More questions owners ask about fees

No. The Queensland Office of Fair Trading states it plainly: “We do not set a limit on how much commission you may charge as a property agent. You are free to negotiate any commission with your client.” There is no scale, no cap and no prescribed rate for a business sale.

What is regulated is the paperwork, not the price. Commission must be in writing at the time of appointment under the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld), must include GST and say so, and cannot be changed once both parties have signed. Part 7 of the PO Form 6A requires it as a percentage or a dollar amount.

So the number is negotiable and the document is not. A figure agreed in conversation and left out of part 7 is not a fee agreement at all.

Because none of the official sources publishes one. On 14 August 2026 five were checked: the Queensland Office of Fair Trading, Queensland Government seller guidance, business.gov.au, the Australian Institute of Business Brokers and the Real Estate Institute of Queensland. None publishes a business broking rate or a range.

The Office of Fair Trading says only that commission is unregulated and negotiable. Queensland Government guidance for sellers tells you to obtain two or three quotes and compare them, and publishes no rate. business.gov.au describes what a business broker does and advises checking credentials, and publishes no fee guidance.

That leaves broker websites, and a percentage range on a broker’s website is that broker’s own claim rather than a market statistic. The ACCC standard is that claims “should be true, accurate and based on reasonable grounds” and that “A business must be able to prove any claim they advertise”. A range that cannot be sourced does not meet it, so it is not published here.

The PO Form 6A, commercial agent appointment or reappointment, version 1 dated May 2024. Queensland now runs two approved appointment forms, a residential Form 6 and a commercial Form 6A, and a business sale is a commercial appointment.

Part 3 of the Form 6A is headed property or business details, which is the answer to anyone who suggests the Queensland form is only built for houses. The form has a business field because section 26 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) gives the licence a business limb: it authorises the holder “to buy, sell, exchange, or let businesses or interests in businesses”.

If a broker produces a residential Form 6 for a business, or a firm’s own agreement with no approved form attached, that is worth a question before anything else is discussed.

The Office of Fair Trading states the appointment must specify “the services you’ll provide”, “any limits, restrictions or conditions on your services”, “the commission, fees and expenses the client will pay you”, “the due dates for each payment”, and “an end date (for a sole or exclusive agency)”.

It adds that agents must declare financial benefits received from third parties, including service surcharges and referral rebates. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland states the appointment must also carry a warning that you should seek independent legal advice before signing, and must say whether the appointment is single or continuing.

Read the due date column as carefully as the amount column. A charge with no stated due date is a defect, and the consequence of a defective appointment sits in section 89 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld).

The agent loses it. Section 89(1) of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) says a person cannot sue for, recover or keep a reward or expense for performing an activity as a property agent unless the person held the appropriate licence, was authorised under it, and was properly appointed under part 4.

Section 89(2) makes it an offence to sue for, recover or keep the money outside those conditions, maximum 200 penalty units. At the Queensland penalty unit value of $172.70 from 1 July 2026, that is $34,540. Subsection (1) is the civil bar and subsection (2) is the criminal consequence of ignoring it.

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland states that section 112(4) makes an appointment “ineffective from the time it is made” where it does not comply with section 104. That is the pivot on which Queensland fee disputes turn.

No. The Office of Fair Trading states that parties “may not change your commission once you and the client have signed your appointment”. The figure in part 7 of the PO Form 6A is the figure.

The practical consequence runs the other way as well. A discount discussed but never written into part 7 is not a discount, and a structure described in a meeting but absent from the document is not a structure. Anything you are relying on belongs in the form before signature.

If terms genuinely need to change, that is a new appointment or a reappointment, and part 10 of the PO Form 6A carries its own timing rule for reappointment: “within 14 days before the contract ends, not before”.

They are two different events, and both are contract terms rather than statutory ones. Part 7 of the PO Form 6A carries the default language for sales and auctions that “Commission is payable if a contract is entered into and settlement of the contract occurs”, with the trigger to be filled in on the form.

Queensland Government guidance for sellers notes that contracts commonly make commission due once the contract goes unconditional, and that if the sale later falls over after that date the commission is still owed.

So the single most useful question about any fee quote is which event makes it payable: contract signing, the unconditional date, or settlement. That answer moves your risk more than a difference in the headline number.

That depends entirely on the trigger written into part 7 of your appointment, and it is the reason to read that line before signing rather than after.

Queensland Government guidance warns sellers directly that where the fee is triggered at the unconditional date, “if the sale falls through after this date ... you do still need to pay the commission”. A fee triggered at settlement does not have that exposure, because settlement did not occur.

Ask for the answer in writing before the form is signed, and check that the written answer matches what you were told.

Under an exclusive agency, the appointed agent, because section 23 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) entitles that agent to the reward “whether or not the selling agent is the effective cause” of the sale. Causation does not come into it.

Under a sole agency or an open listing it turns on effective cause. In Podium Project Marketing Pty Ltd v B Global (Aust) Pty Ltd [2024] QDC 219, decided 12 December 2024, the District Court of Queensland awarded the appointed agent $253,000 plus interest, holding it was an effective cause of sale through sub agents even though it never met the buyers.

Section 102(6) of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) also lets agents work together with an already appointed agent without each holding an appointment. That is the statutory basis for conjunctional selling, and it is one route to a two agent argument.

It is the test the court applies when more than one person claims credit. In Podium Project Marketing Pty Ltd v B Global (Aust) Pty Ltd [2024] QDC 219 the District Court of Queensland used the formulation from LJ Hooker Ltd v Adams Estates Pty Ltd: “The inquiry is whether the actions of the agent really brought about the relation of buyer and seller.”

Two findings in that case matter to a seller. More than one party can be an effective cause at the same time. And an agent can be an effective cause without ever having spoken to the buyer.

That is why an introduction clause and a listing type together decide your exposure. Effective cause is a question of fact, decided after the event, on evidence about who did what.

You do, up to the authorised amount written into part 8 section 1 of the PO Form 6A, and payable at the time stated there. Advertising is not commission and is not covered by it.

Queensland Government guidance says you reimburse an agent for expenses “only if you discuss and agree on them in advance”, that the agent must “place the money in their trust account”, and that the agent must obtain receipts. Trust money is governed by the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 (Qld) and must be banked before the end of the first business day after receipt under section 16.

An authorised amount expressed as an estimate rather than a number is a blank cheque. Ask for a figure, ask whether the money is held in trust until it is spent, ask for receipts, and ask what happens to an unspent balance.

Not without disclosing it. Part 8 section 4 of the PO Form 6A requires the agent to disclose a rebate or discount the agent receives, with the source of the service and the estimated amount, and the Office of Fair Trading requires agents to declare financial benefits received from third parties including service surcharges and referral rebates.

An undisclosed margin creates three problems at once. It is a benefit that belonged in part 8, and a defective appointment engages the section 89 bar on recovering a reward or expense. It is money you were told was a pass through cost when it was not. And it puts the agent’s interest in spending your advertising budget somewhere other than where it works best.

Ask the question before the form is produced, then check that the form matches the answer you were given.

It is trust money, and the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 (Qld) builds four layers around it. It must be banked before the end of the first business day after receipt under section 16. It is “not available to the agent’s creditors” under section 20. The account is audited, with an auditor appointed within 1 month of the account opening under section 30 and the audit completed within 4 months after the last day of the audit month under sections 35 and 40.

Behind those sits the claim fund. Section 25 of the Agents Financial Administration Regulation 2014 (Qld) caps recovery at $200,000 for a single claimant and $2,000,000 in total for contraventions by a single person.

The controls exist because the risk is real. On 18 March 2026 the Queensland Department of Justice reported a Brisbane real estate agent sentenced over three counts of fraud involving more than $131,000 taken through around 200 trust account transfers between January 2013 and June 2020.

It is not insurance against a bad deal. Section 82 of the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 (Qld) lets you claim where you suffer financial loss because of a listed claimable event, and those events are about misuse of client money and property: contravention of the trust account provisions, and stealing or misapplying property entrusted to a relevant person.

A disappointing sale price, a buyer who walks away, an appraisal that proved optimistic or a campaign that did not work are none of those things. Claims are lodged with the Office of Fair Trading Claims and Recoveries unit.

The Act also sets time limits for lodging a claim. Those limits could not be confirmed from the Act text for this page, so treat any period you are quoted as something to check with your own solicitor rather than as settled.

Whatever end date goes into part 4 of the PO Form 6A, agreed before you sign. The 90 day machinery people quote comes from section 110 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld), and that section is expressly limited to the “sale of residential property” and expressly excludes a commercial scale appointment.

Whether any statutory maximum term applies to a business appointment on a Form 6A could not be confirmed from the Act for this page, because the provision that would settle it could not be retrieved. So do not treat 90 days as a rule for a business, and do not treat its absence as a licence for an open ended term either.

What is verifiable is that part 4 has start and end date fields, part 5 sets out how the appointment ends, and part 10 permits reappointment only “within 14 days before the contract ends, not before”. Ask for the end date as a date, not as a length.

Compare the total cost of the engagement, not the headline number. Queensland Government guidance encourages sellers to ask two or three agents and compare the quotes, and the marketing authority in part 8 and the payment trigger in part 7 can move the total by more than a difference in the percentage does.

Six things decide it: the structure, the trigger event, the authorised marketing amount and whether it is refundable, any engagement or minimum fee, any rebate the agent receives, and the definition of an introduced buyer in any tail clause.

Then check the two things that are checkable against a public source. The licence number and the name it is held in, on the free Fair Trading Licensing Register at ftlr.fairtrading.qld.gov.au, which returns the licence number, the holder’s name, the licence type and a ‘details current at’ date. And the licence expiry date, which is a field in part 2 of the PO Form 6A. The Office of Fair Trading states the free register cannot be used as evidence in legal proceedings, and sells an official extract for $20.70 from 1 July 2026.

No. The appraisal is free, and it is free whether you list with me or not. Nothing on this page applies until you decide to sell and sign an appointment. If you want to know your number and then do nothing for three years, that is a perfectly good outcome and it costs you nothing.

The campaign fee, and nothing else. No success fee, no advertising invoice, no cancellation fee, no renewal to keep it listed. That one number is the whole of your exposure.

Because the alternative is sending your financials to an outside agency to keep costs down, and that is how people find out you're selling. I do the work myself, which costs time before anything sells. The fee covers that, and then it comes off the end.

It is a fixed price for a defined package, earned as the work is delivered. If you end the appointment before something on the list has been done, you don't pay for that part.

Then I wear it. The campaign fee is a fixed price, not a budget you top up. You will never get an invoice from me part-way through a campaign asking for more advertising money.

The bands are published because they are the bands. What's worth discussing is the advertising cap, the length of the appointment, and whether I'm the right person for your business at all.

I do, out of the campaign fee. Once you appoint me and the campaign fee is paid, I run the searches and there is nothing separate for you to pay. For a standard business that covers up to two individuals, one company and one trust, for the business being sold. If the ownership runs wider than that, you are told the additional cost as soon as I know how the business is structured, it is charged at what it costs me with nothing added, and it is settled before the listing is advertised.

No. Every figure on this site is plus GST. GST is added where it applies, at the rate applying at the time, so the site does not publish a GST-inclusive figure that could be wrong later. Part 7 of your PO Form 6A states the commission including GST, and that figure is calculated when the appointment is prepared.