Ten units and a suitability test: Queensland's auctioneer licence path

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Kooky

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

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A person can spend years selling houses in Queensland, hold a full real estate agent licence, run an office, and still not be allowed to stand in front of a crowd and take bids. The reason is a short bracket in the Property Occupations Act 2014. The section that describes what a real estate agent licence authorises says the holder may buy, sell, exchange or let real property, and after the word "sell" it adds four words: other than by auction.

Auctions belong to a different licence. The Act names it first in its list of licence categories, the Office of Fair Trading issues it, and the path to it runs through ten named units of training, a suitability test and an application that the regulator says takes four to six weeks to process. This guide follows that path for an individual who wants to auction real property: what the licence allows, how it sits beside the other credentials in an agency, who is eligible, which units are required, how the application is lodged, what the fees are made of, and what keeping the licence involves. It covers the auctioneer licence only. It describes the general rules as the Act and the regulator publish them, and a particular applicant's position depends on their own history and paperwork.

Office of Fair Trading, "Apply for an auctioneer licence (real property)", Queensland Government, page updated 14 May 2026.

What the licence lets its holder do

Section 24 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 lists the categories of licence the chief executive may issue. There are three: the auctioneer licence, the real estate agent licence and the resident letting agent licence.

Section 25 then says what the first of them authorises. An auctioneer may sell, attempt to sell, or offer for sale or resale any real property, or an interest in real property, by way of auction, as an agent for others and for reward. Each part of that sentence does some work. "Attempt" and "offer" mean the licence covers the campaign and the calling, not only a successful sale. "As an agent for others" places the auctioneer in the seller's service. "For reward" marks the activity as a profession.

The Office of Fair Trading's page on applying for the licence translates this into everyday terms. Real property, it says, takes in dwellings, community title lots, businesses and vacant land. The same section of the Act also lets an auctioneer sell goods by auction where they are directly connected with the auction of a place of residence or land, and the regulator gives the example of livestock sold at the auction of a farmhouse.

There is a second authority that is easy to miss. The regulator's page says an auctioneer may sell the property by any means during the auction period. A commentary on the law of auctions written by Carter Newell Lawyers and published by the REIQ on 2 March 2026 makes the same point, citing sections 14 and 25 of the Act: the licence authorises sale by auction and sale by any means while the auction period runs. An auctioneer appointed for a campaign is therefore not confined to the minutes spent on the rostrum.

The licence does not stretch to every kind of auction. The Office of Fair Trading's page on the corporate version of the licence says a company holding it cannot auction vehicles or chattels without a separate chattel auctioneer licence, and the regulator runs separate application pages for chattel auctioneers. Someone who wants to sell cars or household goods under the hammer is looking at a different credential from the one described here.

Three credentials in one office, and who may take bids

An agency can hold people with three different pieces of paper, and only one of them covers an auction.

The first two rows come straight from the Act. Section 26, on the real estate agent licence, carries the bracketed exclusion quoted at the top of this guide. The Carter Newell commentary describes the auctioneer licence as separate and distinct from the real estate agent licence, and says a real estate agent or salesperson cannot call an auction on the strength of that credential alone. The Queensland Government's own page for people buying at auction says the same thing from the public's side: the auctioneer must hold a current auctioneer licence, which is a different licence from a real estate agent's or a chattel auctioneer's.

None of this stops one person from holding more than one credential. The rule is about what each document covers, not about who may collect them. A licensed real estate agent who also wants to call auctions applies for the auctioneer licence as well, and from then on each activity is done under the licence that authorises it.

The Office of Fair Trading also describes how an auctioneer may work. The application page lists three arrangements: alone, in a partnership, or as an employee of another auctioneer or of a real estate agent. That last arrangement is the familiar one in residential sales, where the agency lists the property and an auctioneer takes the rostrum on the day.

Is there a trainee auctioneer licence?

Readers who trained under older rules, or in another state, sometimes ask about a trainee category. The sources read for this guide do not show one. The Act's list of licence categories in section 24 has three entries and none of them is a trainee licence. The Office of Fair Trading's application page describes a single individual auctioneer licence and makes no mention of a trainee pathway.

In practice this means the preparation happens in training, not under a provisional licence. The units listed below include preparing for an auction, conducting one and completing the paperwork afterwards, and they are finished before the application is lodged. A person who is not yet licensed can learn the craft; what the Act reserves for a licence holder is selling by auction as an agent for others, for reward.

Eligibility: two conditions

The Act sets the entry conditions briefly. Under section 45, an individual is eligible for a property agent licence if they are at least 18 years old and hold the educational or other qualifications approved for that licence. The section adds that the chief executive publishes the approved qualifications on the department's website, which is why the list of units lives on a government web page and not in the Act itself.

The Office of Fair Trading's application page repeats the two conditions in plain words: be 18 or older, and have successfully completed the required training.

Nothing in those conditions asks for a period of prior experience in sales, and the regulator's page does not list one. The filter that follows eligibility is of a different kind. It concerns the person, not the coursework.

Suitability: what the regulator looks at

Section 34 of the Act deals with the suitability of individual applicants and licence holders. It sets out circumstances in which a person is not suitable to hold a licence at all. According to the Act and the Office of Fair Trading's summary, an individual is unsuitable if they are:

• an insolvent under administration;
• convicted of a serious offence within the preceding five years;
• currently disqualified from holding a licence.

The regulator's page explains what it counts as a serious offence: an offence punishable by three or more years' imprisonment, of kinds that include violence, fraud, drug trafficking, extortion, arson, unlawful stalking and sexual offences.

Beyond those bars, section 36 obliges the chief executive to weigh a wider set of matters before deciding. The Act and the regulator's page list them: the applicant's character and that of their business associates, their criminal history, whether a licence they held was ever suspended or cancelled, whether a claim was paid out of the claim fund because of something they did, whether they have been disqualified from managing a company, whether they were an executive officer of a corporation that became insolvent, and whether they are entitled to work in Australia.

The first group works as a gate and the second as a judgment. An applicant in the first group cannot be licensed while the circumstance lasts. An applicant with something in the second group has a matter the regulator will consider with everything else, which is one reason an honest and complete application matters more than a fast one.

Suitability is also not a test passed once. Section 34 speaks of applicants and licensees together, so the same standard follows the holder for as long as the licence is held.

The ten training units

The Office of Fair Trading's application page lists the training an auctioneer must complete. There are ten units, all drawn from one of two national qualifications: the Certificate IV in Real Estate Practice (CPP41419) or the Diploma of Property (Agency Management) (CPP51122).

The list has a visible shape. Five units, numbered 4001 to 4005, cover the ground any property professional starts on: professional practice, ethics, legislation, marketing and communication, and a first look at trust accounts. Three units, numbered 4161 to 4163, are the auction itself, split into before, during and after. The last two, on transacting in trust accounts and managing operational finances, deal with money. An auctioneer's training is therefore seven parts general practice and finance to three parts auction, which reflects how much of the job is paperwork and how little of it is performance.

Two warnings sit under the list on the regulator's page.

The first concerns old training. Units from the superseded Property Services training package, known by the code CPP07, are no longer accepted. A person who studied years ago and never applied should check which package their statement of attainment belongs to before assuming it still counts.

The second is the visa condition set out above. It affects where the training is done, not what is studied, and it is worth settling before enrolling because the application asks for proof of qualifications and, for anyone who is not an Australian citizen, proof of the right to work.

Lodging the application

Section 29 of the Act describes obtaining a licence as a series of steps that includes paying the prescribed fees and, where required, the cost of a criminal history check. Section 30 says the application must be in the approved form, state the category of licence and the term applied for, establish the applicant's eligibility, name their business associates and supply the information the form asks for.

The Office of Fair Trading offers two ways to lodge. One is its online licensing portal. The other is the paper form titled "Application for a property industry licence", handed in at an Office of Fair Trading counter or posted to the Industry Licensing Unit in Brisbane.

On identity, the regulator's page names the documents it accepts: a birth certificate or extract, a driver licence, a passport or a citizenship certificate. Someone lodging in person shows originals. Someone lodging any other way sends certified copies, and the page says who may certify them: a Justice of the Peace, a Commissioner for Declarations, a solicitor, a barrister or a notary public.

Three groups have something extra to supply. An applicant who is not an Australian citizen provides a certified copy of their passport and of the visa showing they may work in Australia. A New Zealand citizen or passport holder provides a criminal history document from the New Zealand Ministry of Justice, which the regulator's page says is free and can take up to 20 working days, a delay worth starting early. And an applicant who will trade from more than one place of business registers every address, with a licensed individual in charge at each.

The page is frank about incomplete files. If something is missing, the office asks for it, and an application that is never completed may be treated as withdrawn. The stated four to six weeks is the time for a complete application.

What the fees are made of

This guide gives no dollar figures, for a simple reason: the amount that counts is the one shown on the Office of Fair Trading's "Fair trading fees" page on the day an application is lodged, and the application page itself sends readers there instead of quoting a price.

The structure is stable and can be described. The Act speaks of prescribed fees, which are set in the Property Occupations Regulation 2014. The Regulation's schedule does not price an auctioneer licence differently from the other categories. It sets one application fee and one licence issue fee for licences generally, with the issue fee depending on two things: whether the applicant is an individual or a corporation, and whether the licence is taken for one year or three. On top of that comes the cost of the criminal history check, which section 29 treats as a separate item.

An applicant is therefore choosing between a smaller payment now with a renewal in a year, and a larger one that covers three years. The same choice returns at every renewal.

Money paid is not always lost if the application goes no further. The regulator's page says a partial refund may be available where an applicant withdraws or the application is refused, and that the criminal history check fee may be refunded if the check has not yet begun.

Companies, partners and the person in charge

An individual licence covers a person. A business that auctions property through a company needs a corporate auctioneer licence, and the Office of Fair Trading's page on that licence shows how the two fit together.

The corporate licence does not replace individual ones. The regulator says the person in charge of each of the company's places of business must hold an individual auctioneer licence, and that any director who works as an auctioneer must hold one too. Suitability is tested across the people behind the company: the page lists the corporation's directors and executive officers among those whose history is examined, with the same bars as for an individual, such as a current disqualification or a serious offence conviction in the past five years.

For someone starting out, the practical reading is that the individual licence comes first whatever shape the business later takes. A sole operator needs it. A partner needs it. An employee who calls auctions for an agency needs it. And a company cannot be licensed without at least one person who already holds it.

Renewal, restoration and stepping away

A licence is issued for the term chosen, and the Office of Fair Trading's page on renewing an auctioneer licence describes what happens as that term runs out.

The office sends a renewal notice four to six weeks before the expiry date. Renewal can be done online, by post or in person. The page is specific that it cannot be done by email or over the telephone. The holder again picks a term of one year or three.

Section 58 of the Act requires the renewal application to be made before the licence expires, and to come with the renewal fee and one of two documents about trust money: an audit report, if the auctioneer operated a trust account during the period, or a statutory declaration that no trust account was operated. Since 6 June 2026 the application also carries a statement that the holder has met the yearly continuing professional development requirement, two approved sessions in each CPD year, or evidence of exceptional circumstances; a licence first issued less than 12 months ago is exempt. The regulator states the same four to six weeks for processing a renewal as for a first application.

A missed date is not the end. Section 61 allows an application for restoration within three months after expiry, with a restoration fee added to the renewal fee. The regulator's page says that if the application arrives within those three months, the auctioneer may keep working while it is processed. Past the three months the position changes completely: the licence has expired, the person must stop working as an auctioneer, and the only way back is a new application.

There is also a way to pause. Section 75 lets a licence holder ask for the licence to be deactivated, and the Office of Fair Trading keeps a separate page on deactivating and reactivating an auctioneer licence.

Where the public can see the licence

Once issued, the licence becomes a public fact. The Office of Fair Trading's page on checking an auctioneer licence, last updated on 2 October 2025, says anyone may search the public register of licensed auctioneers free of charge.

A record shows the licence holder's name, the registered business name and its location, the licence number and class, and the status of the licence. The page lists the statuses a searcher may see: active, expired, refused, cancelled or suspended. A seller choosing an auctioneer, or an agency engaging one for a Saturday, can confirm in a minute that the person holds the licence the Act requires for the work.

The regulator attaches a caution to the free search. It is provided for information and cannot be used as legal evidence. Where a formal record is needed, a paid extract of the register can be requested through the online portal or from the licensing office, and the page says extracts usually arrive within 10 working days.

For the new licence holder, the register is the last step of the path described here. The ten units are completed once, two approved CPD sessions follow in each later year, the suitability test continues for as long as the licence is held, the renewal date comes round every one or three years, and through all of it the entry on the register is what tells a seller that the person about to open the bidding is entitled to do so.

In Queensland the right to say "sold" at a property auction comes from one licence, and no amount of experience under another licence replaces it.

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 →