Real Estate Underquoting Laws Australia 2026 | ComplyEdge

If you run a real estate agency in NSW or Victoria, the rules that govern how you price and advertise a property have changed more in the last six months than in the last six years.

This is the operator's guide to what is now in force, what is on the legislative runway, and what your agency needs to build before 1 July 2026. It is written for principals, sales agents, agency directors, and anyone whose business has just been reclassified from "loosely supervised" to "highly regulated".

The headline you need to internalise is simple. Underquoting has moved from "cost of doing business" to "existential risk." The penalty maths no longer works for the bad actors. And the enforcement environment has shifted from regulator-driven complaints to peer-driven intelligence, which is a much more dangerous regime.

Let's walk through it.

NSW underquoting penalty: from $22,000 to $110,000 (or three times your commission)

On 13 March 2026, the Minns Labor Government introduced the Property and Stock Agents Amendment (Underquoting and Other Agent Conduct) Bill 2026 into the NSW Parliament. The substantive content of the Bill is worth a careful read, but the part that matters commercially is the penalty.

The maximum penalty for underquoting in NSW is being lifted from $22,000 to $110,000, or three times the agent's commission, whichever is greater. This is the second limb that changes everything. A premium property sale generating an $80,000 commission now carries up to $240,000 in exposure on a single non-compliant listing.

The penalty for dummy bidding has also been doubled to $110,000.

These figures are not symbolic. They are calibrated specifically to remove the financial incentive to under-price a listing. The era of writing the fine off as a line item is over.

NSW Fair Trading also gains expanded powers under the Bill, including the authority to compel public disclosure of an agent's misconduct. That second sanction may turn out to be more commercially damaging than the fine itself, because public misconduct findings are permanent on Google and visible to every future vendor running due diligence on your agency.

Statements of Information: NSW finally catches up with Victoria

The 2026 NSW Bill mandates that every property advertisement carries a price or price guide. It also bans the language the industry has hidden behind for a decade. Phrases like "offers over", "offers above", and the trailing "+" symbol are no longer permitted.

Where the agent chooses to advertise a price range, the upper figure cannot exceed the lower by more than 10 per cent. A $1.0m to $1.1m range is compliant. A $1.0m to $1.2m range is not.

NSW is also adopting what Victoria has had in its regime since 2017: the Statement of Information. This document sets out how the agent arrived at the estimated selling price, the three most recent comparable sales used, and the median sale price for the suburb.

The Statement of Information is no longer a form. It is the principal compliance artefact your agency produces for every listing. If NSW Fair Trading or Consumer Affairs Victoria walks in next week, the first document they will ask for is the SOI, followed by the working file behind it.

If your agency is still building Statements of Information in the last 15 minutes before a listing goes live, your agency is now non-compliant by design. The SOI workflow needs the same governance discipline a financial services licensee applies to a product disclosure statement. Versioned. Sourced. Approved.

Need help auditing your current SOI workflow? Our Regulatory Health Review is the entry-point diagnostic for this exact problem.

Victoria reserve price disclosure: the auction model just changed

On 19 November 2025, the Victorian Government announced legislation, expected to be introduced to Parliament in 2026, requiring real estate agents to publish the vendor's reserve price at least seven days before an auction or fixed-date sale.

If the reserve is not published within that window, the auction cannot proceed. There is no carve-out for last-minute vendor uncertainty. The publication is the legal precondition.

For anyone outside Victoria reading this thinking it does not affect them: Victorian property reforms tend to land in NSW within 18 to 24 months. Behave accordingly.

The strategic shift this creates is significant. The Australian auction model has historically depended on the vendor's ability to keep the reserve confidential until the morning of the auction, when crowd size and bidder behaviour could be assessed. That informational asymmetry is the engine of the auction format. Removing it does not just tighten the rules. It changes the negotiating dynamic between agent and vendor.

The hard conversation that used to happen on auction morning now has to happen seven days earlier, in writing, with a defensible justification for the reserve. Vendor management just got much harder for Victorian agencies.

Victorian comparable property guidelines: your selection methodology is now discoverable

On 6 November 2025, Consumer Affairs Victoria released updated guidance on how agents must select comparable properties for a Statement of Information. The updated guidance arose because more than a quarter of underquoting complaints involved agents choosing comparables that conveniently justified an artificially low price guide.

Under the new framework, agents cannot simply pick three recent local sales. The comparables analysis must explicitly account for:

• Whether the comparable properties are renovated or unrenovated
• Whether they are built dwellings or vacant land
• Whether they sit within the same school zone catchment
• Whether they share an apartment complex, residential estate, or street
• Proximity to comparable retail, transit, and lifestyle amenities

The change that most agents have missed: Consumer Affairs Victoria can now request the internal working file behind any Statement of Information. They are no longer just assessing the price guide. They are assessing the reasoning behind it.

This is the model ASIC has used to assess Australian Financial Services Licence holders for two decades. The audit is the audit trail, not the conclusion. If your file shows you deliberately excluded the obvious comparable next door because it sold for too much, you are not "making a judgement call." You are non-compliant.

The enforcement risk most principals miss: your competitors are the regulator's biggest source

Here is the data point that should sit on every real estate principal's desk for the rest of 2026.

Consumer Affairs Victoria has received more than 5,000 underquoting reports since the Taskforce launched in September 2022. According to multiple Premier of Victoria releases, between a quarter and a third of those reports come directly from competing real estate agents.

Read that again.

The agents who lost the listing to you. The agents who have watched your "offers over" campaign generate fake clearance rates for years. The agents whose ethical pricing has cost them market share. Those agents are now the regulator's most prolific source of intelligence.

The compliance discipline you build is not just a defence against Fair Trading or Consumer Affairs Victoria. It is a defence against weaponised complaints from people who know your sales process well enough to file a report that lands.

This is the shift that catches most agencies off guard. The market has eyes inside your own playbook. The only durable answer is to make sure every listing has an evidence file robust enough to survive a complaint from the smartest, angriest competitor in your patch.

What "Comply or Explain" actually looks like for a real estate agency

The doctrine is straightforward. You comply with the rule as written, or you formally explain why you have not.

In real estate, complying means selecting comparable properties that match on the criteria Consumer Affairs Victoria has now specified, publishing a Statement of Information that mathematically supports your price guide, and respecting the 10 per cent range rule in NSW.

Explaining means documenting a defensible deviation. If the property is genuinely anomalous, say a custom-built architectural home on a street of unrenovated post-war cottages, the algorithmic comparables will mislead. You can deviate. But the deviation has to be documented. Why these comparables and not those. Why this premium and not that. What evidence supports the variance.

The deviation is not the offence. The undocumented deviation is the offence.

This is the operating model financial services has lived inside for two decades. Real estate is the sector that has just been pushed into it, whether the industry was ready or not.

Three things every principal should do this quarter

1. Audit your last 20 listings against the new standard

Pull your last 20 listings, recreate the Statement of Information evidence file for each one, and assess whether the working file would survive a Fair Trading audit today. Most agencies, when they actually run this exercise, find that fewer than half of their files would clear the bar. That is the gap to close before 1 July.

2. Move pricing methodology under principal-level oversight

The era of the sales agent generating the Statement of Information in the listing CRM, unchecked, is over. Pricing methodology now requires a second pair of eyes inside the agency before publication, and a documented sign-off. Treat your SOI workflow the way an AFSL holder treats a financial product disclosure document.

3. Decide whether you have an internal compliance function at all

Most real estate agencies do not. They have a sales director who handles "issues" when they arise. That is not a compliance function. That is firefighting. If you do not have someone whose actual job is to maintain the evidence file, audit the listing workflow, and run interference between the agency and the regulator, you do not have a defence. You have a hope.

This is the gap our Managed Compliance Partner retainer was built to close. We embed inside the agency as your external compliance function. The regulator deals with us, not with you.

Frequently asked questions

When does the NSW underquoting Bill take effect?

The Property and Stock Agents Amendment (Underquoting and Other Agent Conduct) Bill 2026 was introduced into the NSW Parliament on 13 March 2026. Commencement will be determined on passage and proclamation. Plan on the new penalties being operative in the second half of 2026. Verify the current status at parliament.nsw.gov.au.

Does the Victorian seven-day reserve disclosure law apply to private sales?

No. The proposed Victorian reform applies to auctions and fixed-date sales. Private sales, off-the-plan sales, and volume sales are expected to be outside scope. Refer to Premier of Victoria announcements from 19 November 2025 for the policy parameters.

What is the maximum underquoting penalty in Victoria today?

As at November 2025, the maximum penalty for underquoting offences under the Estate Agents Act 1980 (Vic) is approximately $48,800. Under the Australian Consumer Law, exposure can reach $2.5 million for individuals and $50 million for corporations for the most serious misconduct.

Do these underquoting reforms apply to conveyancers and property developers?

The underquoting reforms apply to estate agents and their representatives. Conveyancers and property developers have a separate set of obligations under the AML/CTF Tranche 2 regime, with commencement on 1 July 2026 under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth). The two regimes hit the property sector in the same calendar quarter, which is why we recommend integrated planning.

What is a Statement of Information?

A Statement of Information is a mandated document that sets out an agent's estimated selling price, the three most comparable recent sales used to arrive at that price, and the median sale price for the suburb. It is required in Victoria and is being introduced into the NSW regime under the 2026 Bill.

How does the "comply or explain" doctrine apply to real estate agents?

You either follow the standard rule (algorithmic comparables, 10 per cent range in NSW, mandatory Statement of Information) or you document why a specific listing required a deviation. Deviation without documentation is treated as non-compliance. Deviation with a credible, contemporaneous evidence file is defensible.

Who can help my agency build a defensible compliance framework?

ComplyEdge works directly with real estate principals, franchise networks, and agency groups across NSW and Victoria to build defensible compliance frameworks. Our Regulatory Health Review is the entry-point diagnostic. The Managed Compliance Partner retainer is the ongoing solution for agencies that need an embedded compliance function.