More questions about checking a broker

Four things. The licence number, the name of the licence holder, the type of licence, and the date of the last data update, which appears in the ‘details current at’ field. That is what the Office of Fair Trading says the free register at ftlr.fairtrading.qld.gov.au holds.

It is enough to confirm that a person holds a current licence of a class that covers business broking. Section 26 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) is the provision that makes the class cover businesses as well as real property.

It is not enough to settle an argument. The Office of Fair Trading states that the free register “is for your information only. You cannot use it as evidence in legal proceedings.” For that you buy the extract.

More fields, and evidentiary weight. The extract returns the holder’s name, their registered business name if they have one, their place of business, the status of the licence expressed as current, expired, refused, cancelled or suspended, and the licence number and class.

The status field is the one worth paying for. A free search tells you a licence exists. The extract tells you whether it is current, expired, refused, cancelled or suspended, in a document you can put in front of a solicitor.

The fee is published on the Office of Fair Trading fair trading fees page, which was last updated on 1 July 2026 when a 3.4 per cent indexation increase was applied. Check the number there rather than taking it from a broker’s website, including this one.

Honestly, this could not be confirmed either way. The Office of Fair Trading publishes what the free search returns and what the extract returns. Neither description mentions disciplinary history, and no statement that disciplinary history is excluded could be found either. That was checked on 14 August 2026.

So do not assume a clean search means a clean record, and do not assume the opposite. Treat the register as answering one question, which is whether a licence exists and what its status is.

The separate place to look is the Office of Fair Trading’s published enforcement data. The Legal and Enforcement Actions dataset sits on the Queensland Government Open Data Portal and lists completed legal and enforcement actions by calendar year. That is a different product from the licensee register and it has to be searched separately.

Run three searches and compare the names. The Queensland licensee register returns the name of the licence holder. ABN Lookup returns the entity name, the entity type, the ABN status and the GST registration status. The ASIC business names register returns the registered business name and the ABN of the holder.

Part 2 of the PO Form 6A carries the licensee details, including the licence number and the licence expiry date. Part 1 carries the client details. The name in part 2 has to be the name on the register.

This is not paperwork pedantry. Section 89 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) bars a person from suing for, recovering or keeping a reward unless that person held the appropriate licence, was authorised under it and was properly appointed. A licence held by a related company that is not the appointed entity is a section 89 problem in waiting.

A search on the Personal Property Securities Register at ppsr.gov.au costs $2 online. You get a certificate, described by the register as “proof of whether or not a security interest was registered at that time”. Retrieving a copy of a search result afterwards is free.

You can search by organisation identifier, by an individual’s name and date of birth, by serial number for a motor vehicle, watercraft or aircraft, and by intellectual property, registration number, point in time or ordinal.

Buying business assets that carry a registered security interest means buying somebody else’s debt collateral. Against a six figure purchase price, $2 is the cheapest risk control in the transaction.

Search the Tax Practitioners Board register at tpb.gov.au/registrations_search. It holds the registration details of registered, suspended and deregistered tax and BAS agents, and the complete dataset is also downloadable from data.gov.au. No fee is stated for the search.

The line is drawn by TPB(I) 39/2023 and section 90-5 of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (Cth). Advice that applies or interprets a taxation law to your own circumstances, in a situation where you can reasonably be expected to rely on it, is a tax agent service.

Charging for one while unregistered attracts a civil penalty of up to 250 penalty units for an individual, which is $91,000 at the Commonwealth penalty unit value of $364 from 1 July 2026. Advertising one while unregistered is up to 50 penalty units.

The Queensland Law Society keeps a Register of Solicitors, described as containing “records of all current legal practitioners in Queensland”, and a free referral directory called Find a Solicitor at youandthelaw.com.au/directory. A listing in the directory requires the solicitor to hold an unrestricted practising certificate and to be a full member.

There is a limit worth knowing before you rely on either. The Society directs enquiries about whether a person holds a current practising certificate to its records team by email rather than answering that question through the public search.

So if practising certificate status matters to you, write to the Society. Section 24(1) of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) makes engaging in legal practice without being an Australian legal practitioner an offence carrying a maximum of 300 penalty units or 2 years imprisonment.

ASIC’s professional registers at service.asic.gov.au list Australian financial services licensees, credit licensees, authorised representatives, registered liquidators and SMSF auditors. The Financial Advisers Register sits on Moneysmart. If a name is not on one of them, that person does not hold or act under an AFS licence.

It matters because a share in a body is a financial product under section 764A(1) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), and arranging for a person to acquire or dispose of one is dealing under section 766C. Dealing in a financial product is a financial service.

ASIC RG 36.43 asks three questions: whether the intermediary’s involvement was of sufficient importance that the transaction would probably not have happened without it, whether it added value, and whether the benefit received depended on the decision made. On a broked share sale those three tend to point the same way.

Not as far as this page can establish. AUSTRAC maintains the Reporting Entities Roll, the Remittance Services Register and the Digital Currency Exchange Register. Public registers exist for the remittance and digital currency exchange sectors. No public search of the Reporting Entities Roll could be located on 14 August 2026.

Rather than assert something unverified, this page leaves the Roll off the list of searchable registers. Anyone who tells you to go and check a broker’s AUSTRAC enrolment on a public register should be asked where.

What you can do is ask the question directly. Tranche two obligations commenced on 1 July 2026, and an entity providing a designated service on that date had until 29 July 2026 to enrol. Whether a particular broker provides a designated service turns on the transaction, not the job title, so there is a defensible answer either way and no defensible blank look.

No. Membership of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers is membership of a professional body. It is not a licence, it is not a government accreditation, and it does not confirm that a member holds a current Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence. That is checked at ftlr.fairtrading.qld.gov.au and nowhere else.

The Institute’s own Code of Conduct states its limits: “These rules do not replace any law. Where these rules are inconsistent with any applicable law, that law shall prevail.” The Institute does not issue the licence, does not administer the trust account regime and does not administer the claim fund.

Membership does not give you access to a statutory compensation fund either. The claim fund is statutory, capped at $200,000 per claimant under section 25(1) of the Agents Financial Administration Regulation 2014 (Qld), and administered by the Office of Fair Trading.

The Australian Business Licence and Information Service at ablis.business.gov.au is run by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources. You describe a business and a location, and it returns the licences, permits, approvals, registrations, codes of practice, standards and guidelines that apply across Commonwealth, state and local government.

It is the cheapest way to discover that the business you are about to buy needs an approval nobody mentioned. No fee is stated for a search.

Its record for the Queensland licence that covers business broking describes it as permitting the holder to “buy, sell, exchange or rent houses, businesses, land or any interest in these”, excluding auctioneering, for a term of 1 or 3 years, with two approved continuing professional development sessions every CPD year.

Two tools, both free. The find a local contractor search at my.qbcc.qld.gov.au returns contractors in an area with their contact details. The QBCC Licensee Register is described by the Commission as more detailed than that search, and gives a complete licence history.

A requested list of every licensed certifier registered in Queensland carries a $15 fee and is processed within five working days.

Run it before the price conversation, not after. A licence, its class and the licensee’s history do not transfer with the assets, so a buyer who cannot hold or obtain the licence cannot complete regardless of how the numbers look.

Because the lease sits over land that somebody else owns, and the contract names a landlord who may not be that person. A Titles Queensland current title search is $25.71 on the FY2026/27 fee schedule, and a historical title search is $37.88.

An image of a registered instrument or document, which includes a community management statement, is $50.16. A survey plan image is $27.56. Reduced rates apply to an entity under section 35(4) of the Act.

What you are looking for is the registered owner, any registered leasehold interest, and any registered mortgage over the premises. A mortgagee with power over the premises is a party to your continuity of occupation whether or not anyone mentions it at the negotiation.

Less than a day of anyone’s professional fees. The Queensland licence check, ABN Lookup, the ASIC banned and disqualified search, the Tax Practitioners Board register, the Queensland Law Society directory, the QBCC searches, ABLIS and the ACNC Charity Register are free.

The paid ones on this page are a $2 Personal Property Securities Register search, a $25.71 Titles Queensland current title search or $37.88 for a historical one on the FY2026/27 schedule, and the ASIC extracts and the Office of Fair Trading licence extract, whose fees are published on the ASIC Connect and fair trading fees pages.

Set that against the price of the business. The cost of checking is not the reason anyone skips it.

Whether the person is any good. A register confirms that a licence, a company, a registration or a security interest existed on a stated date. It carries no view on competence, on judgement, or on whether a fee is worth paying.

It also carries no view on the business you are buying. Registers tell you who holds what. The condition of the earnings, the concentration of the customers, the state of the lease and the transferability of the licences are read out of documents, not out of a search field.

So use the registers for the facts they hold and be sceptical of anyone, including a broker, who offers a register as a substitute for evidence. Where anything on this site differs from an official source, the official source is right.

Yes. Tony Pope holds Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence number 4963575 and is a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers. The licence is publicly searchable on the Fair Trading Licensing Register at ftlr.fairtrading.qld.gov.au by name or by licence number.

Search the Queensland Fair Trading Licensing Register by the broker's name or licence number and confirm the licence class and status are current. Then search the trading entity on ASIC Connect and ABN Lookup, and confirm the entity named on the agency agreement is the same entity that holds the licence.

No. A market appraisal is a licensed business broker's opinion of the likely selling price based on comparable evidence and current buyer demand. A valuation is a formal document prepared by a registered valuer or a suitably qualified accountant, usually for a court, a lender or a statutory purpose. They are different things and they are used for different reasons.

The Office of Fair Trading, within the Queensland Department of Justice, issues and supervises licences under the Property Occupations Act. The Australian Institute of Business Brokers is the national industry body and sets a code of conduct for members, but it is not a government regulator.

At minimum: ASIC Connect and ABN Lookup for the entity, the Personal Property Securities Register for finance over plant and equipment, QBCC for any building or construction licence, the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator for a fleet, and the ATO small business CGT concession pages for what you keep after tax. A buyer will check all of these, so it is better that you see them first.