Several offers on one Queensland home: what the agent has to do

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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 home that draws one offer is a negotiation. A home that draws three is a contest, and the agent is the person running it. The seller is waiting for the best result, every buyer wants to know where they stand, and the agent has to keep both promises the law asks of them: work for the seller, and deal honestly with everyone else.

Queensland has no single rule headed "multiple offers". What applies is a mix of conduct standards in the Property Occupations Regulation 2014, the general duty an agent owes the person who appointed them, the Australian Consumer Law, the way a sale contract is formed, and the industry's own guidance, set out in the REIQ Best Practice Guidelines. This guide puts those pieces together from the agent's side of the desk: what has to happen with each offer, how a best-offer round is usually run, why a seller can still switch buyers before contracts are signed, and what buyers can and cannot expect to hear.

REIQ Best Practice Guidelines (version V05.24), Guideline 16; Queensland Government guidance on the contract of sale; Office of Fair Trading table of property industry penalties, updated 1 July 2026.

Whose side the agent is on

Everything in a multiple-offer sale follows from one fact: the selling agent works for the seller. The Queensland Law Handbook puts it simply. The agent is appointed by the seller and owes a duty to that person, while still having ethical obligations to deal fairly with buyers. The Queensland Government's own guidance for sellers goes a step further and says an appointed sales agent is legally required to negotiate the best possible price for the seller.

The appointment itself is in writing, on Form 6 for residential property. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance on property advertising says the vendor's minimum price is recorded on that form, and advertising has to be consistent with it.

The agent cannot change sides halfway through. The Office of Fair Trading lists acting for more than one party to a transaction among the appointment offences, with a maximum penalty of $34,540 for an individual. A selling agent who starts advising one of the competing buyers on how to beat the others is no longer only the seller's agent. Buyers who want someone in their corner appoint their own buyer's agent.

What the conduct standards actually say

The Property Occupations Regulation 2014 sets out conduct standards for licensees and real estate salespersons in Part 5, made under section 235 of the Act. Three of them do most of the work when offers compete.

• Conflict of duty or interest (section 18). An agent must not accept an appointment, or continue to act, where doing so puts the agent's own duty or interests in conflict with the client's. An agent with a personal stake in which buyer wins would need to look hard at this standard.
• Material facts (section 20). An agent appointed to sell must take the reasonable steps a prudent agent would take to find out or verify the facts material to the sale, to avoid error, omission, exaggeration or misrepresentation. The duty applies before listing and afterwards as the occasion arises, which covers a campaign where buyers are asking pointed questions.
• Client's instructions (section 22). An agent must act in accordance with the client's instructions unless that would be contrary to that part of the regulation or otherwise unlawful. The examples given include not offering a property on terms the client has not authorised. The price at which an agent offers to sell must follow the client's written instructions.

What the regulation does not contain is a clause that names offers and says each one must be passed on. The expectation that offers reach the seller rests instead on the agent's duty to the seller and on the industry guidance below. A seller cannot weigh an offer they never hear about, and an agent who quietly filters out a buyer the agent does not favour is making the seller's decision for them.

Passing on each offer to the seller

The REIQ guidelines are the most detailed written account of how this is meant to work in practice. They are best-practice standards that REIQ members are encouraged to adopt, not law, and the REIQ is clear that the Office of Fair Trading is the regulator. They are still the closest thing Queensland agents have to a playbook.

The starting point is Guideline 7: a member must not act, or fail to act, in a way that breaches the fiduciary duty to act in the client's best interests at all times. On offers specifically, Guideline 15 describes what a genuine expression of interest should contain:

1. the purchase price offered;
2. the deposit;
3. whether the buyer needs a finance condition or a building and pest condition;
4. any special conditions the buyer wants;
5. the proposed settlement date.

The same guideline lets an agent decline to pass on an expression of interest that is not genuine, but only where doing so does not breach the duty to act in the client's best interests. That is a narrow door. A vague phone call with no price is not an offer. A low written offer from a real buyer is, and whether it is worth answering is the seller's call.

The list also explains why price alone rarely settles a multiple-offer sale. Two buyers at the same figure can be very different propositions for the seller: one unconditional with a large deposit and a settlement date that suits, the other subject to finance and a building inspection. The agent's job is to lay out every term side by side so the seller compares like with like.

Why offers are put in writing

A spoken offer on a Queensland home binds nobody, and the government's guidance for sellers explains why. A buyer makes a formal offer by signing the sale contract. The seller accepts by signing it too, rejects it by not signing, or makes a counter-offer by altering the contract and signing the changed version. The contract becomes binding once both have signed, and every change has to be initialled by both, whoever proposed it, or the contract may be invalid.

In a contest that matters twice over. Written offers let the agent present the terms accurately to the seller, which the material-facts and instruction standards both point towards. And where buyers have made their offers by signing a contract, the seller can act quickly: the chosen buyer's signed contract is already on the table.

The REIQ guidelines refer to two industry forms for this stage, a Notice of Offer to Purchase and a Multiple Offer Acknowledgement, alongside Guidelines 15 to 17. The guidelines do not make either form compulsory. Where the agent prepares the contract itself, Guideline 17 asks the agent to tell the seller that the agent can facilitate a contract but cannot give legal advice, to recommend the seller get legal advice, and to take care with the particulars: the parties' correct legal details, the property description, the price and its GST treatment, and the disclosure details.

The best-offer round

When more than one buyer is in play, Guideline 16 sets out the process the REIQ recommends, to keep the sale transparent and to protect the agent against claims of unprofessional conduct or breach of fiduciary duty. The REIQ's wording is a best offer by a specified time and date, the round often described as "best and final".

The first four steps come straight from Guideline 16(a). The fifth is the general law of contract formation described above. Nothing in the guideline obliges the seller to accept any of the offers, and nothing obliges the seller to take the highest figure. In its section on digital offer platforms, the REIQ notes that offerors may be told the seller may not accept the highest offer and may negotiate terms with any offeror before accepting.

A deadline is a tool, not a law. The seller can choose to extend it, to go back to two buyers with a counter-offer, or to accept an offer before the deadline if the terms are strong enough. What changes the picture is what buyers were told. If every buyer was told offers close at 5pm on Thursday and the agent then lets one buyer in after the others are locked out, the honesty rules below start to bite.

A formal tender is the more structured version of the same idea. The Queensland Government describes a sale by tender as one where buyers submit tenders by a closing date and the seller then reviews them, choosing the best one or rejecting them all. The government's guidance says the agent recommends a method of sale based on the property, its location, market conditions and how quickly the seller needs to sell.

Honesty with the buyers who miss out

The agent's duty runs to the seller, but that does not license anything in dealings with buyers. The Australian Consumer Law makes a false or misleading representation about the sale of land an offence. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance on property advertising gives the maximum penalties: up to $2.5 million per breach for an individual, and for a corporation the greatest of $100 million, three times the benefit received or, where the benefit cannot be calculated, 30 per cent of annual turnover during the breach period.

The REIQ guidelines apply the same principle to a contested sale. Guideline 16(b) says an agent must not engage in deceptive and misleading conduct, and gives as an example inducing a buyer to raise an offer by telling them about another offer, whether that offer exists or not. Guideline 14 asks sales agents to deal with prospective buyers professionally, in good faith and honestly, and to avoid excessive sales tactics or pressure that pushes a buyer into a decision under duress, such as signing on the promise that a concern can be fixed after contract or waiving a condition.

Pricing is part of the same picture. The Office of Fair Trading says an offers-over price should be the lowest amount the seller will accept, and that setting a price the agent knows the seller will not accept is false advertising, which it calls bait advertising. Its example is precise: if Form 6 records $500,000 and the advertisement invites offers over $475,000, the advertisement is misleading. The REIQ adds that an offers-over figure may be seen as bait advertising if substantially higher offers are received, and that a price range may be misleading if the seller would not accept the lower figure.

What a buyer can expect to be told

Buyers in a multiple-offer sale often feel they are bidding blind. Some of that is the nature of private treaty, and some of it is the seller's choice. In its guidance on digital offer platforms, the REIQ notes that in a private treaty sale, offer amounts may be disclosed to other offerors, subject to the client's instructions. Whether the figures are shared is therefore the seller's decision, not the buyer's right.

The line between the two columns is the line between confidentiality and deception. An agent may decline to say what another buyer offered. An agent may not say a higher offer is on the table when it is not, or claim the seller has accepted another offer to pressure a buyer upwards. Questions about the property itself are a different matter: section 20 of the regulation asks the agent to verify the facts material to the sale to avoid exaggeration or misrepresentation, and the REIQ's Guideline 18 asks agents to disclose material facts that may affect a buyer's decision to purchase.

Identity is the other thing every buyer should expect to be asked about. In its section on digital offer platforms, the REIQ notes that buyers' identities must be verified before a contract of sale is entered into, and that an agent should obtain written authority where someone else places an offer on a buyer's behalf.

Gazumping, and why it is legal before contracts

Gazumping is the moment a buyer who thought they had the home learns the seller has signed with someone else at a higher price. Canstar's August 2026 guide describes it as the seller accepting a rival's higher offer before contracts are exchanged, and notes that the buyer who misses out generally has no right to recover the costs already spent.

This is why gazumping is lawful rather than a breach. There is no contract to break. What can make it unlawful is the way it is done. An agent who told a buyer the home was "off the market" or "yours" to stop them looking elsewhere, while still taking offers, risks a misleading representation. An agent who strings two buyers along with invented deadlines is in the territory REIQ Guideline 16(b) warns against.

For the agent, the practical point is to say plainly where the sale stands. "The seller has agreed in principle, but nothing is binding until the contract is signed by both" is accurate. "It's done, you've got it" is not, until the signatures are on the page.

For buyers, the protections are timing and preparation rather than a legal shield. Canstar's guide suggests having finance pre-approval and inspections ready, so the window between agreement and signed contract is as short as possible, and having a solicitor look at the contract before signing.

After one contract is signed

Once both parties have signed, the dynamic flips. The seller is bound. The buyer, in most private treaty sales, is not yet fully bound, because the five-business-day cooling-off period now runs in the buyer's favour only.

The Office of Fair Trading's guidance sets out how it works. The period starts on the day the buyer receives a copy of the contract signed by both parties and ends at 5pm on the fifth business day. A buyer who terminates in that time must give written notice, and the seller may keep a termination penalty of up to 0.25 per cent of the purchase price from the deposit, with the rest refunded within 14 days. The buyer can waive or shorten the period in writing. It does not apply to auction sales, among other exceptions.

For an agent who has just run a contested sale, this is the uncomfortable stretch. The losing buyers may still be keen, and a signed contract is not yet a certain sale. The REIQ's Guideline 25 deals with negotiations once a contract exists. If either party tries to renegotiate a signed contract, the agent should refer them to their legal representatives to formalise it, and if the agent does take part, the agent should warn the parties that agreements made through the agent may not be binding until the lawyers formalise them. The guidelines do not set a separate procedure for offers that arrive after a contract is signed, so how they are handled turns on the contract's own terms and the seller's legal advice.

Where a dispute goes

Most multiple-offer disagreements are about expectations, not law: a buyer who expected a second chance, or a seller who expected a higher number. Where something has gone wrong, the routes are the same as for any complaint about an agent.

The Queensland Government's guidance for sellers sets out three steps: raise the complaint in writing with the agent; if that fails and the agent is a member, take it to the REIQ; and if it is still unresolved, make a formal complaint to the Office of Fair Trading, which may also open the way to a claim for financial loss. A buyer who believes a representation about the sale was false or misleading is in Australian Consumer Law territory, which the Office of Fair Trading's property advertising guidance describes.

In a contest for one home, the agent can keep a buyer's offer confidential, but never invent one. That single line separates sharp negotiating from misleading conduct.

The agent's checklist, in short

Pulled together, the rules and guidance give a clear sequence for an agent handling several buyers at once:

• confirm the seller's written price instructions on Form 6 before the campaign, and advertise in line with them;
• check for any conflict of interest with a buyer, and step back if one exists;
• take every genuine offer in writing, with price, deposit, conditions and settlement date;
• tell every interested buyer when offers are competing, and give them the same deadline;
• present every genuine offer to the seller together, with the terms laid out side by side;
• share other buyers' figures only on the seller's instructions, and never invent or inflate one;
• verify buyers' identities before any contract is signed;
• tell buyers plainly that nothing binds until both parties have signed.

None of this guarantees the seller the price they hoped for, or every buyer a fair shot by their own measure. It does mean the seller decides with full information, and every buyer who walks away does so having been told the truth.

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.

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