diff --git a/SAX2.c b/SAX2.c
index 4adf2024..33d167ea 100644
--- a/SAX2.c
+++ b/SAX2.c
@@ -994,12 +994,12 @@ xmlSAX2StartDocument(void *ctx)
 #ifdef LIBXML_HTML_ENABLED
 	if (ctxt->myDoc == NULL)
 	    ctxt->myDoc = htmlNewDocNoDtD(NULL, NULL);
-	ctxt->myDoc->properties = XML_DOC_HTML;
-	ctxt->myDoc->parseFlags = ctxt->options;
 	if (ctxt->myDoc == NULL) {
 	    xmlSAX2ErrMemory(ctxt, "xmlSAX2StartDocument");
 	    return;
 	}
+	ctxt->myDoc->properties = XML_DOC_HTML;
+	ctxt->myDoc->parseFlags = ctxt->options;
 #else
         xmlGenericError(xmlGenericErrorContext,
 		"libxml2 built without HTML support\n");