Questions owners ask about selling in Queensland

All of it. Greater Brisbane, Logan, Ipswich, Moreton Bay, Redlands, Toowoomba, the Darling Downs, the Scenic Rim and the Lockyer Valley are serviced in person as a matter of course. Beyond that, from the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast through Wide Bay, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville, Cairns and the North West, enquiries are welcome and the process is the same.

The nine regional pages on this site each carry their own ABS business counts, their own named industrial precincts and their own council rules, because a seller in Cairns and a seller in Capalaba are not solving the same problem.

Tony Pope works from Gumdale in Brisbane and is licensed for the whole state. Regional appraisals begin by video and phone, with a site visit arranged where the business warrants it, which for anything of scale it usually does. For a business outside the south east the honest position is that the process and the buyer research are identical, and the travel is a scheduling question rather than a capability question.

Not automatically, and the reason it sometimes sells for less is worth understanding before you accept it. A regional business usually has a smaller local buyer pool and thinner comparable evidence, so a buyer has more room to argue.

What closes that gap is evidence and reach. Earnings a buyer can verify, work that continues without you, and a campaign that goes to buyers in Brisbane, interstate and inside your own industry rather than only to the people who already drive past your gate.

The nine regions on this page are grouped by how buyers behave, not strictly by council boundary. Ipswich covers Ipswich City, Lockyer Valley and Scenic Rim. Toowoomba covers Toowoomba, Western Downs, Southern Downs, Goondiwindi, Balonne and Maranoa.

Regional Queensland covers 57 councils, split into six named sub regions: Wide Bay Burnett, Central Queensland, Mackay Isaac Whitsunday, North Queensland, Far North Queensland, and the Central West and outback. If your town is not named on a page, ring and ask.

ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, including Entries and Exits, July 2021 to June 2025, released 26 August 2025, read at local government area level through ABS Data by Region.

They count businesses on the register, not businesses that sold. No page on this site publishes a sale price, a multiple range or a transaction count for a region, because that data is not published at that level and inventing it would be worse than leaving it out.

Often not, and that is the point of running a campaign rather than an advertisement. A trade buyer expanding into your region, an interstate operator buying a Queensland footprint and an investor backing a manager will each pay for something different.

The local buyer pool is the one that turns up by itself. The buyers worth finding are the ones who have to be gone and found.

A licence issued by the Queensland Office of Fair Trading under the Property Occupations Act 2014. Queensland issues no separate business broker licence, so broking sits under that licence, which covers the sale of businesses as well as land.

Tony Pope holds licence 4963575, and it is publicly searchable on the Fair Trading register. Anyone holding a general agent licence can call themselves a business broker tomorrow, whether or not they have ever sold a business, so it is worth checking.

Not on its own, and be careful with anyone who tells you otherwise. The Queensland Government has published a $7.1 billion venue and infrastructure programme, which is real, funded and dated.

What it does is change demand in specific sectors and specific corridors, mainly construction, civil, transport and accommodation. What it does not do is lift the multiple on a business whose earnings still depend entirely on the owner. The regional pages name the projects and their values, and stop short of promising what they will do to any individual business.

No. The fee structure is published in full on the fees page and does not change by postcode.

There is no charge for the appraisal, no charge before you engage, and no charge afterwards if the business does not sell.

Not through a properly run process, and in a small town that matters more than it does in a capital city. The business goes to market described by its shape and its numbers, with no trading name and no address attached.

Every enquiry signs a confidentiality agreement and is qualified before anything identifying is released. In a town where everyone knows the yard, confidentiality is the process rather than a courtesy.

Nothing changes about the process. The appraisal, the buyer research, the confidentiality and the management of due diligence are the same in every industry.

What changes is that more questions get asked before a number goes on it. That is a better answer than claiming expertise that does not exist.

Yes, and the property is usually handled as a separate line rather than folded into the goodwill. The common structures are selling both together, selling the business and leasing the property back to the buyer, or selling the business and retaining the property as an income asset.

Which one suits you is a question for your accountant, because the tax outcome differs materially. It is worth settling before you go to market, because it changes who the buyer is.

Start with the licence. Business broking is a licensed occupation in Queensland under the Property Occupations Act, and every legitimate broker holds a licence issued by the Office of Fair Trading. Search the name or the licence number on the Fair Trading Licensing Register and confirm the status is current. Then check the entity on the agency agreement is the entity that holds the licence, and ask which professional body they belong to. Tony Pope holds licence 4963575 and is a member of the Australian Institute of Business Brokers.

A market appraisal is free and carries no obligation. If you go to market, brokerage is typically a commission payable on a successful sale, so the fee depends on delivering a result, with a marketing contribution depending on the campaign. The structure is discussed openly before you engage anyone and there should be no surprises in it.

Six to nine months from the appraisal to settlement, of which three to six is the market campaign and contract. Preparation before the appraisal is additional. Regional businesses are not necessarily slower, because the buyer paying the most is frequently from outside the district anyway. Anyone promising substantially faster is either lucky or not being straight with you.

Buyers are approached nationally rather than waited for locally. For regional Queensland businesses in particular, the buyer who pays the most is often an interstate trade acquirer or a consolidator who wants the geography, the licences or the contracts. Relying on the local market alone is how regional businesses get underpriced.

Price is normally a multiple of normalised earnings, and the multiple moves with owner dependence, customer concentration, recurring revenue, transferable systems, plant condition and the quality of the financial records. Location affects the buyer pool more than it affects the multiple. The only way to get a figure that means anything is an appraisal against your actual numbers, and that is free.

No. The first conversation is private, nothing is marketed and no buyer is contacted without your written approval. If you go to market, the business is advertised without being identifiable, every enquiry signs a confidentiality agreement and is qualified for financial capacity before receiving anything that identifies you, and sensitive information is released in stages.