Who supervises a Queensland agency office, and what the law asks of them

In this article

Written by

Kooky

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

About Kooky and Shaka →

Every real estate office in Queensland has a name on the licence, a team at the desks and, somewhere between the two, one individual who answers for how the place is run. The law calls that individual the person in charge. Buyers and sellers rarely meet the title, yet it decides who is accountable when a deposit is mishandled, a salesperson oversteps or a branch is left with nobody at the helm.

Supervision is a quiet subject in a busy agency. Listings, auctions and inspections fill the week, and the question of who is actually watching the way the business is carried on tends to surface only when something goes wrong. The Property Occupations Act 2014, which regulates property agents in Queensland, puts that question at the centre of its design.

This guide sets out what the Act and the Office of Fair Trading say about supervision inside an agency: what being in charge means, who may hold the role at the main office and at a branch, how a business stays supervised when the person in charge is away, and what the regulator can do when supervision fails. It is a general explainer for principals, staff and curious clients, not advice on any one business.

Maximum penalties from the Office of Fair Trading's property industry breaches and penalties page (updated 1 July 2026); the 30-day limit from its substitute licensee page.

Supervision is written into the Act's purpose

The Property Occupations Act opens with a statement of what it is for, and supervision appears in it directly. Among the ways its objects are achieved, section 12 lists ensuring that people who carry on a licensee's business, or who are in charge of it at a place, keep close personal supervision of the way the business is carried on.

The same section explains how the work is divided. The chief executive is responsible for licensing. The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, known as QCAT, reviews certain decisions and deals with disciplinary matters. The Act also aims to protect consumers who deal with licensees and their employees, and to give the people who work for licensees a lawful framework to operate in.

Read together, these objects explain why the person in charge matters so much. An agency is usually a team: a principal, perhaps other licensed agents, registered salespeople, property managers and administrative staff. The licence sits with the principal licensee, which may be an individual or a company. The Act's answer to the question of who keeps the team inside the rules is that every place of business has an identified, qualified individual who personally supervises it.

What being "in charge" actually means

Section 19 of the Act defines the term. A person is in charge of a licensee's business at a place only if that person personally supervises, manages or controls the conduct of the licensee's business at that place. The licensee's business, in turn, means the business carried on under the licence.

Two words in that definition do most of the work. The first is "personally". The role cannot be held on paper by someone who lives elsewhere and visits twice a year; the definition describes someone who actually supervises, manages or controls. The second is "place". The test is applied office by office, so a large agency group does not have one person in charge but one for every location where it carries on business.

The definition does not list daily tasks. It does not say how often files must be reviewed or how many staff one person may oversee. What it does is fix responsibility on a named individual at each place, and the rest of the Act builds on that.

For a corporate licensee the point is sharper still. Section 55 restricts a corporation holding a licence to performing licensed activities only through particular people, starting with a licensed person who is in charge of the corporation's business. A company cannot inspect a home, negotiate a sale or run a trust account by itself; it acts through individuals, and the Act requires that the right individual be in charge.

Who may be in charge at the main office and at a branch

Section 84 of the Act sets out who must be in charge of a property agent's business at each place, and the Office of Fair Trading's page on places of business restates the rules in plain terms. The starting point is simple: each place of business must have a licensed person, or in some circumstances a real estate salesperson, in charge.

At the registered office, the rule depends on who holds the licence. An individual who is a principal licensee must be in charge of the business there personally. A corporation that is a principal licensee must make sure the individual in charge at its registered office is a real estate agent, or an auctioneer for an auctioneering business.

At every other place of business, the principal licensee must make sure a qualified individual is in charge. The table below gathers the options the Act allows.

The salesperson rule deserves a closer look, because it decides who can run a branch. The Office of Fair Trading's salesperson registration page, updated on 22 September 2026, says a registered salesperson may manage a secondary place of business but not the principal place of business. Its place of business page adds that a principal must not appoint a salesperson as a person in charge if the salesperson's registration carries conditions, and that a salesperson with conditional registration must not run a place of business or influence how the business is run.

The same registration page sets limits that shape what a salesperson in charge can oversee. Registered salespeople can only work as employees, and they cannot conduct auctions or operate trust accounts. A branch run by a salesperson therefore still depends on licensed people for those tasks, and the principal licensee remains the holder of the licence under which everything at the branch is done.

One person, one place

A person in charge cannot be spread across a region. Section 84 says an individual must not be in charge of a property agent's business at more than one place. The Office of Fair Trading's page puts it in one line: one person cannot be in charge of more than one place of business.

There is a narrow exception for premises that sit side by side. Properties count as a single place of business when they are directly attached or share a boundary and are not separated by a public road, and the Act does not treat an individual in charge of such contiguous premises as breaching the rule. Two shopfronts facing each other across a street do not qualify, because a public road separates them.

The rule has practical consequences for agencies that open branches. Each new office needs its own qualified individual, so every expansion depends on having a licensed agent, or a salesperson with unconditional registration, ready to run it. It also means a principal who lives at the registered office cannot simply add a branch across town and supervise both: the branch needs someone else in charge.

Offices can be shared. The Office of Fair Trading's place of business page notes that offices may be shared with other licensees. Sharing a building does not change the count: each licensee's business at that place still needs its own person in charge.

Keeping Fair Trading informed

Supervision is easier to test when the regulator knows where an agency operates. The Office of Fair Trading's place of business page says the place of business must be declared in the licence application, and that an agency must report a move of address within 14 days. Its page on updating licence details lists adding or changing a place of business among the changes to report within 14 days, along with changes to a company's office bearers and any serious-offence conviction.

Section 83 of the Act is the general rule behind those pages: a licensee must give the chief executive written notice of a prescribed change in circumstances within 14 days after the change. The Office of Fair Trading's penalties page puts the maximum fine for failing to notify changes within 14 days at $17,270.

The regulator also expects licences to be visible inside the business. Its page on holding a licence says a licensee must be able to show a client or an inspector the licensee's own licence, the corporate licence and the licence or registration of any employee, and must keep a copy for each licensee at the relevant premises. For the person in charge of a branch, that is a simple test of supervision in itself: knowing who works at the office and what each person is licensed or registered to do.

Section 56 explains why that knowledge matters. An employed licensee may perform an activity under their own licence only if the employer's licence also authorises it. If an employee does something outside the employer's authority, the Act treats the employee as acting without a licence for that activity. A person in charge who knows the scope of the agency's licence, and of each team member's licence or registration, is the safeguard against that outcome.

When the person in charge is away

People take leave, fall ill and travel. The Act does not let a place of business go unsupervised in the meantime; it provides a substitute licensee system instead. Section 66 covers a principal licensee who is an individual and will be absent from the registered office. Section 67 covers an employed licensee or a real estate salesperson who is in charge of a principal licensee's business at a place and will be absent for a reason other than resignation or termination.

The Office of Fair Trading's substitute licensee page, updated in September 2023, sets out how the system works. The procedure runs in five stages.

Suitability has a defined meaning. The substitute licensee page lists people who are not suitable, including anyone insolvent under administration, anyone currently disqualified from holding a licence or registration, and anyone convicted of a serious offence in the past five years. It also lists factors the Office of Fair Trading weighs, such as criminal history, earlier licence cancellations or suspensions, and whether the person is capable of doing a licensee's job satisfactorily. Where insurance is a condition of the licence, the substitute must hold the same level of cover.

Section 69 explains what the appointment does. For its duration, the substitute is treated as the person being replaced, and the person being replaced must not act under their own licence or registration in the meantime. The appointment ends when its period runs out, when either side ends it by written notice, when the chief executive revokes it, or when the relevant licence or registration is suspended or cancelled.

The penalties page shows the regulator treats the system seriously: breaches of the substitute licensee rules carry maximum fines of $17,270 or $34,540, depending on the offence. The appointment records are part of the same picture, since sections 66 and 67 require them to be kept at the registered office and made available to inspectors.

The numbers behind the duty

The Act expresses its fines in penalty units, and the Office of Fair Trading converts them into dollars on its breaches and penalties page, updated on 1 July 2026. Section 84 itself sets 200 penalty units for an individual and 1,000 for a corporation. The page gives the dollar values for the premises offence of not having a licensee in charge of a place of business: $34,540 for an individual and $172,700 for a corporation.

The page also states the general rule that the listed fines are for individuals and that corporations can face up to five times the maximum. For the premises offence, $172,700 is exactly five times $34,540. The same multiple runs through the Act's design for corporate principals: a company that holds the licence carries the heavier exposure when its offices are not properly staffed.

These are maximums set by Parliament, not typical outcomes. A court decides the actual penalty in each case, and the Office of Fair Trading decides first whether a matter goes to court at all.

When supervision fails: what the regulator can do

The Office of Fair Trading describes its approach as an escalation model: the less willing a business is to comply, the stronger the response. Its enforcement page, last modified in August 2024, lists the tools in rising order.

At the lighter end are education, engagement and official warnings, used for minor or technical breaches where there was no intent to break the law or act dishonestly and the business agrees to act quickly. Infringement notices are used for relatively minor, isolated, first-time breaches. Enforceable undertakings are legally binding agreements in which a business commits to changing or stopping certain conduct; the Office of Fair Trading generally uses them instead of court action where reoffending is unlikely, and they may require staff training, new procedures or remediation of harm.

Further up the scale are administrative actions: show cause notices, changes to licence or registration conditions, and suspension or cancellation of a licence or registration. Public warnings naming a business are reserved for limited cases. At the top sit court prosecution and disciplinary proceedings in QCAT. The enforcement page notes that breaches generally lead to court prosecution rather than tribunal action, and that QCAT can disqualify a person from holding a licence for as long as it considers appropriate.

Conditions are a quieter tool with lasting effect. The Office of Fair Trading's page on conditional licences says conditions may prohibit or limit some activities, and that they can be added or changed at the licensee's request, by order of a tribunal after a disciplinary hearing, or by the Office of Fair Trading itself.

What published cases show

The Office of Fair Trading publishes enforceable undertakings in a public register, last modified on 29 September 2026. Each entry gives a name, a date and the sections of law involved, without a narrative. In February 2026, two undertakings recorded on the same day, one by a company and one by an individual, cite section 84(2) of the Property Occupations Act, the corporate person-in-charge rule, alongside several provisions of the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014, the law on trust accounts. An earlier entry from 2017 also cites section 84(2). The register does not describe the facts, but the citations show that the person-in-charge rule is enforced, and in both entries it sits next to trust account provisions.

The court outcomes the Office of Fair Trading publishes make the link between oversight and trust money concrete, even though none of them is framed as a supervision case. In one matter announced in March 2026, a Brisbane property manager was sentenced in the District Court for fraud after manipulating trust accounting software to make 196 transfers totalling $116,376 between January 2013 and June 2020. The release says the case followed an Office of Fair Trading investigation; it does not say how the conduct was first detected or how the business around the property manager was supervised.

In another, announced in June 2025, the investigation began after an agency failed to lodge its annual audit report. A receiver appointed by the Office of Fair Trading found a shortfall in the trust account, the agent and the company were disqualified from holding a real estate licence for 10 years, and more than $69,000 was approved for payment from the statutory claim fund. Several of the published outcomes name a company alongside an individual, which reflects the structure of the Act: the licence-holding business and the person running it can both face charges.

Supervision in a Queensland agency is not a job description. It is a named individual at every office, present enough to know what the team is doing.

The claim fund adds a financial consequence that falls on the business. The Office of Fair Trading's claim fund page says consumers can seek compensation when they lose money because of a licensee's actions, such as mishandled trust money or a bond not passed on to the Residential Tenancies Authority. After a payment, the business must repay the fund, and the page warns that not repaying can affect the licence and the ability to keep trading.

Questions a principal can ask of each office

The Act leaves the method of supervision to the business, but its rules suggest the questions that matter. These are general prompts drawn from the rules above, not a compliance checklist for any particular agency.

1. Is there one named individual in charge at each place of business, and is that person qualified for the role at that kind of office?
2. Does any individual appear as the person in charge at two places that are not contiguous?
3. If a salesperson runs a branch, is the registration free of conditions, and are auctions and trust account work handled by licensed people?
4. Has every place of business, and every change to it, been reported to the Office of Fair Trading within 14 days?
5. Are copies of every licence and registration held at the premises where those people work?
6. When the person in charge is away, is there a written substitute appointment with signed consent, and do the absences stay inside the yearly limits?
7. Does the person in charge know which activities the agency's licence authorises, so no employee works outside it?

As passed in 2014, the Act also contains a section headed "responsibility for acts and omissions of salespersons", placed among the rules on carrying on business, which is worth reading in full for any principal who employs registered salespeople. How the rules apply to a specific office always depends on its facts, and the Office of Fair Trading publishes its guidance for licensees alongside the Act.

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 →