Every Australian who has bought a home in the last decade knows the routine. You find a listing guided at $850,000, you spend $700 on a building inspection and a contract review, you take a Saturday morning off, and you watch it sell for $960,000 to someone who was never in your price range. The guide was never a guide. It was bait.
In 2026 both of Australia's largest property markets moved against that practice at the same time, and in very different ways. New South Wales has gone after the penalty, lifting the maximum fine fivefold. Victoria has gone after the information, forcing sellers to publish their reserve a week before the auction. If either works, the cost of shopping for a house drops for everyone.
What underquoting actually is
Underquoting is not "the property sold above the guide". In a rising market that happens constantly and lawfully, because buyers compete and the price runs.
Underquoting is advertising or quoting a price the agent knows, or reasonably ought to know, the seller will not accept. The offence is in the knowledge, not the outcome, and that is precisely why it has always been hard to prove. An agent can point to a soft market, an optimistic vendor, or a comparable sale from three months ago and the file becomes a matter of interpretation.
The 2026 reforms attack that ambiguity from two directions: by making the estimate documented and checkable, and by making the penalty large enough to change the commercial calculation.
What changed in New South Wales
The Property and Stock Agents Amendment (Underquoting and Other Agent Conduct) Bill 2026 passed the NSW Parliament this year. It is the most substantial rewrite of price advertising rules the state has seen.
| Breach | Previous maximum penalty | New maximum penalty |
|---|---|---|
| Underquoting | $22,000 | $110,000, or three times the agent's commission, whichever is greater |
| Dummy bidding at auction | $55,000 | $110,000 |
The multiplier matters more than the headline figure. Tying the penalty to three times the commission means the fine scales with the property, so underquoting a $4 million home is no longer a rounding error against the fee earned. That is the first time the economics have pointed the other way.
Alongside the penalties, agents now face a set of positive duties:
- Advertise with a price or a price guide. Listings without any price indication are no longer an escape route from the rules.
- Publish a Statement of Information showing how the estimated selling price was calculated, including the comparable sales relied on and the median price for the suburb.
- Follow clearer rules for calculating and revising the estimate, so the estimate has to move when the evidence moves.
- Never advertise a price below a written offer the vendor has already rejected, or below the highest unsuccessful bid at a previous auction.
That last provision is quietly the most powerful. If a vendor knocked back $900,000 in writing last month, the listing cannot go back on the market guided at $850,000. The paper trail follows the property.
NSW Fair Trading also gains real enforcement teeth: the power to compel agents to publicly disclose their breaches, and the power to require that a price estimate be verified by an independent qualified valuer. Publicity is a sanction that agents feel more sharply than fines, because reputation is the product.
"The focus of the Minns Labor Government is simple: a fair property market that works for everyone," Minister Anoulack Chanthivong said, framing the reforms around ensuring "homebuyers aren't wasting their valuable time and money."
What changed in Victoria
Victoria took a different route, and arguably a bolder one. Rather than policing the estimate, it removes the secret the estimate has always concealed.
Under laws arriving in 2026, Victorian agents must publish the auction reserve price at least one week before auction day. Once published, all marketing material has to be updated to carry it. The requirement extends to fixed-date-of-sale campaigns as well, closing the obvious workaround. Most significantly, an auction cannot proceed if the reserve has not been disclosed within the required timeframe.
Think about what that does to a Saturday morning. Today you walk into an auction knowing a guide, a quoted range, and nothing about the number the property will actually sell above. From the commencement of these laws, you walk in knowing the floor, a week in advance, with time to arrange finance, order an inspection and decide whether to bother at all.
Victoria's underquoting taskforce, running since 2022, has issued more than 200 infringements worth about $2.3 million in fines, and the state's per-breach penalties for individual agents currently sit at up to about $11,000. The reserve disclosure rule sidesteps the enforcement problem entirely: there is nothing to interpret about whether a number was published.
"Underquoting isn't fair and it's young Victorians and families paying the price," the state's consumer affairs minister said of the reform.
The rest of the country
The two big markets have moved. Elsewhere, the position is more varied, and buyers should check with the relevant regulator rather than assume NSW or Victorian rules apply.
Queensland is the outlier worth knowing about. Under the Property Occupations Act 2014, agents are prohibited from giving any price guide at all on a property going to auction. No guide, no range, no indication. Queensland's reasoning is that a guide is inherently manipulable, so the state removes it and relies on buyers doing their own comparable sales research. Agents there also cannot represent a property at a price they know the seller will not accept.
In the remaining states and territories, price representations are governed by a combination of state agent licensing legislation and the misleading and deceptive conduct provisions of the Australian Consumer Law. Practice and enforcement intensity differ, so confirm the current requirements with your state's consumer affairs or fair trading office before relying on a guide.
What buyers should actually do with this
Reforms shift the odds. They do not do your work for you. Five practical habits do more for your budget than any statute.
Read the Statement of Information as evidence, not decoration. In jurisdictions that require one, it names the comparable sales the agent chose. Look at what is missing as much as what is included: three comparables from a cheaper pocket of the suburb, or sales from six months ago in a market that has since moved, tell you something about the estimate.
Do your own comparables. Pull the last three months of sales for the same property type and land size within a few streets. This is the single skill that makes a guide irrelevant, and it is the foundation of reading the market signals that show where a property should land.
In Queensland, expect no guide and plan for it. The research burden is entirely yours, which is one reason buyer's agents are heavily used in Brisbane. Our Brisbane buyer's agent guide covers finding local help.
Ask directly whether a written offer has been rejected. In NSW that answer now constrains what the property can be advertised at, and everywhere it tells you where the seller's floor really sits.
Report it when it happens. Enforcement bodies act on complaints, and the taskforce results in Victoria show they do act. A five-minute report to your state regulator costs you nothing and is the mechanism by which the new penalties actually bite.
What it means for the auction room
Underquoting has always been most damaging at auction, because auctions have no cooling-off period and no finance clause. You bid, the hammer falls, you are bound. A buyer who has been drawn to an auction by a false guide is a buyer making a binding, unconditional decision on bad information.
Both reforms improve that. NSW ties the advertised price to the property's actual offer history, and Victoria hands you the reserve a week out. In each case, the number you plan around is now anchored to something.
Set your walk-away price before the day and write it down, because the psychology of the room is unchanged by any of this. Our auction playbook covers bidding strategy in detail, and it matters more than ever in a market where clearance rates have sat below 50% since late May 2026. Weak clearance means more properties passing in, and a passed-in property is a negotiation, not an auction.
If you would rather have someone who reads statements of information every week doing this for you, what a buyer's agent does explains the role, and GoMatch matches you with a vetted one for free.
The limits: reforms take time to bite
Two cautions belong on all of this.
First, commencement. Passing a bill and commencing its provisions are different events, and different sections often start on different dates. Before you rely on any specific obligation described here, confirm the current commencement position with NSW Fair Trading or Consumer Affairs Victoria.
Second, behaviour. Underquoting persisted through the last two rounds of reform in both states because the incentive survived: a low guide brings crowds, crowds bring competition, competition brings price. Higher penalties change the risk side of that trade but not the reward side. The reserve disclosure rule in Victoria is the more structural fix, because it removes the information asymmetry rather than punishing its exploitation.
Watch the enforcement statistics over the next twelve months. They will tell you more than the legislation does.
FAQ: underquoting laws in Australia
What is the penalty for underquoting in NSW?
Following the Property and Stock Agents Amendment (Underquoting and Other Agent Conduct) Bill 2026, the maximum penalty rose from $22,000 to $110,000, or three times the agent's commission, whichever is greater. Penalties for dummy bidding at auction rose from $55,000 to $110,000.
Does Victoria have to publish the auction reserve price?
Under laws arriving in 2026, Victorian agents must publish the reserve price at least one week before the auction, update all marketing material once it is published, and cannot proceed with the auction if the reserve has not been disclosed in time. The requirement also applies to fixed-date-of-sale campaigns.
Why is there no price guide on Queensland auctions?
Queensland's Property Occupations Act 2014 prohibits agents from giving a price guide on any property going to auction. The state's approach is to remove the guide entirely rather than regulate its accuracy, which puts the research burden on buyers.
How do I report suspected underquoting?
Contact your state consumer protection regulator: NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria, the Office of Fair Trading in Queensland, or the equivalent body in your state. Keep the advertisement, the quoted range, any Statement of Information and the final sale price, because the comparison is the evidence.
Where this leaves you
The 2026 reforms are the most serious attempt Australia has made to fix a practice that has cost buyers time, money and trust for a very long time. NSW made lying expensive. Victoria made the truth compulsory.
Neither removes the need to do your own work. A price guide, however well regulated, is still someone else's opinion of what your money should buy. Pull the comparable sales, read the Statement of Information sceptically, set your ceiling in advance, and treat the guide as the last piece of information you consider rather than the first. The legislative details above were confirmed against government releases and legal commentary current in August 2026, and commencement dates should be checked with the relevant regulator.
Sources
- NSW Government, "Hammer comes down on underquoters with tough new laws", ministerial release, 2026.
- NSW Government, "NSW cracks down on underquoting with tough new laws", 2026.
- Law Society Journal, "New laws crack down on underquoting in NSW", 2026.
- Savings.com.au, "Victoria forces disclosure of auction reserve prices in crackdown on underquoting", 2026.
- Armstrong Legal, "Misleading property price guides (Qld)", Property Occupations Act 2014.
- Cotality, "Australia's housing market downturn widens", Home Value Index results for July 2026.
