Buying or selling a Queensland home 'as is': what the contract still says

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Kooky

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

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The words turn up in listings for deceased estates, for houses that need everything done, and for properties sold by people who have never lived in them: "sold as is", sometimes "as is, where is". Buyers read them as a warning that nothing will be fixed. Sellers hope they mean that nothing can come back on them. Neither reading is quite what Queensland law provides, because the phrase has no fixed legal meaning and the standard contract's terms on title, warranties, risk and default make no provision for an "as is" sale.

What a sale "as is" actually involves depends on two things: what the standard contract says about the condition of a property in every sale, and what the parties add or take away by special condition. This guide looks at both, using the Contract for the Sale and Purchase of Residential Real Estate published by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland and the Queensland Law Society, in use in its first edition since 1 August 2025, and the Queensland Government's guidance on the seller disclosure scheme. It sets out what the phrase can change, what it cannot, and how a buyer or seller should read a contract that uses it. It is general information only.

REIQ and Queensland Law Society residential contract, first edition, clauses 7.4(1) and 7.9; Queensland Government seller disclosure scheme guidance, updated 21 July 2025.

A phrase from the listing, not from the contract

The standard contract is the same printed document in every sale. Its terms deal with the deposit, conditions, settlement, the seller's warranties and default, and none of those provisions sets up a separate kind of sale called "as is". A property advertised that way is sold on the same printed terms as the renovated house next door unless something more is written into the contract.

The something more is a special condition. The Queensland Law Handbook, published by Caxton Legal Centre, advises buyers to be particularly wary of special conditions added to the standard terms and to get specialist advice where a condition's meaning or fairness is unclear. That advice is nowhere more relevant than here, because an "as is" condition can be three lines that change very little or a page that removes most of the buyer's protections, and the label is identical.

The first task for anyone looking at an "as is" sale is therefore to stop reading the advertisement and start reading the back pages of the contract. If there is no special condition, the phrase was marketing. If there is one, its exact words are the deal.

The starting point in every sale

The standard contract already places much of the risk about a building's condition on the buyer, whatever the listing says.

It contains no general promise by the seller that the house is sound, that the roof does not leak or that the appliances work. The seller's warranties in clause 7.4 are about specific legal matters, described below, and not about quality. Clause 7.4(6) goes out of its way to say that the seller does not warrant that the present use of the property is lawful.

The statutory disclosure scheme draws the same line. Since 1 August 2025 a Queensland seller has had to give a buyer a disclosure statement and prescribed certificates before the buyer signs. The Queensland Government's guidance on the scheme says plainly what the statement does not have to cover: the structural soundness of the building, flooding history, and previous building or development approvals.

So in an ordinary sale, with no mention of "as is", the buyer is already expected to find out about the physical state of the property through their own inspections. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission describes a pre-purchase building inspection as the means of checking matters such as the roof, wall cracks, foundations, waterproofing and drainage, and adds that it is not a warranty against future defects. A buyer who signs without a building and pest condition, and without having inspected, has in practical terms bought the building as it stands.

That is why the phrase often adds less than either side expects. A good deal of what it conveys is true of every sale.

What a seller promises regardless

Against that background, the standard contract contains a number of promises and obligations that operate in every sale unless the parties remove them. An advertisement cannot remove them. Only the contract can.

The first group is the warranties in clause 7.4(1), given at the contract date. The seller warrants that there is no outstanding enforcement notice under section 248 of the Building Act 1975 and no outstanding show cause notice under that Act; that the seller has not received any other communication from a competent authority that may lead to such a notice; that there are no current or threatened claims or proceedings that may lead to a court order or writ affecting the property; that there is no outstanding obligation on the seller to give a notice under the Environmental Protection Act 1994; and that the seller is not aware of any facts that may lead to the lot being classified as contaminated land.

The second group, in clause 7.4(2), is given at settlement: that the seller will be the owner, will be capable of completing the contract and that there will be no unsatisfied court order or writ of execution affecting the property. Under clause 7.4(3), a breach of a warranty in either group allows the buyer to terminate by notice given before settlement.

Other obligations concern the handover. Clause 7.2 requires the property to be sold free of encumbrances other than those the buyer has agreed to take. Clause 7.6 requires the seller to comply before settlement with any enforcement notice issued before the contract date unless its details were disclosed to the buyer. Clause 7.9 requires the seller to install smoke alarms in any domestic dwelling in accordance with the legislation by the settlement date, and gives the buyer an adjustment of 0.15 per cent of the purchase price at settlement if that is not done. On a sale at $620,000 the adjustment is $930. And clause 8.3 requires the seller to use the property reasonably until settlement and not to do anything that may significantly alter it.

None of these is a promise about how good the house is. Each is a promise about its legal position or about the seller's own conduct, and a rundown house can satisfy all of them.

The buyer's rights that survive

Beside the warranties, clause 7.7 gives the buyer a right to terminate before settlement if any of a list of circumstances applied at the contract date. The list includes that the present use is not lawful under the relevant planning scheme; that the lot is affected by a proposal of a competent authority to alter the dimensions of transport infrastructure; that access to the lot passes unlawfully through other land; that a competent authority has issued a current notice of intention to resume any part of the lot; that services to the lot which pass through other land are not protected by a registered easement; that the property is affected by the Queensland Heritage Act 1992; and that the property is declared acquisition land under the Queensland Reconstruction Authority Act 2011.

Clause 7.5 adds rights about the description of what is being sold. The buyer may survey the lot, and may terminate before settlement on discovering an error in the boundaries, an encroachment or a material mistake in the description of the property. For lesser errors the remedy is compensation, claimed in writing on or before settlement.

These provisions show the limits of the phrase from another angle. "As is" speaks to the condition of the property. It says nothing about whether the driveway is on the right side of the boundary or whether the State has given notice that it intends to take part of the yard. A buyer of the most dilapidated house in the street keeps these rights unless the contract takes them away. Clause 7.7(2) does impose one limit of its own: a buyer who settles is treated as having accepted the property subject to all the listed matters.

The honest route: disclose it

The first edition of the contract gives a seller a way to deal with known problems that is more reliable than a slogan. Clause 7.8 provides that clauses 7.4(1), 7.4(2), 7.5, 7.6(1) and 7.7 do not apply to the extent that any relevant fact or circumstance has been disclosed by the seller to the buyer in the contract or in the seller disclosure statement.

In other words, disclosure switches the warranty off for the thing disclosed. A seller who knows the council has issued a show cause notice about an unapproved deck, and says so in the contract, is no longer warranting that there is no such notice. The buyer signed knowing about it and has agreed a price on that footing. Under clause 7.6(3), the buyer must then comply with an enforcement notice issued before the contract date whose details were disclosed.

This is what a well-drafted "as is" sale usually amounts to: a list. The contract identifies the known defects and notices one by one and states that the buyer accepts them. A list protects the seller precisely, because nobody can later dispute what was disclosed, and it informs the buyer precisely, which a general phrase does not.

What a special condition can add

Some sellers genuinely cannot make a list. An executor selling a late relative's house, or a lender selling a property it has taken possession of, may know almost nothing about its history. In those sales the special conditions can go further, and they tend to do one or more of three things.

The first is to remove or narrow the warranties in clause 7.4 and the rights in clause 7.7, on the basis that the seller has no knowledge on which to give them. The second is to record that the buyer has inspected the property, relies on their own enquiries and accepts it in its present state of repair. The third is to deal with rubbish, furniture and old vehicles on the site, which the standard terms would otherwise require the seller to remove before settlement, by saying they stay.

Each of those is a real change to the bargain, and each shifts risk to the buyer. A buyer facing them should ask which standard clauses are being removed, why the seller cannot give the usual warranties, and whether the price reflects the difference. A special condition overrides the printed terms where the two conflict, so what it removes is gone.

What such conditions leave untouched is the building and pest condition in clause 4.2, which is a separate matter. That condition applies if an inspection date is written into the reference schedule, and the printed note beside it says that if the date is not completed the contract is not subject to an inspection report. Sellers offering a property "as is" may ask for offers with that box blank. A buyer who agrees has given up the right to withdraw on the strength of the reports, and should inspect before signing instead.

What the phrase cannot do

Two limits apply however the special conditions are drafted.

The first is statutory disclosure. The seller's duty to give the disclosure statement and prescribed certificates before the buyer signs comes from legislation, not from the contract. The Queensland Government's guidance lists the exceptions, and they are narrow: sales to government entities, sales between related parties, sales for more than $10 million where the buyer waives disclosure, and sales by a local council to recover rates. Selling "as is" is not among them. The guidance also sets out the buyer's remedy. A buyer may terminate if the documents were not provided, or if they contained inaccurate or incomplete information about a material matter that the buyer did not know of and that would have stopped the buyer signing. An executor or a mortgagee who knows little about the house still has to obtain the title search, the survey plan and the other certificates.

The second is the description of the property itself. "As is" accepts the property in whatever state it is in. It does not turn a three-bedroom house into the four-bedroom house in the advertisement, or the land in the contract into a larger block. Clause 7.5 gives the buyer rights where there is a material mistake in the description of the property, and a seller who has disclaimed responsibility for the building's condition has not thereby disclaimed responsibility for saying accurately what is being sold.

Condition at contract, not at settlement

A further misunderstanding concerns time. Buyers sometimes take "as is" to mean that whatever state the property is in when they get the keys is the state they must accept. The contract fixes the reference point earlier.

Clause 8.3 obliges the seller to use the property reasonably until settlement and not to do anything that may significantly alter it or result in later expense for the buyer. A seller who strips out the kitchen after signing has not delivered the property that was sold, however it was advertised. Clause 8.2 gives the buyer a right to enter once before settlement to inspect, which is the opportunity to check.

Accidental damage is treated differently. Clause 8.1 puts the property at the buyer's risk from 5pm on the first business day after the contract date. The Queensland Law Handbook advises buyers to arrange insurance immediately for that reason. The rule applies to every sale and is especially relevant to an "as is" purchase of an older or vacant building, where the chance of storm or fire damage between contract and settlement is not trivial and the buyer carries it from the second day.

Why sellers choose it, and what it does to price

There are sound reasons to sell this way. A seller without the money or the time to repair may prefer a lower price and a clean exit. An executor has duties to beneficiaries and little appetite for a dispute about a house they never lived in. An owner of a property whose value is in the land may see no point in fixing a building the buyer will demolish.

For those sellers the phrase is mostly a signal. It tells buyers not to expect repairs to be negotiated after a building report and to make their offer on that basis. Signals of that kind narrow the field to buyers who are comfortable with the risk, and such buyers generally expect the risk to be reflected in what they pay. The contract cannot say by how much. It can only make sure both sides are bargaining about the same thing.

Sellers who use the phrase should understand the trade as well. The more protections a contract removes, the more a careful buyer will discount, and the more a seller discloses specifically, the less there is to discount for.

Before signing either side of one

For a buyer, an "as is" sale changes the order of work. The inspection comes before the offer, not after it. The building and pest reports, the council search for approvals and the flood enquiry are done first, or the contract is made conditional on them by a date in the schedule or a special condition. The special conditions are read by a solicitor before signing, and anything the buyer is relying on that came from the advertisement is checked against the contract.

For a seller, the work is disclosure. The statutory bundle has to be complete before a buyer signs. Known notices and defects are named in the contract. The agent is told what the seller knows and does not know, so that nothing is said to buyers that the contract will not support.

"As is" describes an attitude to repairs. The rights and promises are in the contract, and they stay there until a clause removes them.

Sold that way, an "as is" property is not a trap for anyone. The buyer knows the building comes without assurances about its condition and has priced it accordingly. The seller has said what is known and has kept the promises the contract and the legislation still require. The phrase in the listing describes the sale, and the contract sets its terms.

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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