Electronic conveyancing in Queensland: how a settlement completes

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Kooky

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

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For most of the last century a Queensland property settlement was a meeting. Clerks from two law firms and two banks stood in a room, compared documents, swapped bank cheques for a signed transfer and a paper title, and then someone carried the bundle to the titles office. The buyer and the seller were rarely there, but the meeting was real, and when one clerk was late or one cheque was wrong by a few dollars, everybody went home and tried again.

That meeting no longer happens. A settlement today is completed inside a shared online workspace, at an agreed time, by a system that checks the documents, moves the money between banks and lodges the paperwork with the land registry in a single sequence. Buyers and sellers hear about it afterwards, usually by text message. This guide explains what goes on in between: what the law requires, who takes part, what has to be verified before anyone can sign, how the money and the documents are tied together, what happens when something stops, and who sets the rules. It describes the system as it is. It is general information and a solicitor or conveyancer is the person to ask about a particular transaction.

Titles Queensland, eConveyancing mandate guidance, under the Land Title Regulation 2022.

From a room full of cheques to a shared screen

The change came in stages. Queensland's land register itself has been electronic for a long time: a Titles Queensland customer alert of 30 August 2023 notes that the Automated Titles System has held the authoritative record of title since 1994. Paper certificates of title lingered until legislation removed their legal effect from 1 October 2019, a change the law firm HopgoodGanim described at the time as ending the need to hand over a certificate at settlement.

What remained on paper was the exchange itself. Electronic settlement networks grew through the 2010s, state by state and transaction type by transaction type. The Reserve Bank of Australia's Bulletin recorded in March 2021 that by November 2020 more than 75 per cent of Australian property transfers were settled electronically, and that the number of financial institution cheques, the bank cheques once used at settlement, had fallen by 75 per cent between December 2014 and December 2020.

Queensland reached the same point by habit before it did so by rule. The Queensland Law Society's journal Proctor reported in February 2023 that about 70 per cent of relevant titling transactions in the state were already electronic, and that 84 per cent of the 256 members who answered a society survey already used the system for settlements. The requirement that followed turned common practice into the standard one.

What Queensland law now requires

Titles Queensland's guidance sets the rule out. Under the Land Title Regulation 2022, from 20 February 2023, certain instruments dealing with freehold land must be lodged through an electronic lodgment network when they are lodged by industry professionals or corporate entities. The registry lists nine of them.

Three kinds of exemption exist, according to the same guidance: general exemptions that apply to any instrument, exemptions specific to a type of instrument, and an exemption for documents signed before the start date. The requirement is addressed to professionals. A person acting for themselves without a solicitor is outside it, and the registry keeps paper lodgement by post, and since 20 July 2026 an online drop box for some single-party dealings, for those cases. In practice a sale between two represented parties with a loan on either side has no paper route.

Two operators are approved to run a network in Queensland: Property Exchange Australia Limited, known as PEXA, and Sympli Australia Pty Ltd. The standard contract was changed to match. Proctor reported ahead of the start date that the Queensland Law Society and the Real Estate Institute of Queensland were revising the standard sale contracts so that the electronic settlement clause applies whenever the transfer is an instrument the regulation requires to be lodged electronically, with a procedure for choosing the network and no option to withdraw from electronic settlement.

Who is inside the workspace

Members of the public cannot log in. The networks are used by subscribers: law practices, conveyancing businesses and financial institutions that have been admitted by an operator and have agreed to its rules. Everyone else takes part through one of them.

A typical sale has four participants. The seller's solicitor or conveyancer acts for the seller. The buyer's solicitor or conveyancer acts for the buyer. The seller's lender is there to be paid and to release its mortgage. The buyer's lender is there to advance the loan and take a new mortgage. A cash buyer, or a seller with no mortgage, removes a participant; a guarantor's property or a second mortgage adds one.

One of the practitioners opens the workspace for the property and invites the others. Each takes a defined role, and each can see the parts of the workspace that concern it. The practitioners enter the title reference, the parties' names exactly as they will appear on the register, the price and the proposed date and time. The lenders enter their side. The workspace compares what each has entered and shows where the entries disagree, which is the electronic equivalent of the clerks comparing documents across a table, except that it happens days in advance and not in the last five minutes.

The checks before anyone can sign

The register is only as reliable as the instructions that reach it, so the national rules put duties on every subscriber before a document can be signed on a client's behalf. The Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council, which writes those rules, has published guidance notes on each.

The first is the client authorisation. The council's guidance note on the subject, updated in August 2024, describes it as the document by which a party authorises a lawyer or conveyancer to act for them in an electronic transaction. It allows the representative to sign documents for the client, to submit them for lodgement and to authorise any financial settlement involved. It must substantially follow the form set out in the participation rules, and its terms cannot be varied. An authority may be specific to one transaction, standing until a stated date, or given for a batch of transactions.

The second is verification of identity. The representative must take reasonable steps to confirm that the person giving instructions is who they claim to be. This is why a buyer or seller is asked for identity documents, often in a face-to-face or video appointment, even by a firm that has acted for them before.

The third is the right to deal. The council's guidance note defines it as the entitlement of a person to be a particular party to the transaction: in plain terms, that the person selling is the registered owner or is entitled to act as one. The standard is what an ordinarily prudent subscriber would have done in the circumstances, and the guidance suggests supporting evidence that links the person to the land, such as rates notices, utility bills or the contract of sale.

Subscribers must keep the evidence. The guidance on client authorisations gives a retention period of seven years from lodgement. These checks belong to the settlement system and are separate from the identity checks that real estate agents and other businesses carry out under anti-money laundering law.

The documents, and how they are signed

With the parties verified, the documents are prepared inside the workspace from the details already entered. In a standard sale there are three registry instruments: the release of the seller's mortgage, the transfer, and the buyer's mortgage. They will be lodged in that order, because the register has to show the old loan gone before the new owner appears, and the new owner in place before the new loan can attach.

Alongside the transfer travels the information the registry collects on Form 24, the property information form. It records the buyer's details, the price, the settlement date and facts about the property, and the form itself says the information is passed to government departments, local authorities and water entities. That single data set is how the council and others learn that a property has changed hands.

Signing is digital. Each practitioner signs the documents for which they are responsible using a personal digital certificate issued for the purpose, under the client's authorisation. Lenders sign theirs in the same way. Nobody signs for another party, and a document that has been changed after signing has to be signed again.

How the money and the title move together

The financial side is set out in a settlement schedule within the workspace. It has two lists. Source lines say where money comes from: the buyer's lender, and the trust account of the buyer's solicitor for the buyer's own contribution. Destination lines say where it goes: the seller's lender for the loan payout, the seller's nominated account for the balance, and any other payees the parties have agreed. The two lists must add up to the same figure before the workspace is ready.

What happens at the appointed time was described step by step in the Reserve Bank's Bulletin article of March 2021 on property settlement.

The reservation is the heart of it. Banks hold accounts at the Reserve Bank, called exchange settlement accounts, which they use to pay one another. The Bulletin explains that the network sends the Reserve Bank's settlement system a batch describing what each bank owes or is owed in the transaction, with several roles netted to one position per bank. If every paying bank has the funds, they are reserved. The article is specific about their status: the seller has no rights to the funds while they are reserved, and they can be used only to settle that particular property transaction.

Only then is the title lodged. When the registry's acknowledgement comes back, the network asks the Reserve Bank to settle, and the money moves at once using the reserved amounts. In 2020 the average reservation lasted six and a half minutes, according to the Bulletin, and fewer than one in a hundred lasted more than fifteen.

The Bulletin calls the result close to delivery versus payment, a term from securities markets. It means neither side performs first. The buyer's money cannot leave unless the transfer has been lodged, and the transfer cannot be lodged unless the money is locked in place. The old settlement meeting achieved the same thing by having everyone hand over at once across a table.

Timing on the day

Settlement is booked for a time, but the system works through the day. The Reserve Bank's analysis of 2020 found that about 30 per cent of each day's settlements fell between 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm and that Fridays carried roughly a quarter of the week's batches. That concentration reflects how contracts are written and when removal trucks are booked, not a limit of the technology.

There are cut-off times. PEXA's public description of its exchange says they vary with the jurisdiction and with the requirements of the financial institutions involved. A settlement that is not ready by the cut-off cannot complete that day.

When a settlement cannot complete at its booked time, the usual cause is ordinary: a document unsigned, a payout figure that has changed, a lender not yet ready. The parties rebook for later the same day if they can. The Bulletin notes that the operator will cancel a settlement if a problem is preventing timely completion, in which case reserved funds are released and nothing is lodged.

Rarely, the cause is in the infrastructure. On 27 January 2026 a technology outage at the Reserve Bank stopped banks exchanging payment files from about 10:30 am. The Reserve Bank's statement two days later said services were restored by about 5:20 pm, that property settlement was extended to 10:45 pm, and that approximately 500 property transactions could not complete before the deadline. PEXA's own account to its customers gave a higher figure for that evening, about 900, most of which it said settled the following day. Because Queensland contracts generally treat the settlement date as strict, a day's slip of that kind is something the parties' solicitors then have to resolve between them under the contract.

What the buyer and the seller actually do

Seen from outside, the client's part is short and comes early.

Both sides prove their identity and sign the client authorisation. The seller signs the lender's own form asking for the mortgage to be released. The buyer signs loan and mortgage documents with the lender. The buyer then pays their own contribution, the part of the price not covered by the deposit or the loan, into their solicitor's trust account in time for it to be cleared funds on the day. The Queensland Law Society's trust account guidance reminds practices that trust money can be paid out only at the direction of the person it is held for, which is one reason the authorisation and the settlement figures are confirmed in writing beforehand.

On the day there is nothing to attend. The Queensland Government's guidance describes the outcome in four parts: the balance of the price passes to the seller, the title passes to the buyer, the keys are handed over and the buyer takes possession. The practitioners tell their clients when the workspace shows the settlement complete, the seller's agent is told it may release the keys, and the proceeds reach the seller's account through the banking system.

Who writes the rules, and what is under review

Three layers of rule-making sit above every workspace.

The registrars' council sets the national framework. It publishes model operating requirements, which bind the network operators, and model participation rules, which bind subscribers and contain the verification and authorisation duties described above. Each state's registrar then applies them; in Queensland that is the Registrar of Titles, working through Titles Queensland.

The requirements are being revised. A stakeholder briefing from the council dated 17 June 2026 describes a proposed eighth version, with stronger obligations on operators for information security certification, annual business continuity testing and insurance. Submissions on the draft closed on 17 July 2026.

Fees are regulated too. On 3 July 2026 the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal of New South Wales, which is reviewing network fees on behalf of the council, published a draft report recommending that the main operator's transaction fees stay regulated and be set from its costs. The tribunal's review page gives 30 September 2026 as the expected date of its final report.

A third question has been set aside for the time being. For several years the council worked on interoperability, a design that would let a subscriber on one network complete a transaction with a subscriber on another. On 31 March 2026 it announced that the program would not proceed at this time, citing its cost and complexity, doubt about the benefits and the absence of Commonwealth support, and said it would concentrate on strengthening the existing framework.

What the system does not do

It helps to be clear about the edges. The workspace completes a contract; it does not judge one. Whether the contract is fair, whether the conditions were satisfied and whether the property is as described are matters settled before the workspace is ever opened.

It does not collect every charge. Proctor reported in February 2023 that Queensland practitioners could not pay transfer duty through the networks, as their counterparts in other states could, and the Queensland Law Society's trust account alert on the subject still refers to duty being paid to the Queensland Revenue Office outside the platforms.

It does not finish the job on its own, either. Lodgement is not registration. The registry examines what has been lodged and then records it, and a buyer becomes the registered owner at that point, a few working days after the money has moved.

Electronic conveyancing did not change what a settlement is. It changed where the exchange happens, and replaced a room of people with a sequence that either completes in full or does not start.

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 →