Register your brief · No cost to buyers
Tell me what you want to buy
The buyer register opened in July 2026, so a brief lodged now sits at the front of it. Owners who want discretion sell without a public listing, to buyers already known and already briefed. Tell me the sector, the size and the region you want, and you are on the list before the first listing goes live.
Registering a brief is free to buyers and carries no obligation either way. Last updated 15 September 2026.
Tell me what you are looking forCall 0431 124 128
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Check it yourself
How do I buy a business in Queensland?
Register a buying brief with a broker: the sector, the size, the region and the funding you have available. Registered buyers hear about businesses before they are advertised, because the better ones sell quietly. Registering costs nothing, carries no obligation, and your details never go to a seller without your say so.
- Registering a buying brief with a broker is free for buyers, because in a business sale the fee is paid by the seller.
- Plenty of good businesses never reach public advertising, so watching the listings shows you only a fraction of what is available.
- Your brief covers your sector, your budget and your goals, so you are matched against businesses that fit rather than filtering listings.
- The register is new, which means a brief lodged now sits at the front of it rather than behind a queue.
The short answer, in six lines
Everything below expands on one of these, with the register or the regulator named so you can check it yourself.
At a glance
- What comes with the staff
- Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) Part 2-8 creates a transfer of business where an employee ends with the seller, starts with the buyer within 3 months, does the same or substantially the same work, and the employers are connected (s311). Personal and carer’s leave, parental leave and the right to request flexible working transfer regardless. A buyer that is not an associated entity may decline to recognise prior service for annual leave, redundancy pay and the unfair dismissal minimum employment period, but only by written notice given before the new employment starts.
- Long service leave crosses anyway
- Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld) s132 provides that a transfer of a calling does not break continuity, and that service with the former employer is taken to be service with the new employer. The full entitlement is 8.6667 weeks after 10 years of continuous service (s95). The Fair Work election to decline prior service gives you no equivalent escape from this clock, so calculate the accrued amount for every transferring employee and take it as a settlement adjustment.
- The core searches cost under $60
- A PPSR online search is $2 per search as at 14 August 2026. An ASIC current and historical company extract is $18 and a current business name extract is $9 on the current ASIC Connect schedule. A Titles Queensland current title search is $25.71 in FY2026/27. ABN Lookup, the ASIC banned and disqualified registers, the QBCC Licensee Register, the Fair Trading Licensing Register and Australian Trade Mark Search are free. That core set is $54.71, plus $2 for each additional PPSR serial number search.
- No cooling off, with one exception
- There is no statutory cooling off period on a Queensland business contract. The 5 business day cooling off period applies to residential property contracts, not to a business sale, so a business contract binds you from signature and your conditions are your only exits. The exception is franchising, where a franchisee may terminate within 14 days of entering the agreement under the Franchising Regulations 2024 (Cth), F2024L01605, in force from 1 April 2025.
- Product liability runs ten years
- Two limits run together under the Australian Consumer Law, Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). A claim runs for 3 years from when the person became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the loss, the defect and the manufacturer’s identity. It also runs for 10 years from the time the manufacturer supplied the goods. The ACCC treats a business as a manufacturer if it makes, assembles, imports where the maker has no Australian office, or applies its own brand name to the goods.
- Identity checks became law in 2026
- The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), as amended by Act No. 110 of 2024 which received Royal Assent on 10 December 2024, brought new designated services obligations into force on 1 July 2026, with an AUSTRAC enrolment deadline of 29 July 2026 for an entity providing a designated service on 1 July 2026. Lawyers, conveyancers, accountants and real estate professionals are named by the Department of Home Affairs among the captured groups. The Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) small business exemption at $3 million or less annual turnover in any financial year since 2002 falls away for a business that is an AML/CTF reporting entity.
Matched, not just listed
A registered brief is not a mailing list. It is a description of what you can fund, what you can run and what you actually want, so that when the right business comes up you get a phone call rather than an advertisement.
Sectors I know best
If you are buying in one of these sectors, you are talking to someone who understands the industry, not a generalist. Each guide below is written for sellers, but it shows exactly what a smart buyer should be looking at too.
E-commerce & retailMarketplace dependence, own brand, and the difference between the two when you go to fund it.
Transport & logisticsFleet age, encumbrances on the PPSR, and which contracts actually transfer to you.
Earthmoving, plant & civilWhat the machinery is really worth against the book value, and what the hours mean.
Construction & buildingWhether you can hold or obtain the QBCC licence class. Nothing else matters until that is settled.
Mining services & supplyPrequalification status with the mines, and whether it survives a change of ownership.
Window furnishings & interiorsWhere the revenue ceiling sits, and what install capacity you are actually buying.
Toy, gift & hobby retailStock on hand, what of it is dead, and how the online and store numbers really split.
Turf farmsWater, land tenure and harvest cycles. A sector where the balance sheet does most of the talking.
OH&S consultancy & trainingWhether the RTO scope transfers, and how much of the revenue is the departing owner.Each guide is written for a seller, so reading one tells you exactly what the vendor has been advised to expect. View all sector guides.
The five liabilities that follow the business, whatever the contract says about assets
Employees. Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) Part 2-8 creates a transfer of business under s311 where the employee’s employment with the seller ends, the employee becomes employed by you within 3 months, the work is “the same, or substantially the same”, and there is a connection between the employers. The listed connections include a transfer of assets, an outsourcing or insourcing arrangement, and the employers being associated entities. Where there is a transfer, service with the old employer counts as service with you under s22(5) for the National Employment Standards.
Personal and carer’s leave and its accrued balance, parental leave entitlements and the right to request flexible working arrangements transfer regardless. Where you are not an associated entity you may decline to recognise prior service for annual leave, for redundancy pay and for the unfair dismissal minimum employment period, but only by written notice given to the employee before the new employment starts. Where the employers are associated entities, none of those elections are available. Each election shifts a cost between seller and buyer, so each one is a price negotiation. The two normal outcomes are that you recognise service and the price comes down by the accrued liability, or you decline and the seller pays the entitlements out at settlement. Leaving it unaddressed is the outcome that produces a dispute, because the transferring employees will assume their service carried across.
Queensland long service leave. This runs on a different rule. Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld) s132 provides that a transfer of a calling does not break continuity of service, and that service with the former employer is taken to be service with the new employer. The explanatory notes to the Industrial Relations Bill 2016 at clause 132 confirm that intention. The full entitlement is 8.6667 weeks after 10 years of continuous service (s95). The Fair Work election gives you no equivalent escape here, so assume the clock keeps running, calculate the accrued liability for every transferring employee, and take it as a settlement adjustment.
Product liability. The Australian Consumer Law, Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth), imposes liability on a manufacturer for goods with a safety defect. The ACCC treats a business as a manufacturer if it makes or assembles the goods, imports them where the maker has no office in Australia, uses its own brand name on them, promotes itself as the manufacturer, or permits another person to promote the goods as having been manufactured by it. Two limits run together: 3 years from when the person became aware, or ought reasonably to have become aware, of the loss, the defect and the manufacturer’s identity, and 10 years from the time the manufacturer supplied the goods. In a share purchase that exposure sits inside the company and comes with it. In an asset purchase the historic liability generally stays with the seller entity, which is only useful if that entity will still exist and be solvent when a claim arrives. Review the recall history, the complaints register, the supplier indemnities, the insurance position and any mandatory safety or information standard that applies.
Warranty obligations. Separate from product liability, and from two sources. Consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law cannot be excluded and bind you from day one on the same goods and services. Express warranties given by the seller to its customers before settlement can be contractual, extended, or workmanship warranties in a trade. Answer one question before contract: who honours a claim on work done or goods sold before settlement? The three workable answers are the seller with a mechanism to pay you for doing the work, you with the price adjusted for the estimated cost, or you with a retention held from the price for a stated period. Silence is the worst outcome, because the customer comes to you regardless and you either do the work for nothing or damage the goodwill you just paid for. Ask for the warranty claim history in units and dollars for the last 3 years, and the current open claim list.
Environmental liability. It attaches to the land and to the environmental authority, not to the goodwill, so neither an asset sale structure nor a change of trading name moves it. Taking a transfer of an environmental authority under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) makes you the holder and the operator, with the compliance obligations and any financial assurance requirement. The transfer uses the administering authority’s form ESR/2015/1718, and the administering authority can only refuse where the proposed new holder is not registered as a suitable operator. Under s314(5) the previous holder’s financial assurance may not be discharged until the new holder has given its own and the transfer has taken effect.
Whose side I am on, said plainly
Start with whose side of the table this page is written from. Tony Pope acts for sellers. Under the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) the seller signs the appointment, the seller sets the commission and the agent’s duty runs to the seller. That is the structure of a business sale, not a comment on any particular agent, and it is the reason this page is written as information rather than as advice. You can expect a licensed agent to be honest and to comply with the Australian Consumer Law prohibitions on misleading or deceptive conduct in Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). You should not expect the seller’s agent to be your adviser. Engage your own solicitor and your own accountant before you sign anything binding, get borrowing capacity assessed by a lender or a licensed finance broker before you look seriously, and if you want a licensee on your own side, appoint a buyer’s agent under the same Act by your own separate appointment.
Tony Pope holds Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence 4963575, issued in July 2026, and is a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers. He works from Gumdale, Queensland 4154. Buyers are qualified one at a time rather than pulled from a bought list. What sits behind the licence is operating experience. He co founded a toy business with his wife, owned it, built it and sold it, so he has been on the seller’s side of a transaction and read the contract from there. He holds a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment and has built and designed online safety training programmes. He runs sales and marketing for a hinterland tree farm. His father in law spent a working life growing turf in Queensland, built the business to substantial scale and sold it to competitors.
Knowing that is worth more to you than any assurance, because it tells you exactly how to read everything above. Every figure on this page carries an Act, a section, a register, a form or a fee with its reference period, and the source list below is where each one comes from, so you can check it without asking anyone. Where the research could not confirm something it is left out and said so. No Queensland transfer duty rate appears anywhere on this page, because the Schedule 3 rate table could not be retrieved from a primary source. ETP Consulting Pty Ltd enrolled with AUSTRAC as a reporting entity in August 2026, and holds Office of Fair Trading licence 4963575, issued in July 2026. Both were in place before ETP acted for a client. There is no public search of the Reporting Entities Roll, so ask me for the reporting entity number and I will give it to you in writing. Australian Consumer Law s18 and s29 apply to everything written here. The Queensland Office of Fair Trading licensing register at ftlr.fairtrading.qld.gov.au is free to search if you want to verify the licence before you call.
Questions people ask
3 of the 21 answered in full on the questions page for this topic.
Why will nobody tell me the name of the business before I sign a confidentiality agreement?
Because disclosure is what damages a business before it sells. Staff update their resumes, customers start testing alternatives, suppliers tighten trading terms, and a competitor who learns of a sale can price against the business, recruit from it and call its accounts at no cost. Once the information is out there is no remedy that puts it back.
What does signing a confidentiality agreement actually commit me to?
Read the one in front of you rather than assume, but the usual commitments are these. Not to disclose the existence of the sale, the identity of the business or any information provided, other than to named professional advisers who are themselves bound. To use the information only to evaluate the purchase. Not to approach the staff, customers or suppliers directly. To return or destroy the material if the transaction does not proceed. And an acknowledgement that no warranty is given as to the accuracy or completeness of what you are shown.
Can I see the tax returns before I make an offer?
Sometimes at the information memorandum stage, more often after a conditional contract is signed. Business Queensland’s own due diligence list names “Tax returns (minimum 3 previous years)” and a profit and loss statement covering “3 years or longer to determine market variations” as due diligence items, which sit late in the sequence rather than at first contact.
More questions buyers ask, all 21 of them.
Go deeper
The long form, where it belongs
The full detail is on the pages below, each on its own page.
Check it yourself16 primary sources
Primary sources, none of them affiliated with me and none of them endorsing this site. Where anything here differs from an official source, the official source is right.
The terms a seller, a landlord and a financier will use13 definitions
Plain definitions of the words a buyer, a financier or a regulator will use. Where a term has a statutory anchor, it is named.
Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) s311. It arises where the employee’s employment with the old employer ends, the employee becomes employed by the new employer within 3 months, the work is “the same, or substantially the same”, and there is a connection between the employers. The listed connections include a transfer of assets, an outsourcing or insourcing arrangement, and the employers being associated entities. Where there is a transfer, service with the old employer counts as service with the new employer under s22(5) for the purposes of the National Employment Standards.
ASIC Regulatory Guide 230.5, published 9 December 2011, defines it as “financial information that is presented other than in accordance with all relevant accounting standards”. RG 230.17 describes non-IFRS profit information as profit calculated on a basis other than in accordance with IFRS, or calculated in accordance with IFRS but adjusted in some manner. Seller’s discretionary earnings and adjusted EBITDA both sit inside that definition. Neither is an accounting standard figure and both are constructed.
Net profit, plus interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, plus the owner’s total remuneration including superannuation, plus genuinely non-recurring and non-business expenses. It answers the question of what the business generates for one working owner, before that owner is paid at all. It is used for owner operated businesses where the buyer will work in the business. It is non-IFRS information under ASIC RG 230.5.
Net profit, plus interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, plus genuinely non-recurring and non-business expenses, less a market salary for the owner’s role. It answers a different question: what the business returns to an investor who employs somebody to do the owner’s job. Lenders and buyers installing a manager use this base. It is also non-IFRS information under ASIC RG 230.5, and it is a different number from seller’s discretionary earnings for the same business.
Australian Consumer Law, Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). In the ACCC’s words, a product has a safety defect where it “doesn’t meet the level of safety the public is generally entitled to expect”, taking into account how the product was marketed, its packaging, the instructions and warnings given with it, and reasonably foreseeable use.
Broader than it sounds. The ACCC lists five ways a business is treated as a manufacturer. It “makes or assembles the goods”. It “imports the goods (if the maker of the goods does not have an office in Australia)”. It “uses its own brand name in relation to the goods”. It “promotes itself to the public as the manufacturer of the goods”. Or it “permits another person to promote the goods as having been manufactured by the company”. An importer or a private label retailer sits inside that definition.
The trigger for reporting entity status under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth). The services are set out in the tables in section 6 of that Act. Whether an obligation applies to a particular business turns on the designated services actually provided, not on the job title. AUSTRAC’s professional services list includes to “buy, sell or transfer a legal arrangement or body corporate” and to “handle a person’s money, accounts, securities, virtual assets or other property to help a person to plan or execute a transaction”.
Franchising Regulations 2024 (Cth), F2024L01605, s23(6): “The franchisor must not execute the franchise agreement with the prospective franchisee before the end of the period (the consideration period) of 14 days after the latest” of the specified dates. Section 23(8) requires the franchisor to repay an amount within 14 days after receiving a repayment request made during that period.
Per the ACCC, “A franchisee may terminate a franchise agreement within 14 days of entering into the agreement (the cooling-off period)”. On a transfer of an existing agreement the period ends at the earlier of two events: 14 days after becoming the new franchisee, or the day the new franchisee takes possession and control of the franchised business. Taking the keys on day 3 ends the cooling off period on day 3.
The permit issued under the Environmental Protection Act 1994 (Qld) to conduct a prescribed environmentally relevant activity. On a change of owner it is transferred using the administering authority’s request to transfer environmental authority holder form, ESR/2015/1718. The critical condition is that the proposed new holder is “registered as a suitable operator”. Where financial assurance applies, s314(5) means the previous holder’s assurance may not be discharged until the new holder has given its own and the transfer has taken effect.
A Personal Property Securities Register search run against an entity’s ACN, or its ABN where there is no company, returning every security interest registered against that entity’s personal property. In the PPSR’s own words, “When you search, you’ll get a certificate you can keep as proof of whether or not a security interest was registered at that time.” An online search is $2 as at 14 August 2026, and retrieving a copy of a prior search result is free.
Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth) s118-565. It is a right to future financial benefits contingent on the economic performance of the asset or business. Section 118-565 sets conditions. The asset must have been an active asset of the disposing entity just before the disposal. The parties must “deal with each other at arm’s length in making the arrangement”. And all financial benefits must be provided over a period ending no later than 5 years after the end of the income year in which the CGT event happens. Look through treatment applies to rights created on or after 24 April 2015.
Duties Act 2001 (Qld) s35. It includes “goodwill”, “a statutory business licence used for carrying on a business”, “the business name used for carrying on a business”, “a right under a franchise arrangement used for carrying on a business”, a supply right, “intellectual property used for carrying on a business” and “personal property in Queensland of a business”. It is dutiable property under s10(1)(d), the rate sits in Schedule 3 by force of s24(2), and lodgement is required within 30 days after the liability arises (s19). No rate figure is stated on this page. Obtain the current rates from the Queensland Revenue Office or from your solicitor.
Register your buying brief
Tell me the sector, the size, the region and the funding you have available. It takes one conversation, it costs nothing, and your details never reach a seller without your say so.
Tell me what you are looking for
I will tell you when something matches. You sign a confidentiality agreement before you see anything that identifies a business.
Nothing you send goes any further. It comes to me only, into my own database in Sydney. I do not pass buyer enquiries to sellers, to other brokers or to anyone else. You see a sector, a region and a size before you see a name, and nothing that identifies a business is released until you have signed a confidentiality agreement.
If you would rather not put anything in writing yet, ring 0431 124 128. Prefer to pick a time yourself? Book a time in my diary.