Bidding at a Queensland auction through a buyer's agent: the rules

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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An auction compresses a property purchase into a few minutes. There is no time to reflect, no cooling-off period afterwards, and the highest bidder signs a binding contract on the spot. For some buyers that is the appeal. For others it is a reason to ask someone else to hold the paddle.

Bidding at auction is one of the four services the Queensland Government lists for a buyer's agent, alongside finding properties, negotiating with sellers and doing background checks. It can be part of a full search or a stand-alone engagement for one auction on one day. Either way, a person bidding for someone else is acting under rules from two directions: the rules that govern agents and their clients, and the rules that govern who may bid at a Queensland auction. This guide covers both. It explains what the appointment must say, how registration works when the bidder is not the buyer, how the price limit operates, what happens at the fall of the hammer and after a pass-in, and what the auctioneer is allowed to reveal. It describes the rules in general terms and does not suggest that any buyer should or should not bid through an agent.

Queensland Government guidance on buying at auction; Property Occupations Regulation 2014, section 23; Office of Fair Trading guidance on auctioning a property.

Bidding is not conducting

A common point of confusion is worth clearing up first. A real estate agent's licence does not allow its holder to conduct an auction. The Office of Fair Trading says so in its description of the licence, and section 25 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 gives the selling of property by auction to licensed auctioneers.

That restriction is about calling the auction: standing at the front, taking bids and knocking the property down. It has nothing to do with taking part as a bidder. A buyer's agent who raises a paddle is in the crowd, on the buying side, and the Queensland Government's guidance on appointing a buyer's agent lists bidding at auction among the things such an agent can do.

So an auction where a buyer's agent is bidding involves three licensed roles with different jobs. The auctioneer conducts the sale. The selling agent, who may be the same person or a colleague, acts for the seller. The buyer's agent acts for one of the bidders.

What the appointment has to say

A buyer's agent cannot bid on the strength of a telephone call. The Office of Fair Trading states that a property agent cannot provide services to a client until appointed in writing, and for residential property the Government's guidance names Form 6.

Where the engagement is for auction bidding only, the form describes that service: representing the client at the auction of a named property on a given date. The guidance requires the form to state the services to be provided and any limits or conditions on them, all commissions, fees and expenses, and when each is due.

For an auction, the limits and conditions are the centre of the document. They record, or attach, the client's instructions on four matters.

The Real Estate Buyers Agents Association of Australia notes in its consumer information that auction bidding is offered as a specialised service with its own pricing, separate from a full search. The fee and its due date belong on the form like any other.

Timing matters as well. Bidders must be registered before the auction starts, and the preparation the Government's guidance recommends, from the contract review to the building and pest inspections, takes days, not hours. An appointment signed on the morning of the auction leaves the agent able to bid but with little chance to have done any of the work that informs the limit. Where the agent is expected to advise on value as well as to bid, the form needs to be in place early enough for that advice to be given.

Registering to bid

Queensland requires every bidder at a property auction to be registered before bidding. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance for auctioneers sets out the routine: register all bidders in advance, examine suitable identification such as a driver's licence, hand out identifying markers such as numbered cards, and announce at the start that only registered bidders may bid.

Section 23 of the Property Occupations Regulation 2014 gives the detail. A person is registered once they have given the auctioneer their name and address and produced satisfactory evidence of their identity. The auctioneer then assigns the person a unique bidder identifier and enters the name, address and identifier in the register. The register must be kept for at least five years.

When a buyer's agent attends, the agent is the person bidding, so the agent is the person who registers. The agent gives their own name and address and shows their own identification, and receives the bidder number.

The regulation then adds a requirement for one particular situation. A person registering must also give the auctioneer the name and address of any other person for whom bids are intended to be made on instructions given by that person by telephone. That provision covers the familiar scene of a bidder with a phone to their ear, relaying each bid from a buyer who is somewhere else.

Telephone instructions and the absent buyer

There are two ways a buyer's agent can bid for a client who is not in the room, and they are treated differently.

In the first, the buyer is on the telephone throughout and decides each bid as it happens. The agent is a voice and a hand. Under section 23, the agent tells the auctioneer at registration whose instructions are being relayed, and that person's name and address go on the record.

In the second, the buyer has given the agent a written limit beforehand and is not on the line at all. The agent exercises judgement within that limit: when to bid, in what increments, when to stop. Here the agent is bidding on standing instructions, not on instructions given by telephone.

In either case the auctioneer and the selling agent have a practical interest in knowing that the person bidding can deliver a buyer. If the hammer falls to someone who turns out to have had no authority, the seller has a signed contract with nobody. An auctioneer may therefore ask a bidder who is acting for another person to show evidence of that authority, and an agent who carries the signed appointment and a written authority from the client has what is needed.

The limit and the duty to follow it

The most important number at an auction is the one the buyer has decided not to go past. When someone else is bidding, that number becomes an instruction, and the conduct rules give it force.

Section 22 of the Property Occupations Regulation requires a property agent to act in accordance with a client's instructions, unless it would be unlawful to do so. A buyer's agent told to stop at a figure must stop there. An agent who bids beyond it has gone outside the client's instructions and outside that standard.

The practical difficulty is that auctions do not always stop at round numbers. A bid of $5,000 more might secure the property. The rule is no different. Unless the client can be reached and gives a new instruction, the limit holds. Some buyers deal with this in advance by being available by telephone during the auction, which turns a fixed limit into one that can be raised by a call. If that is the plan, section 23 means the buyer's name and address should be given to the auctioneer at registration.

A limit also protects the agent. The Queensland Government's guidance notes that the auctioneer must not reveal the reserve price, and that it is illegal for the seller or their agent to give a price guide for an auction property. A buyer's agent prepares an opinion of value from comparable sales, but nobody on the buying side knows the reserve. The limit is the buyer's decision, made on that advice, and the agent's task on the day is to carry it out.

What the auctioneer may and may not reveal

A buyer represented by an agent gains a degree of privacy, and the rules on confidentiality explain how much.

The Office of Fair Trading's guidance says an auctioneer must not identify any bidder during the auction. Section 25 of the regulation restricts disclosure of bidders' identities afterwards, with limited exceptions: to an inspector, to a court, or to the seller where that is necessary to allow negotiation with a bidder after the auction.

The same guidance covers the seller's side of the ledger. The auctioneer must not disclose the reserve price to anyone other than a person acting for the seller, and failure to handle the reserve properly carries a maximum penalty of $34,540. Vendor bids are permitted only up to the reserve, and the auctioneer must announce each one as a vendor bid. The Government's guidance for buyers adds that dummy bids are illegal.

For a buyer's agent these rules set the conditions of the contest. The agent can hear when a bid is the seller's own, and knows that every other bid has come from a registered bidder. The agent cannot find out the reserve, and other bidders cannot find out from the auctioneer who the agent's client is.

If the hammer falls

The Queensland Government's guidance is brief on what happens next: the successful bidder must sign a contract immediately, and there is no cooling-off period for buying at auction.

Those two facts are why authority to sign is one of the instructions the appointment needs to settle. If the buyer is present, the buyer signs. If the buyer is absent, someone must sign in their place, and that person needs the buyer's authority to do so. An authority to bid and an authority to sign a contract are not the same thing, and it is prudent for both to be given expressly and in writing before the auction.

The deposit is due at the same time. The Government's guidance tells buyers to ask the agent beforehand what percentage of the winning bid is required as a deposit and what forms of payment are accepted, mentioning personal cheque, bank cheque and deposit bond. A buyer who will not be there needs to have arranged how the deposit reaches the seller's agent on the day.

Because there is no cooling-off period and auction contracts are ordinarily unconditional, everything a buyer would normally make a condition has to be finished first. The same guidance lists the preparation: inspection, finance, a valuation, a review of the contract and legal advice on its terms, together with a title search and building and pest inspections. A buyer's agent may coordinate that work, but the legal review remains the job of the buyer's solicitor or conveyancer.

If the property passes in

Brisbane's best final auction clearance rate in three months, in published results from mid-September, was 38.5 per cent. With most scheduled auctions ending without a sale under the hammer, what happens after a pass-in is not a side issue.

When bidding stops below the reserve, the property is passed in and the selling agent usually turns first to the highest bidder. If that bidder is a buyer's agent, the conversation is with the agent, and the client's instructions for this stage decide how far it can go. An appointment that authorised bidding to a limit does not necessarily authorise a negotiated purchase afterwards on different terms. This is the fourth row of the table above, and it is the one most easily overlooked.

The legal position after a pass-in has a feature that surprises buyers. According to the Queensland Government's guidance, if a contract is agreed within two days of the auction there is no cooling-off period, just as if the property had sold under the hammer. A contract agreed after that does carry one. A buyer negotiating on the afternoon of the auction is therefore still in auction conditions.

Section 25 of the regulation fits this stage too. It allows the auctioneer to tell the seller who a bidder is where that is needed to negotiate after the auction.

Identity checks at the fall of the hammer

Since 1 July 2026, real estate businesses have had to identify their customers under federal anti-money-laundering law. In a toolkit issued to members in June, the Real Estate Institute of Queensland advised that the rules for auctions are effectively those for private treaty sales, with the normal steps carried out at the fall of the hammer.

For a buyer who bids through an agent, that can mean two checks. The buyer's agent identifies the client as its own customer when the appointment is made. The selling agency identifies the buyer once there is a contract. These checks are about who the buyer is. They are separate from bidder registration under the state regulation, which identifies the person holding the paddle.

What the service does and does not change

It is worth being plain about what bidding through an agent alters.

It changes who stands in the crowd, who decides the pace of the bidding and who speaks to the selling agent if the property passes in. It can change who knows the buyer's identity on the day. It adds a fee, agreed in writing beforehand.

It does not change the price the property is worth, the reserve the seller has set or the limit the buyer has chosen. It does not create a cooling-off period, soften the contract or remove the need for finance and inspections to be settled beforehand. And it does not move the decision. The agent carries an instruction; the amount is the buyer's.

At an auction the buyer's agent holds the paddle, and the buyer holds the number. The rules exist to keep those two things from being confused.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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