PEXA counts 2.67 million property transfers in a year, expects fewer

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The electronic network that carries most Australian property settlements processed 4.2 million transactions in the year to 30 June 2026, its operator told the stock exchange on 18 August. PEXA Group said 2.67 million of them were transfers of ownership, and that it expects volumes to decline in the current financial year as economic conditions change.

The figures came inside an announcement about something else: the company's formal reply to a review of the fees it is allowed to charge. Both halves matter to anyone settling a sale or purchase in Queensland, where almost every represented transaction has had to be completed electronically since February 2023. The volume figures show how much passes through the system. The fee review will decide what each of those transactions costs from the middle of next year.

PEXA Group announcement to the ASX, 18 August 2026. National figures; the company did not publish a split by state.

What the company told the market

The announcement is titled as a response to the draft report of the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, known as IPART, on the service fees of electronic lodgment network operators. It confirms that PEXA has lodged its submission, supported by independent expert reports the company commissioned, which propose other ways of assessing the fees and the rate of return of a digital platform.

Because the submission contains information the market had not seen, the company released the key numbers at the same time. For the 2026 financial year its Australian exchange handled 4.2 million transactions: 2.67 million transfers, 0.97 million refinances and 0.55 million other transactions. Transfer volumes in July 2026 were approximately 192,000.

The company added two statements about the future. It expects transaction volumes to decline in the 2027 financial year because of changes in the macroeconomic environment. And it said the forecast it gave the tribunal for that year had been redacted from the public version of its submission until its annual results were final. Those results are due on 28 August.

The announcement repeats a figure the company uses to describe its position: 90 per cent of all property transfer settlements in Australia are processed on its platform.

A year of settlements in three parts

The three categories describe different events in the life of a property. A transfer is a change of owner, the transaction a buyer and a seller think of as settlement. A refinance is a change of lender with no change of owner: one mortgage comes off the title and another goes on. The remaining category covers other dealings lodged through the network.

Transfers are close to two-thirds of the total: 2.67 million of the 4.19 million that the three parts add up to, or about 64 per cent. Refinances are a little under a quarter. The balance between the two tends to move with interest rates. When rates change, borrowers shop for a new lender and refinances rise, while the number of homes changing hands responds more slowly and to more things: listings, confidence, borrowing capacity.

The annual total can be set beside the tribunal's own numbers. IPART's draft report, published on 3 July, counts 3.95 million PEXA transactions in 2024-25. Against that base, 4.2 million is an increase of about 6 per cent in a year. The same draft assumes between 4.24 million and 4.15 million billable transactions a year over the period it is setting fees for, a path that is flat to slightly down. PEXA's statement that it expects a decline in the coming year sits at the cautious end of that assumption.

July, and why the company expects a slower year

The one monthly figure in the announcement is the newest: about 192,000 transfers in July 2026. Spread evenly, 2.67 million transfers a year is roughly 222,500 a month, so July ran about 14 per cent below last year's monthly average.

A single month proves little. Settlements follow contracts by several weeks, so July's transfers largely reflect contracts signed in late autumn and early winter, and the calendar has its own rhythm. The company did not compare the month with July 2025, and no conclusion about a trend can be drawn from the announcement alone.

What the company did say is that it expects fewer transactions in the year ahead and that the cause is the wider economy. It gave no number. The annual results on 28 August are the next scheduled occasion on which it could.

For Queensland the announcement offers no separate count. PEXA's statement gives national totals only, so how many of the 2.67 million transfers were Queensland homes is not something this document answers.

The fee review behind the announcement

The reason for the announcement is a review that reaches every settlement in the country. IPART is a New South Wales body, but its draft report says the review was commissioned by the NSW Government on behalf of the Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council, the group of state and territory land registrars that regulates electronic conveyancing nationally. Its draft recommendations are framed for the whole country, including a recommendation that pricing stay nationally consistent.

The draft, released on 3 July, recommends that PEXA's transaction fees continue to be regulated, on the ground that the market is highly concentrated. It proposes to set them from the company's actual costs and to reduce the fees for transfers from 1 July 2027, while most other fees rise only with inflation. The tribunal's media release that day quoted tribunal member Sharon Henrick: "PEXA's transfer fees are its highest fees."

The size of the proposed change is set out in the draft using the 2026-27 fee schedule for New South Wales. The fee for a transfer with financial settlement over a single title would fall from $146.30 to $92.71, a cut of 36.6 per cent. The fees for a mortgage, at $73.04, and for a discharge of mortgage, at $54.01, would move only with the consumer price index. Taken together the draft describes a reduction of about 20 per cent in the revenue the company is allowed to earn from its regulated services. The Motley Fool, reporting the company's first reaction on 3 July, put PEXA's own estimate of the effect at about $70 million of revenue and said the company would argue for the change to be phased in over four years, not one.

The consultation has since run its course. IPART's review page records a public hearing on 21 July attended by more than 110 people, and submissions closed on 14 August. PEXA's announcement four days later confirms its submission is among them.

What it means for a Queensland settlement

Queensland is one of the jurisdictions where the fee matters most directly, because electronic conveyancing is not optional there. Titles Queensland's guidance says that since 20 February 2023, under the Land Title Regulation 2022, industry professionals lodging the main instruments in a sale must do so through an electronic lodgment network. The list includes the transfer, the mortgage and the release of mortgage. The registry names two approved operators, PEXA and Sympli.

In an ordinary sale with a loan on each side, four parties take part in the electronic workspace, and IPART's draft describes each paying its own fee: the seller and the buyer for the transfer, the buyer's lender for the new mortgage, the seller's lender for the discharge. The fees charged to the buyer and the seller are passed on by their solicitors or conveyancers as disbursements, one line among the costs of the transaction. The proposed reduction is to that line. It would not change the registry's own lodgement fees, which are set by Titles Queensland, or any other cost of buying or selling.

Nothing changes yet. The draft is a draft, the current fees remain in place for the whole of 2026-27, and the earliest date on which a new schedule could apply is 1 July 2027. A settlement booked for this spring or summer is charged as it would have been before the review began.

What comes next

Two dates are fixed and one step is open-ended.

The last step is the one that turns a recommendation into a rule. IPART advises; it does not set the fees itself. Its draft report says the registrars' council will consider the final recommendations and decide whether to amend the national operating requirements so that a new pricing structure can begin in 2027-28. PEXA's announcement notes that the timing of that response is uncertain.

For buyers and sellers the practical position is simple. The network carried more transactions than the tribunal counted a year earlier, its operator expects somewhat fewer in the year ahead, and the price of using it is under review with no change possible before the middle of 2027.

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 →