Ruling on settlement network fees slips a month, to 30 October

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Kooky

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The final report of the national review into electronic settlement fees will arrive a month later than planned. In an announcement to the stock exchange on Friday 4 September 2026, PEXA Group said the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal's revised deadline for delivering the report is 30 October 2026. The tribunal's review page and the company's own results announcement a week earlier had both given 30 September.

The report matters to anyone who will buy or sell property in Queensland from the middle of 2027. It will recommend what the operator of the country's main settlement network may charge each party to a transaction, and the draft released in July proposed a cut of more than a third to the fee for a transfer. A month's delay does not change that proposal. It does shorten the time left for the steps that must follow before any new fee can apply.

What changed on 4 September

The announcement is brief. Its title describes a revision of the timeline for the tribunal's review of the service fees of electronic lodgment network operators, the formal name for the businesses that run settlement networks. It gives the new date and restates two facts about the company: that it has facilitated more than 28 million property settlements since 2013, and that 90 per cent of Australian property transfer settlements are processed on its platform.

Nothing in the announcement alters the content of the review. The draft recommendations stand as published, the consultation on them is closed, and the tribunal is now writing its final advice.

Who is reviewing the fees, and for whom

The tribunal, usually called IPART, is the independent pricing regulator of New South Wales. Its draft report explains why a state body is examining a national service: the NSW Government commissioned the review on behalf of the Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council, which brings together the land registrars of every state and territory, Queensland's included. The council writes the operating requirements that every network operator must meet, and those requirements contain the rules on pricing.

The NSW Government's consultation page sets out the three questions the tribunal was asked. Should the fees these operators charge continue to be regulated? If so, by what method or at what level? And how should future adjustments and reviews work?

The answers are advice, not a decision. The draft report says the council will consider the final recommendations and decide whether to amend its operating requirements to put a new pricing structure in place.

What the draft recommends

The draft contains nine recommendations. The first is that regulation should continue for PEXA's transaction fees, because the market is highly concentrated: the tribunal gives the company 99 per cent of electronic conveyancing and 90 per cent of all conveyancing in 2024-25. The same recommendation would lift price regulation from Sympli, the smaller of the two approved operators, which the draft counts at 33,900 transactions that year.

The others deal with method. Fees would be built up from the company's actual costs, an approach regulators call the building block method and use for utilities such as water and electricity networks. They would be set fee by fee, not as an average the company could rebalance. Pricing would remain the same across the country. The regulatory period would run four years, to 30 June 2031. Transfer fees would fall in 2027-28, other fees would rise with the consumer price index, and all fees would then move with that index for the remaining three years. A mechanism to adjust for swings in demand would be considered at the next review.

Behind the recommendations sit six draft decisions on the inputs. The tribunal assumes between 4.24 million and 4.15 million transactions a year, values the starting asset base at $367.6 million, allows operating costs of $164.2 million to $166.1 million a year and capital costs of $35.9 million to $39.1 million, and sets the allowed return at 6.5 per cent a year after tax and inflation. The result is the finding that tribunal member Sharon Henrick put in the media release of 3 July, that the transfer fees "do not appear to be aligned with the costs of providing the transfer services."

The fees, party by party

The draft works through an ordinary sale: a seller with a mortgage to pay out, and a buyer with a new loan. Four parties join the electronic workspace and each is charged its own fee.

On that schedule the four fees add up to $419.65 today. With the transfer fee at $92.71 and the other two unchanged before inflation, they would add up to $312.47, which is $107.18 less. The whole of the difference falls on the two transfer fees: $53.59 each for the buyer and the seller, a reduction of 36.6 per cent. Where a sale covers more than one title the draft proposes a fall from $167.42 to $111.96, 33.1 per cent.

Two cautions apply to reading the table from Queensland. The figures are those the draft publishes for New South Wales, and although the tribunal recommends nationally consistent pricing, a Queensland bill of costs should be read from the practitioner's own disbursement list. And the fees charged to the lenders are theirs to absorb or pass on under their own loan terms, which the review does not cover.

What the operator has said

PEXA has not opposed regulation as such in its public statements. Its argument is about method and pace. The Motley Fool, reporting the company's first response on 3 July, said the company estimated the draft would reduce its revenue by about $70 million and would press for the reduction to be phased in over four years, where the draft proposes one. The company's announcement of 18 August said its submission included independent expert reports offering other ways of assessing the fees and the rate of return of a digital platform.

Its results for the year to 30 June 2026, published on 28 August, show the scale involved. The Australian business earned $345.6 million in revenue, with an average of $80.60 on each transaction, and the announcement summarised the draft as a 20 per cent cut to regulated revenue from the 2028 financial year.

Other submissions were made to the tribunal by the 14 August deadline. This article relies only on the documents it has read, and reports PEXA's position because the company has published it to the market.

Why a month matters to the timetable

The delay is small against a review that will set fees for four years. Its effect is on what happens afterwards.

PEXA told the market on 18 August that once the final report is delivered, the registrars' council would consider it, consult stakeholders and decide its response, and that this could take several months. A report on 30 October, followed by several months of consultation, places the council's decision in the early part of 2027. If the council then changes its operating requirements, each jurisdiction's registrar applies them, and the operators have to rebuild their fee schedules and billing before 1 July.

The council has other changes in train at the same time. A stakeholder briefing dated 17 June 2026 describes a proposed eighth version of the operating requirements, with new obligations on information security, business continuity testing and insurance, on which submissions closed on 17 July. Whether pricing changes would travel with that version or separately is not stated in the documents published so far.

The Queensland position

Queensland's stake in the outcome follows from its rules. Titles Queensland's guidance says that since 20 February 2023 the transfer, the mortgage and the release of mortgage must be lodged through an electronic lodgment network when a solicitor, conveyancer or financial institution is acting, with limited exemptions. A represented buyer or seller therefore pays a network fee as a matter of course.

Queensland also has a seat at the table where the decision is made. Its registrar is a member of the registrars' council, and the state was represented at the ministerial forum of 24 March 2026 at which ministers agreed to set aside the separate program to make the two networks interoperable. With that route to competition closed for now, the price review is the main instrument left for governing what a settlement costs to process.

The next date to watch is 30 October. Until the final report is public, the draft remains the only statement of what the tribunal thinks, and the fees on a settlement statement stay where they are.

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 →