NSW underquoting laws start 17 November with $110,000 fines

Anoulack Chanthivong, the Minister for Better Regulation and Fair Trading, announced on 1 November that New South Wales’s new underquoting laws take effect from 17 November, requiring real estate agents to publish a selling price or price range on every residential listing and ending the practice of advertising a property as “price on inquiry.”

Why it matters

Underquoting is advertising a property below an agent’s own reasonable estimate of what it will sell for, a practice the government says wastes buyers’ time and money and gives a false impression of what a property is worth. From 17 November, agents must base their price estimate on the three most comparable sales, keep detailed records showing how each estimate was reached, and update an online ad within one business day if the displayed price stops matching the estimate, for instance after a revised valuation, a rejected offer or a property passed in at auction. Agency agreements may be retained electronically rather than on paper. A second requirement follows on 8 February 2027: agents must prepare a Statement of Information setting out how they arrived at the estimated price, including the comparable sales used, and make it available alongside online ads and at property inspections. For agents, the two dates mean compliance work starts in two stages, first the pricing and record-keeping discipline, then the public-facing disclosure document. “Buyers deserve clear and reliable information when deciding what they can afford,” Chanthivong said.

The numbers

The penalty for underquoting rises to $110,000 or three times the agent’s commission on the sale, whichever is greater. The release says changes earlier this year already doubled the penalty for dummy bidding to the same $110,000 figure and strengthened NSW Fair Trading’s enforcement and disciplinary powers. The government’s release puts the scale of the market the rules will apply to at roughly 150,000 property transactions in New South Wales each year. The release states the laws, their regulations and the staggered timing were set after what it describes as extensive consultation with industry stakeholders, though it does not name which bodies were consulted or publish the consultation record.

What’s next

The near-term test is 17 November, when every residential listing in the state has to carry a genuine price or price range and agents have to be able to show the comparable-sales working behind it. For builders and contractors, it lands weeks after Parliament passed the Local Jobs First tender weighting for government contracts; both are tracked on our Sydney market page. The bigger compliance shift lands on 8 February 2027, when agents must have the Statement of Information ready and available with online ads and at property inspections, setting out how the estimated price was determined and which comparable sales were used. NSW Fair Trading already holds the strengthened enforcement and disciplinary powers from the earlier round of changes, and the $110,000 underquoting penalty, or three times commission, is the figure those powers will now be used to enforce once the 17 November rules take hold.