

Changing the state law is a big step, alternatives to this are voluntary programs. I have just come across one such attempt by the Macedon Ranges Shire, they are calling it the  'Voluntary Environmental Resource Inventory (VERI) - A Property Vendors Toolkit'. It is an attempt to reward good land management. Check it out and tell me what you think? Does it have any potential for our region?