Complaints about a Queensland agent: who handles them, what can happen

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Kooky

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

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Most sales and tenancies in Queensland finish with nobody thinking about a regulator. When something does go wrong between a member of the public and a real estate agent, the first difficulty is rarely the problem itself. It is working out where to take it. A seller who thinks the agent ignored an instruction, a buyer who believes an advertisement was wrong, an owner missing rent money and a tenant unhappy about an inspection each have a real grievance, and each belongs in a different place.

This guide maps those places. It covers the agency's own complaint process, mediation, the Office of Fair Trading, the Residential Tenancies Authority, the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal and the courts: what each one deals with, how a complaint moves through it, how long it takes and what it can and cannot deliver. It describes process only. It discusses no individual case, and it is general information, not advice on a dispute.

Sources: Office of Fair Trading, "Understand the complaint process" and "Property industry breaches and penalties".

First, work out what kind of problem it is

Complaints about agents fall into four broad kinds, and the kind decides the destination.

The first is about service: calls not returned, a campaign that felt neglected, feedback that never came. No law has been broken. The remedy lies with the agency and, in the end, with the client's right to end the appointment.

The second is about conduct the law regulates: acting without a written appointment, advertising a price the seller would not accept, failing to disclose a personal interest in a sale, working without a licence, mishandling trust money. These are matters for the Office of Fair Trading, which licenses agents under the Property Occupations Act 2014.

The third is about a tenancy: entry without notice, a bond not lodged, a repair not done, a rent increase that came too soon. The property manager is an agent, but the rules broken are tenancy rules, and they belong to the Residential Tenancies Authority.

The fourth is about money: a commission the client says was not earned, a loss the client wants made good. Regulators do not award compensation. That takes a tribunal, a court or, in a narrow class of cases, the State's claim fund.

Many real complaints straddle two rows. A seller who believes a property was advertised below the instructed price has both a conduct complaint and, perhaps, a money claim. The two run separately, and an outcome in one does not decide the other.

Start with the agency

The Office of Fair Trading expects a consumer to raise a problem with the business first, and its guidance for the property industry tells agencies to be ready for that. Its page on dealing with complaints advises a business to name the staff responsible for complaints, write the procedure down, train everyone in it, provide a complaint form, keep records of each complaint and tell customers plainly how to raise one.

The same guidance describes what handling a complaint well looks like from the inside: check the records and speak to the staff involved before answering; where the complaint is genuine, speak to the customer in person and not only in writing; give one staff member responsibility for the complaint until it is finished, with authority to approve a remedy; give time frames; and once a solution is agreed, carry it out quickly.

For a client, that points to a practical sequence. Put the complaint in writing, addressed to the principal of the agency, who is the licensee responsible for the office. Say what happened, with dates. Attach the documents: the Form 6 appointment, the advertisement, the emails. Say what would put it right. Ask for a reply by a date.

Writing matters for two reasons. It gives the agency a fair chance to fix the problem, which most will take, since an agency lives on referrals. And it creates the record every later step will ask for. Fair Trading's own process begins by asking what the business said.

In a sale, one remedy sits with the client throughout. An appointment to sell is limited in time, and the Office of Fair Trading's guidance sets out how each kind can be ended. A rental management can be ended by either side on 30 days' written notice. A client who has lost confidence does not need a regulator's finding to move on.

Mediation without a regulator

Between the agency's own process and a formal complaint lies an option that is often overlooked. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance points businesses and customers to free mediation through the State's dispute resolution centres, and says mediation there reaches a settlement in 90 per cent of cases without anyone going to court.

Mediation suits disputes where the facts are not much contested and the argument is about what is fair: who bears an advertising cost after a sale falls over, whether a fee should be reduced after a poor campaign. A mediator does not decide who is right. Both sides have to agree to take part and to any outcome. For a client who wants a result more than a finding, it is frequently the quickest path.

Lodging a complaint with the Office of Fair Trading

When the agency's answer does not resolve a matter that the law regulates, the complaint goes to the Office of Fair Trading. It can be lodged online. The office's published process then runs in stages.

Conciliation is voluntary. The office puts each side's position to the other and looks for an agreement: an apology, a refund, a correction. It is not a hearing and nobody is ordered to do anything. The 30-day figure is an aim, and the office says complex matters can take longer.

The office's process is framed around consumers. Its guidance treats a business as a consumer too where the goods or services cost $100,000 or less, or are of a kind normally bought for personal or household use, so a small investor or a family company selling a property is not shut out.

One feature is worth knowing about. Complaint data is shared through a national system the office calls ACLink with fair trading agencies in other states and New Zealand. A complaint that looks isolated in Queensland may be one of a pattern elsewhere, and the system exists so that regulators can see it.

What Fair Trading cannot do

The limits are stated on the office's own page, and they surprise people who expect a regulator to act like a court.

This separation between regulating conduct and compensating loss runs through the whole system. If conciliation fails, the office's advice is that the consumer may take the matter to a tribunal or court, or get legal advice. The office may still go on to investigate the agent's conduct, but that is a matter between the regulator and the licensee. The complainant is a witness in it, not a party, and its outcome does not put money in their hands.

It also explains why a complaint can end with the office taking no action against the agent even though the client was let down. Poor service is not a breach. A regulator acts on contraventions of the law it administers, and on evidence.

What the regulator can do to an agent

Where a breach is established, the range of responses is wide. The office's complaint page lists four in general terms: it can formally warn a business, issue fines, pursue penalties in court and seek to have a business banned from operating.

For property agents those translate into specific tools. An infringement notice is an on-the-spot fine for a listed offence. An enforceable undertaking, which the office's penalties page describes as an alternative to court action, is a legally binding agreement in which the licensee commits to stop a practice or put something right.

The licence itself can be acted on. According to the office's page on ending a licence, a licence can be suspended where it was obtained with materially incorrect or misleading information, where trust account irregularities are suspected, where audit reports have not been lodged, where a receiver has been appointed or where property legislation has been breached. A suspension can last up to 28 days, and longer where an audit report is outstanding. Cancellation is automatic in a narrower set of events: conviction of a serious offence, bankruptcy or insolvency, or the winding up of a corporate licensee.

Prosecution is the last resort. The office's list of offences gives the maximum penalties a court can impose on an individual, and says a corporation can face up to five times as much.

Results of prosecutions are public. The office keeps a court outcomes register, and the Department of Justice publishes statements on significant cases. Its news page carries four statements about property agents between June 2025 and June 2026. Court action is the visible tip of the system, and a small one.

Misleading advertising of a property is treated under a separate national law. The office's guidance says false or misleading representations about the sale of land fall under the Australian Consumer Law, where the maximum for an individual is $2.5 million per breach.

Disciplinary proceedings in the tribunal

Between a warning and a criminal prosecution sits professional discipline. Under the Property Occupations Act 2014, disciplinary proceedings against a licensee or registered salesperson are brought by the regulator in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which hears discipline and regulation matters for a range of occupations.

The purpose is different from a prosecution. A criminal court punishes an offence. A disciplinary tribunal asks whether a person should keep the right to practise and on what terms. The Act gives the tribunal a list of orders it may make if grounds are established, which in broad terms run from a reprimand through a fine and an order to compensate, to suspension or cancellation of the licence and disqualification from holding one for a period or permanently.

A member of the public cannot start disciplinary proceedings. They are started by the regulator after its own investigation, and the complainant's role is to give evidence if asked. The tribunal also hears applications by licensees themselves to review licensing decisions made against them, so it works in both directions.

The tribunal's registry is frank about what it cannot do for anyone involved. Its published guidance says registry staff cannot give legal advice, predict an outcome or recommend a lawyer, and points parties to community legal centres, Legal Aid Queensland and private solicitors.

Getting money back

Since the regulator cannot award compensation, a client who has lost money needs one of four other routes.

The first is agreement, through the agency, mediation or Fair Trading's conciliation. Most refunds happen this way.

The second is a civil claim. A dispute about whether commission was earned, or about a loss caused by an agent's breach of duty, is a legal claim like any other, decided by the tribunal in its civil jurisdiction or by a court, depending on the amount. The appointment form is the central document, because it states when commission is payable.

The third applies where the law itself takes the commission away. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance on disclosure of interests says that an agent who fails to disclose a beneficial interest in a sale can be required to repay commission to the client, apart from any penalty.

The fourth is the claim fund. Queensland maintains a fund that can compensate a person who suffers financial loss because of certain breaches of the law by an agent. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance describes it as available to consumers who lose money because of an agent's actions in the property industry. It has its own application, limits and time limits, and it is a remedy of last resort for a specific kind of loss, not a general compensation scheme.

When the complaint is about a property manager

Tenants and owners often assume a complaint about a property manager goes to Fair Trading because the manager is an agent. Usually it does not.

If the issue is the tenancy, the body is the Residential Tenancies Authority. Its free dispute resolution service deals with the disagreement itself: a bond, a repair, an entry, a notice. If that fails, either side may apply to the tribunal. Separately, the authority's compliance team investigates breaches of the tenancy Act. It says requests can come from tenants, residents, owners or managers, that an investigation can take from a few weeks to several months, and that outcomes range from education and an official warning to a penalty infringement notice or prosecution. Like Fair Trading, it does not recover money: the authority says its investigations uphold compliance and do not provide compensation.

The Office of Fair Trading comes in where the complaint is about the manager as a licensee: unlicensed management, rent money not accounted for, acting without an appointment. An owner whose statements do not add up has a Fair Trading matter. A tenant whose home was entered without notice has a tenancy matter.

What makes a complaint effective

Every body in this guide works from documents, and the same handful recur.

The appointment form shows what the agent was engaged to do, at what price and for what fee. Advertisements, saved as they appeared, show what was represented. Emails and messages show what was instructed and when. A short timeline, with dates, ties them together. For a tenancy, the equivalents are the agreement, the entry notices, the condition reports and photographs.

It helps to identify the agent precisely. The Office of Fair Trading's free online register gives the name of the licence holder, the business name and place of business, the licence number and class and its status. A complaint that names the licensee and the individual is easier to act on than one that names a brand.

It also helps to say which rule is thought to have been broken. The conduct standards in the Property Occupations Regulation 2014 are short and readable: an agent must not act where their interest conflicts with the client's, must take reasonable steps to verify ownership and the facts material to a sale, and must act on the client's instructions. A complaint framed against one of those gives the regulator something to test.

Finally, it helps to be clear about the aim. A person who wants an apology or a refund should say so and be open to conciliation. A person who wants the conduct examined should give the regulator the evidence and accept that the result may never be reported back in detail.

Keeping the system in proportion

The length of this guide could give the wrong impression. The machinery is extensive because the sums involved in property are large, not because failures are common. The great majority of complaints end at the first step, with a conversation in the agency's office, and the great majority of agents never meet the later ones.

The design is consistent once it is seen whole. The agency answers for its service. The regulator answers for the standard of the profession, and can warn, fine, restrict or remove a licence. Tribunals and courts decide who owes money to whom. Knowing which of those three questions is being asked is most of the work of making a complaint.

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.

About Kooky and Shaka →