More questions owners ask before appointing anyone

No. Nothing in Queensland law requires you to use one. Section 97(1) of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) applies to a person who acts “as an agent for someone else for reward”. Selling your own business is not acting for someone else, so a private sale sits outside the Act entirely.

What sits outside the Act with it is the protection. There is no appointment form setting out who is paid what and when. There is no trust account holding the deposit under section 16 of the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 (Qld). There is no claim fund behind it, and no annual audit.

So the question is not whether a private sale is lawful. It is whether you can run a confidential campaign, qualify buyers and negotiate hard while still running the business. That is a judgement about your time and your appetite, and it is yours to make.

Not without a Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence. Section 97(4) of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) contains the exemptions, and they are narrow: employees at an agent’s office, employees of rooming accommodation providers, a lawyer collecting rents, and a person selling manufactured homes. There is no accountant among them, and no exemption for a fee called something other than commission.

The line sits at what is being done and how it is paid for. An accountant preparing the financials, building the add back schedule and advising on tax for a fee for service is doing accounting work. An accountant approaching buyers, negotiating the price and taking a reward contingent on the sale is performing section 26 activities.

The maximum penalty under section 97 is 200 penalty units or 2 years imprisonment, which is $34,540 at the Queensland penalty unit of $172.70 from 1 July 2026. Section 89 then stops the fee being recovered or kept at all.

The Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) authorises legal practice. It does not authorise acting as a property agent for reward. A solicitor drafting the contract, advising on the special conditions and acting on settlement is practising law, which is exactly what you want a solicitor for.

A solicitor appraising the business, marketing it, finding the buyer and taking a percentage of the price is doing the work described in section 26 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld). Section 97 does not carve that out because the person is a solicitor.

In practice the two roles run alongside each other rather than replacing each other. Your solicitor holds the contract and the risk allocation. The broker holds the process and the buyers.

No. Section 24 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) lists three categories of licence: auctioneer, real estate agent and resident letting agent. Business broking sits inside the second one.

Section 26 is where the confusion comes from, because it has two limbs. One limb covers real property. The other covers “businesses or interests in businesses”. A single licence carries both.

That is why this site says Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence rather than describing it by what it sounds like. The statutory category name describes houses and businesses in the same breath, and used loosely it misdescribes what a business broker is licensed to do.

It is the Office of Fair Trading approved appointment form for a commercial or business sale, version 1 dated May 2024. Queensland runs two forms. The residential Form 6 is for houses. The Form 6A is the one for your business, and part 3 of it is headed property or business details.

You should care because the form is where every number in the arrangement is fixed. Part 4 carries the term with a start date and an end date. Part 6 carries the listing type. Part 7 carries the commission and the event that makes it payable. Part 8 carries the authorised marketing amount and any rebate the agent receives.

Section 102 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) makes it an offence for an agent to act before you have signed it, maximum 200 penalty units. Part 9 of the form advises you, in capitals, to seek independent legal advice before you sign.

The agent can lose it entirely. Section 89 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) says a person cannot sue for, recover or keep a reward or expense unless the person held the appropriate licence, was authorised under it, and was properly appointed under part 4.

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 not a defect that can be cured after the fact. It is an appointment that never existed, feeding straight into the section 89 bar.

Section 89(2) goes further. Suing for, recovering or keeping the money outside those conditions is an offence in its own right, maximum 200 penalty units, $34,540 from 1 July 2026. An agent in that position has not merely lost a debt.

It is the single most valuable distinction in the document, and it is one line of section 23 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld). Under an exclusive agency the agent “is entitled ... to receive an agreed commission or other reward, whether or not the selling agent is the effective cause” of the sale. Under a sole agency the agent is not entitled if you directly caused the sale.

Put in your own terms: under an exclusive agency, selling to your own supplier, your own employee or your own competitor still generates the fee. Under a sole agency it does not.

Part 6 of the PO Form 6A spells out both in the form’s own words, including the warning that appointing a second agent during a sole agency term can mean “A commission to each agent (two commissions)”. An open listing is the third option, defined at section 20, where you may sell independently or appoint other agents and the agent is paid only if the agent caused the sale.

For as long as part 4 of the form says, which is why part 4 is worth reading twice. You may be told a number as though a statute sets it. Be careful with that.

Section 110 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) caps reappointment for a sole or exclusive agency for the sale of residential property at “1 or more terms of not more than 90 days”. Section 110 is expressly confined to residential property, and section 110(2) says the limit does not apply to a commercial scale appointment. So the residential cap does not apply in terms to a business appointment.

Whether any statutory cap applies to a business appointment could not be confirmed here, because section 103 of the Act could not be retrieved from legislation.qld.gov.au. The practical answer stands either way. Ask for an end date rather than a term, get it written into part 4, and take the form to your solicitor before you sign it.

No. The Queensland Office of Fair Trading states that parties may not change the commission once the client and the agent have signed the appointment.

It also has to be in a particular shape from the start. Part 7 of the PO Form 6A requires the commission to be written as a percentage or a dollar amount. It must include GST and say that it does. Section 88 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) requires commission to be claimed only for actual amounts, so a percentage applies to the price actually achieved.

A fee structure that was discussed but not written into the form is not a fee structure. Anything you agreed in a conversation belongs in the document before either of you signs it.

It is separate, and you pay it. Part 8 of the PO Form 6A requires an authorised amount for advertising and marketing, and a stated time for payment, plus separate lines for repairs, other fees and any rebate the agent receives.

Queensland Government guidance for sellers says you reimburse an agent only for expenses discussed and agreed in advance, that the money goes into the agent’s trust account, and that the agent must produce receipts.

An open ended marketing authority is a blank cheque. Ask for a number rather than an estimate, ask what happens to unspent money if the business does not sell, and read the answer on the form rather than taking it in conversation.

Not without an Australian financial services licence, or an authorisation under someone else’s. Shares are a financial product under section 764A(1) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). Arranging for a person to acquire or dispose of a financial product is dealing under section 766C, and dealing is a financial service.

ASIC Regulatory Guide 36 at RG 36.42 defines arranging as bringing “into effect the issue, variation, disposal or acquisition of, or application for, a financial product”. RG 36.43 weighs three factors: whether the involvement was important enough 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.

The practical answer is that a broker holding a Queensland Office of Fair Trading licence and no financial services licence sells the assets, being goodwill, plant, stock, the lease, the contracts and the name, and refers a share sale to a licensee or to your solicitor. An asset sale transfers no financial product and sits wholly inside the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) licence. Which structure suits you is a tax and legal question, not a broking one.

Not without registration. TPB(I) 39/2023 sets out the test drawn from section 90-5 of the Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (Cth): a service relating to ascertaining or advising on liabilities, obligations or entitlements under a taxation law, provided where you can reasonably be expected to rely on it.

General published information is on the other side of that line. That capital gains tax applies to a business sale, that small business concessions exist in Division 152 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth), that a share sale and an asset sale are taxed differently, that GST may apply unless the going concern conditions are met. The moment any of that is applied to your own numbers, it is a tax agent service.

Charging for one while unregistered is up to 250 penalty units for an individual, $91,000 at the Commonwealth penalty unit of $364 from 1 July 2026. Advertising that you will provide one while unregistered is up to 50 penalty units, $18,200. The Tax Practitioners Board register at tpb.gov.au is free and shows registered, suspended and deregistered agents.

Only within a narrow lane. Sections 24(3A) to (3E) of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld) provide that a Property Occupations Act licensee does not engage in legal practice merely by providing or preparing a property contract in the ordinary course of business. The permitted method is described as “inserting information, crossing alternatives, or using precedents previously prepared by lawyers”.

So filling in the parties, the price, the apportionments, the plant list and the settlement date on an approved or lawyer prepared contract is inside the lane. Drafting a special condition that changes the legal effect, a restraint of trade, a vendor finance clause, a deed, a lease assignment or a share sale agreement is not. Neither is advising you what any clause means.

Section 24(1) makes engaging in legal practice without being an Australian legal practitioner an offence, maximum 300 penalty units or 2 years imprisonment, $51,810 at $172.70 from 1 July 2026. Section 24(4) adds that the person “is not entitled to recover any amount” for the work, and section 24(5) lets you recover what you already paid as a debt.

It is trust money, and four things sit behind it. It must be paid into the general trust account before the end of the first business day after receipt, under section 16 of the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 (Qld). It is “not available to the agent’s creditors” under section 20.

The account is audited. An auditor must be appointed within 1 month of the account opening under section 30, and the accounts audited and the signed report filed within 4 months after the last day of the audit month under sections 35 and 40.

Behind all of that is the claim fund. Section 82 of the Act lists the events that found a claim, including stealing or misapplying property entrusted to a licensee. Section 25 of the Agents Financial Administration Regulation 2014 (Qld) caps recovery at $200,000 per claimant and $2,000,000 in aggregate for contraventions by a single person.

None of that attaches to an unlicensed intermediary, because a person with no licence has no trust account and no claim fund behind them.

The one who was the effective cause of the sale, unless the appointment was an exclusive agency, in which case section 23 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 (Qld) makes causation irrelevant to the entitlement.

Podium Project Marketing Pty Ltd v B Global (Aust) Pty Ltd [2024] QDC 219, decided 12 December 2024, is the current Queensland authority on the point. The District Court awarded an appointed agent $253,000 plus interest, applying the test from LJ Hooker Ltd v Adams Estates Pty Ltd, and held that more than one party can be an effective cause of the same sale. The agent had reached the buyers through sub agents and had never met them.

Section 102(6) allows agents to work together with an already appointed agent without each holding a separate appointment, which is the statutory basis for conjunctional selling. For you, the protection is upstream. Know which listing type you signed, and do not sign a second appointment while a sole or exclusive agency is running.

It means the member has agreed to a code of conduct and pays a subscription. The Australian Institute of Business Brokers Code of Conduct requires members to act honestly, to obtain written instructions before being engaged, to keep clients informed and to carry insurance, and states that only financial members may use its credentials.

It is not a regulator, and the Code says so about itself: “These rules do not replace any law. Where these rules are inconsistent with any applicable law, that law shall prevail.” It does not issue the licence, does not administer the trust account regime and does not administer the claim fund. Those are Queensland Office of Fair Trading functions.

So membership does not tell you the licence is current, and it does not give you access to a statutory compensation fund. Worth noting: business.gov.au, the Commonwealth small business site, tells sellers to check a broker’s professional credentials and points to the Institute, without mentioning state licensing. Check the licence as well as the badge.

The real risk is not the fee you save, it is that you get one shot. If a private sale leaks, drags on or goes stale, the business can be tainted permanently: staff leave, customers worry, competitors circle, and future buyers assume something is wrong with it. A properly run, confidential process protects the asset the first time, because there is no undo button on a damaged sale.

Yes, and some owners do. The question is whether it leaves you better off. Selling alone means personally handling buyer search, confidentiality, qualifying time wasters, negotiating without competition, and holding the deal together through settlement. Owners who try it usually either sell for less than a competitive process would have achieved, or return to a broker after months lost and confidentiality gone. What you are weighing is the fee against what a competitive, confidential process is worth to you, and nobody can tell you that number before the campaign runs.

When you engage a broker to sell, they work for you. The engagement, the duty and the fee all sit with the seller, and the aim is to pursue the strongest price and terms the market will support by creating competition between qualified buyers. That's different from a buyer's agent, who a buyer separately engages. A good selling broker is firmly in the seller's corner.

A properly run broker process is far more confidential than selling alone. The business is marketed without being identified, buyers sign confidentiality agreements and are qualified before anything identifying is released, and detail is staged so full access comes late, with a committed buyer. Selling alone usually means showing your hand to competitors, customers and staff the moment you start approaching buyers.

The fee only looks expensive if you ignore what it buys: access to a large pool of qualified buyers, a confidential and competitive process that lifts the price, vetting that saves months, and deal management that stops sales collapsing in due diligence. In almost every sale the extra value a competitive process creates, plus the deals it saves, exceeds the fee comfortably. What you save in commission you tend to hand back in price.