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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →The fee charged to buyers and sellers for completing a property transfer online would fall by more than a third under draft recommendations published on Friday 3 July 2026 by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal of New South Wales. IPART's fact sheet proposes that the fee PEXA charges for a transfer of a single title with settlement drop from $146.30 to $92.71, including GST, from 1 July 2027.
The tribunal is a New South Wales body, but its review covers the whole country. Its draft report says the state government commissioned the work on behalf of the other Australian jurisdictions, represented by the Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council, and one of its recommendations is that fees be the same in every state and territory. In Queensland, where Titles Queensland says electronic conveyancing has been mandatory for most transactions since February 2023, the fee is part of the cost of nearly every home sale.
IPART, draft report and fact sheet on electronic lodgment network operator service fees, 3 July 2026.
What the draft proposes
Electronic lodgment network operators, or ELNOs, run the online systems on which property documents are signed, settlement money is paid and transfers are lodged with a land registry. Each participant in a transaction pays the operator a fee for each document it lodges. IPART was asked whether those fees should continue to be regulated, and how.
Its draft answer has six main parts. Regulation should continue, but for PEXA only. It should extend to ancillary services closely linked to transactions. Fees should be nationally consistent. They should be set from PEXA's actual costs using what regulators call a building block method. The new prices should run for four years, with a review before 1 July 2031. And the regulator should set individual fees for each kind of transaction, instead of capping an average.
Related readPEXA disputes the sums behind lower settlement fees at public hearingThe practical result is a cut concentrated on transfers. IPART's fact sheet shows the two transfer fees paid at a settlement falling by about a third, and the other common fees staying where they are in real terms.
| Transaction | Current | Proposed | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer with settlement, single title | $146.30 | $92.71 | -36.6% |
| Transfer with settlement, multiple titles | $167.42 | $111.96 | -33.1% |
| Mortgage with settlement, single title | $73.04 | $73.04 | None |
| Discharge with settlement, single title | $54.01 | $54.01 | None |
| Caveat, single title | $20.57 | $20.57 | None |
IPART fact sheet, draft recommendations for ELNO service fees, 3 July 2026. Current figures are the New South Wales schedule. Fees would continue to be adjusted for inflation from 1 July 2027.
Transfers that do not involve a financial settlement would also fall, by less. The draft report gives a proposed fee of $81.71 for a single title, against $97.24 now, which is a reduction of about 16 per cent. Across all transfer types the report describes first-year reductions of between 14.6 and 36.6 per cent.
Tribunal member Sharon Henrick explained the focus on transfers in the media release. PEXA's transfer fees are its highest, she said, and "they do not appear to be aligned with the costs of providing the transfer services."
What a typical sale costs
IPART's draft report builds an example around the most common kind of transaction: a sale with four participants, being a seller, a buyer and a lender on each side.
At the current New South Wales fees, the seller's representative and the buyer's representative each pay $146.30 for the transfer. The incoming lender pays $73.04 for its new mortgage, and the outgoing lender pays $54.01 to discharge the old one. The report puts the total at about $419.65.
Applying the proposed transfer fee to the same example gives two transfer fees of $92.71, with the mortgage and discharge fees unchanged, for a total of $312.47. That is $107.18 less, a fall of about 26 per cent for the transaction as a whole. The calculation is this magazine's, from IPART's published figures, and it leaves out the inflation adjustment that would apply from 1 July 2027.
Related readPEXA counts 2.67 million property transfers in a year, expects fewerThe saving is split evenly between the two sides. Each party to the sale would pay $53.59 less than now for its transfer.
Why Queensland sales are covered
Three features of the draft tie it to Queensland.
The first is the national brief. The report says the review was undertaken for all jurisdictions through the registrars' council, known as ARNECC, which noted the publication of the draft on the day it was released.
The second is the recommendation on consistency. The report records that since 18 May 2026 PEXA has run eight pricing schedules, one for each jurisdiction. These pass on a fee of about $1.10 a transaction, plus GST, charged for the national data standards that the system relies on, in every state and territory except New South Wales, together with revenue office fees in Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania. A Queensland transaction therefore costs slightly more than the New South Wales figures in the table. IPART's fact sheet proposes that prices in all states and territories be brought into line by 2027-28.
The third is the mandate itself. Titles Queensland lists nine instruments that professionals must lodge electronically, including the transfer, the release of mortgage and the national mortgage form. For those documents there is no paper alternative in an ordinary sale, which is why the level of the fee is a matter of regulation and not of shopping around.
How the tribunal reached its figures
The draft rests on a finding about the market. The report says PEXA completed 3.95 million electronic conveyancing transactions in Australia in 2024-25, about 99 per cent of the electronic market and about 90 per cent of all conveyancing once paper transactions are counted. The other approved operator, Sympli, completed about 33,900. Ms Henrick said in the media release that the tribunal had found little evidence that the smaller operator constrains the larger one's prices.
Related readThe pre-settlement inspection in Queensland: what a buyer may checkThe report also traces the growth of the business. PEXA's transaction numbers rose by about 393 per cent between 2017-18 and 2024-25. Fees have been capped since 1 July 2019: under the national operating requirements an operator may raise its published fees once a year by no more than the change in the consumer price index, an arrangement that runs to 30 June 2027. With prices flat in real terms, the report says, revenue and earnings have grown in line with volumes.
From there the tribunal turned to costs. It concluded that at current fees and volumes PEXA is earning revenue above the level needed to recover its costs and earn a reasonable return on its investment, and that prices would need to fall by about 20 per cent overall. It chose to deliver that reduction through the transfer fees.
On Sympli, the draft recommends no fee regulation at all, on the basis that this would give a small operator more room to rebalance its prices and would lower its regulatory burden.
PEXA's response
PEXA responded on the same day in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange, as reported by The Motley Fool Australia. The company said the draft would reduce its regulated revenue by about 20 per cent, which it estimated at about $70 million. It noted that current fees remain in place through the 2026-27 financial year and that the proposals were still at a draft stage and open to public consultation.
The company's main request concerns timing. Where the draft would introduce the new fees in a single step on 1 July 2027, PEXA is asking for the reduction to be phased in over four years.
Related readPriority notices: how a Queensland buyer's place on the title is heldWho would see the saving
Whether a lower fee reaches buyers and sellers depends on how it is charged to them. The standard Queensland contract, published by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland and the Queensland Law Society, says in clause 5.2 that each party must pay its own fees and charges for using the electronic system. In practice the fee is paid by the solicitor or conveyancer who lodges the document and appears on the client's bill as an outlay.
On that footing, a buyer and a seller would each see the transfer fee on their bill fall by about $54 if the draft became final and the reduction were passed through at cost. The fees paid by lenders for mortgages and discharges would not change, so any fee a lender charges a borrower for those steps has no reason to move.
The sum is small beside the other costs of a sale. Its significance is that it is one of the few costs a buyer or seller cannot avoid or negotiate.
Nothing changes for sales settling this year
The figures are draft recommendations. Current fees apply until 30 June 2027, and any new fees would start on 1 July 2027 only if the final report keeps them and governments adopt it.
What comes next
IPART will hold an online public hearing on Tuesday 21 July 2026 and is accepting written submissions until Friday 14 August. Its final report is due to the New South Wales Government and ARNECC by 30 September 2026.
The decision on what to do with the report then rests with governments and registrars. The review comes at a turning point for the regulation of electronic conveyancing: in March, state and territory ministers endorsed ARNECC's recommendation not to proceed for now with the reform that would have let the two operators' systems work together, and ARNECC is consulting until 17 July on a tighter set of operating rules. Price regulation is the remaining piece. The draft suggests it will be firmer than the inflation cap that has applied for the past seven years.
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.
