# Before the first bid: the bidders register an auctioneer must keep What the auctioneer must record before taking a bid in Queensland, whose identity is checked and how, who may read the register, and how it sits beside the new buyer checks. --- Twenty minutes before a Queensland auction, the busiest spot on the property is rarely the lawn where the bidding will happen. It is a small table near the front door, with a clipboard or a tablet, a stack of numbered cards and a short queue of people holding their driver licences. What is being filled in at that table is the bidders register, and whoever does the writing, the law puts the document in one person's hands. The Property Occupations Regulation 2014 says the auctioneer must keep it. The register is easy to underestimate because the rule behind it is so short. It is one section of the Regulation, seven subsections long, with one further section on who may be told what it contains. Yet that short text decides who is allowed to bid, what the auctioneer must know about them, what the crowd may learn about them, and what has to be kept once the property is sold. Since 1 July 2026 it also sits beside a second, federal set of identity checks that agents run on buyers, and the two are often confused. This guide reads the register from the auctioneer's side of the table: what the Regulation requires line by line, what the Office of Fair Trading adds on its page for auctioneers, where the text is silent, and how the register differs from the buyer check that follows the hammer. It describes the general rules, and a particular auction depends on its own facts and conditions of sale. ## One section, seven subsections The rule is section 23 of the Property Occupations Regulation 2014, headed "Registration of bidders and related obligations for auction". It sits in the part of the Regulation that sets conduct rules for property agents, and every obligation in it is addressed to "the auctioneer". Its first subsection sets the unit of account. For each auction an auctioneer conducts "at the same place on the same day", the auctioneer must keep a register of each bidder registered to bid. The Regulation calls such a person a registered bidder. The register is therefore tied to an event and a location: an in-room evening with several properties in one venue falls under the opening words as one place and one day, and an on-site auction in a front yard is another. The second subsection creates the two duties the public notices. The auctioneer must inform people who are considering bidding that only bids from registered bidders will be accepted, and must ensure, before accepting a bid, that the bidder is registered. The Office of Fair Trading's page "Auctioning a property", last updated on 1 July 2026, puts the first of those into the running order of the day: the auctioneer is to announce at the start of the auction that only registered bidders may bid. The remaining subsections cover a bidder who registered before, the conditions for registering someone, what is written down, the identifier the bidder is given, and how long the register is kept. Each is taken in turn below. ## What goes into the register, and what does not The content of the register comes from two subsections read together. Under subsection (4), the auctioneer may register a person as a bidder only if the person does three things: 1. gives the auctioneer their name and address; 2. produces satisfactory evidence of their identity to the auctioneer; 3. gives the name and address of any other person for whom bids are intended to be made on instructions given by that other person by telephone. Under subsection (5), once satisfied of the person's identity, the auctioneer must assign the person a unique bidder identifier and record the person's name and address, and that identifier, in the register. That is the whole of the required entry. It is worth noticing what the section does not ask for. It does not require the register to hold a date of birth, a telephone number, an email address or the number printed on the identity document. It does not require a copy or a photograph of the document to be kept. The evidence of identity has to be produced to the auctioneer; what has to be recorded is the name, the address and the number on the card. A registration form that asks for more than this is going beyond the section. Any extra fields are a matter of practice, and they are not what section 23 calls the register. ## Evidence of identity: what counts and who decides The Regulation does not publish a list of acceptable documents. Its test is "satisfactory evidence of the person's identity", and it gives a single example: a driver licence with the person's photo on it. The Office of Fair Trading's page uses the same example, telling the auctioneer to see suitable identification, such as a driver's licence, before allowing a bidder to register. Two points follow from the way the text is written. The first is that an example is not a limit. A driver licence is the illustration the drafters chose, and the sources read for this guide name no other document. They do not say that a passport, a proof of age card or a foreign licence is acceptable, and they do not say that any of them is refused. The word doing the work is "satisfactory", and the example suggests what satisfies: a document that carries a photograph and can be compared with the person standing at the table. The second is who has to be satisfied. Subsection (4) says the evidence is produced "to the auctioneer", and subsection (5) makes the auctioneer's own satisfaction the trigger for assigning a number. Where the checking is done by agency staff at the registration table while the auctioneer prepares, the Regulation does not describe that arrangement, and it does not transfer the duty to whoever holds the clipboard. An auctioneer who is handed a completed register just before the start is relying on other people for a judgment the section attributes to the auctioneer. The identity check also has a fixed place in the sequence. The number comes after the auctioneer is satisfied, never before, which is why a card should not be handed over on a promise to show a licence later. ## The number on the card The identifier is the part of the register the crowd can see. The Regulation requires it to be unique, and for an auction of property it adds two practical tests. The identifier must be capable of being easily used by the person to bid during the auction, and it must be easily identifiable by the auctioneer when the person uses it. The Regulation's example is a card or other thing with the identifier clearly shown on it. The Office of Fair Trading speaks of an identifying marker, such as a numbered card or a baton, that bidders must use to indicate a bid. The number does two jobs. It lets the auctioneer meet the duty in subsection (2): a raised card with a number on it is a quick way of being sure, before a bid is accepted, that the person making it is on the register. And it lets bids be called without names, which matters for the confidentiality rule described further on. One step in the process is a shortcut. Subsection (3) says that if a bidder has previously been registered by the auctioneer for the sale of property, that earlier registration may be applied to one or more subsequent auctions conducted by the auctioneer. A buyer who registered for the first lot of an evening does not have to queue again for the fourth. The wording refers to a registration made "by the auctioneer", so the shortcut belongs to the same auctioneer's own register, and the section says "may", which leaves it to the auctioneer whether to use it.
From the queue to the first bidThe order section 23 sets for the auctioneer
  1. Tell the crowdPeople thinking of bidding are informed that only bids from registered bidders will be accepted.
  2. Take name and addressThe person gives their own details, and those of anyone who will instruct them by telephone.
  3. See the evidenceSatisfactory evidence of identity is produced. The Regulation's example is a photo driver licence.
  4. Assign and recordOnce satisfied, the auctioneer assigns a unique identifier and writes it in the register with the name and address.
  5. Check before each bidBefore a bid is accepted, the auctioneer ensures the bidder is a registered bidder.
## Bidding for another person, or for a company This is the point where what many people assume and what the section says part company. Section 23 registers a "person" as a bidder: the individual who will hold the card. It reaches behind that individual in one situation only. If the person intends to make bids on instructions that someone else gives by telephone, the person must give the auctioneer that other person's name and address. A relative on the phone to a buyer interstate, or an agency staff member relaying bids for a buyer who could not attend, is the case the paragraph describes. The person in the room is the registered bidder, and the principal on the telephone is named at registration. On other forms of representation, the section as published is silent. It does not mention a letter of authority, a power of attorney or a company resolution, and it sets no separate rule for a person who attends to bid for a spouse, for a trust or for a company of which they are a director. Nor does the Office of Fair Trading's page "Auctioning a property" address bidding on behalf of others. An auctioneer looking for a written-authority requirement in section 23 will not find it there. What the section does give the auctioneer is a firm base. Whoever the eventual buyer is meant to be, the person who bids must be registered in their own name, at their own address, on evidence of their own identity. The register answers the question "who made this bid?". The question "for whom, and with what authority?" is answered by other documents. A company cannot hold a card. For a corporate buyer, the register therefore shows the individual who bid. Who stands behind the company is a question the register was never designed to answer, and since July it has been taken up by a different regime, described below. ## Registering once the auction has begun A buyer may arrive late, or decide to bid only on seeing where the price is heading. The Regulation deals with this without setting a cut-off. Its test is tied to the bid: the auctioneer must ensure the bidder is registered "before accepting a bid". The Office of Fair Trading's page describes the same duty in two halves. The auctioneer is to take reasonable steps to ensure bidders are registered before the auction starts, and otherwise to ensure that a bidder is registered before a bid from them is accepted. Nothing in either source closes the register at the opening announcement. A late registration is still a full registration. The name and address, the evidence of identity, the auctioneer's satisfaction, the number and the entry are all required, in that order, before the newcomer's bid can be taken. How the auction is held while that happens, whether the auctioneer pauses, or continues with the registered bidders while a colleague completes the entry, is a matter of conduct that the sources read here leave to the auctioneer. What they do not leave open is the order: registration first, bid second. ## Who may be told who is on the register The register is a list of names and home addresses of people who were ready to spend a large sum on a particular day. Section 25 of the Regulation protects it with a short prohibition: an auctioneer must not disclose the identity of a bidder registered under section 23 to anyone other than an inspector or a court. There is one exception, in two limbs. The auctioneer may disclose a bidder's identity to the seller of the property, or to the seller's agent, if the disclosure is necessary to enable the seller or the agent to negotiate with the bidder after the property has been passed in, or to otherwise facilitate the sale of the property. The Office of Fair Trading summarises the result for the auctioneer: no bidder is to be identified during the auction, and identification afterwards is limited to finalising the sale. Read from the auctioneer's desk, the section produces a short list of people who do not get to see the register. Other bidders do not. The underbidder who wants to know who beat them does not. Neighbours, journalists and other agents do not. Even the seller is not given the register as of right: the exception turns on a disclosure being "necessary" for a negotiation or for the sale, which is a narrower thing than curiosity about who turned up. The same section bears on how the register is handled on the day. A clipboard left open on a table discloses identities as surely as an announcement would. > The register tells the auctioneer who is bidding, and the Regulation's next concern is that almost nobody else finds out. ## Five years, counted from the last entry Subsection (7) sets the retention period: the auctioneer must keep the register for at least five years after the day of the last entry made in it. Two details in that sentence matter. The duty is the auctioneer's, like every other duty in the section, so the register does not simply become the agency's file once the sale is done. An auctioneer who calls auctions for several agencies needs to know where each register is and to be able to produce it. And the clock starts at the last entry, which for a register that covers a day of auctions at one place is the final bidder registered that day, including anyone registered late. The five years also interact with section 25. An inspector or a court may be told who was registered, and a register that has been kept is how the auctioneer is able to answer. The confidentiality rule and the retention rule are two sides of the same design: closed to the public, available to the regulator. ## The register and the buyer checks that began on 1 July 2026 Since 1 July 2026, real estate agents in Queensland have also had duties under the federal anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing law. Both regimes involve asking a buyer for identification, but they are separate, and the Real Estate Institute of Queensland's AML toolkit, dated 16 June 2026 and written as a summary of AUSTRAC's published guidance, shows where the line falls. According to the toolkit, the service that brings an agent under the federal law is brokering the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate for other people. For a selling agent, the seller becomes the agent's customer for these purposes at the listing appointment, and the buyer becomes a customer when the contract of sale is signed. On auctions specifically, the toolkit says the rules are effectively the same as for private treaty sales: the ultimate buyer enters into a contract at the fall of the hammer, and it is at that time that the normal onboarding and other requirements are carried out for that buyer. The toolkit does not mention the bidders register, and that absence is itself informative. The federal check, as the REIQ describes it, attaches to one person, the buyer under the contract, and it begins when there is a contract. The Queensland register attaches to every person who wishes to bid, and it must be complete before any bid is accepted. A crowd of twelve registered bidders produces twelve register entries and, on the toolkit's account, one buyer to be taken through the federal process. The two also differ in depth. For an individual, the toolkit describes verifying the full legal name, date of birth and residential address using government-issued photo identification. Where the buyer is a company or a trust, it describes identifying the ultimate beneficial owners, meaning any natural person who ultimately owns or controls 25 per cent or more. And it tells agents that the information collected for these assessments is retained for seven years. The register asks for less, about more people, and is kept for five.
Two identity checks at one auctionThe Queensland register and the federal buyer check, as the sources describe them
QuestionBidders registerFederal buyer check
Where the rule comes fromProperty Occupations Regulation 2014, section 23Federal anti-money-laundering law, in force for agents from 1 July 2026
Whose dutyThe auctioneer'sThe agent brokering the sale
Who is checkedEvery person registering to bidThe buyer under the contract, and the seller as the agent's client
WhenBefore a bid is acceptedFor the buyer, when the contract is signed at the fall of the hammer
What is establishedName and address, on satisfactory evidence of identityFull legal name, date of birth and residential address; owners of 25% or more for a company or trust
How long keptAt least 5 years after the last entry7 years

Property Occupations Regulation 2014, sections 23 and 25; Real Estate Institute of Queensland, AML toolkit, volume 1, 16 June 2026, summarising AUSTRAC guidance.

For the auctioneer, the practical consequence is that neither document stands in for the other. A register entry made at the front door on a photo licence is not, on the toolkit's description, the federal check on the buyer: it lacks the date of birth, it says nothing about who owns a corporate buyer, and it was made before the person became anyone's customer. Equally, an agency's federal file on the successful buyer does not complete the register, which must cover the unsuccessful bidders too. The toolkit speaks to agents and does not say how the federal duties fall on an auctioneer engaged only to call the sale, so that question is left open here. There is one point where the two meet. The register is the reason an auctioneer already knows the name and address of the person who has just bought, and section 25 allows that identity to be passed to the seller's agent where it is necessary to facilitate the sale. ## A bid from someone who is not registered The Regulation states the duty in the positive: before accepting a bid, the auctioneer must ensure the bidder is a registered bidder. What follows if a bid is taken from someone who is not on the register is a question the published sources answer less fully than might be expected. The Office of Fair Trading's page for auctioneers sets out the registration duties as things the auctioneer must do. It does not describe a consequence for accepting an unregistered bid, and it gives no penalty figure for the registration rules. Section 23, in the text read for this guide, carries no maximum penalty line of its own either. Neither source says that a bid taken from an unregistered person is void, or that a sale made on such a bid is undone.
No penalty line

The registration duty is stated without a consequence attached

Neither section 23 nor the Office of Fair Trading's page for auctioneers names a penalty for accepting a bid from an unregistered person, and neither says what becomes of the bid. The duty to check registration before accepting a bid is nonetheless a requirement of the Regulation that binds the auctioneer.

Silence on a penalty is different from the absence of a rule. The auctioneer's licence is held under the Property Occupations Act 2014, the Regulation is made under that Act, and the regulator's page opens its list of registration duties with the word "must". An auctioneer who accepts a bid from a stranger at the back of the crowd has not done what the section requires, whatever the remedy turns out to be. The section also shows how the situation is avoided. The opening announcement tells everyone present that unregistered bids will not be taken. The numbered card makes a registered bidder recognisable at a glance. And because registration is tied to the acceptance of the bid, a hand raised without a card can be answered by stopping, registering the person in full, and only then taking their bid.