Top fine for most Queensland agent offences is now $34,540

In this article

Written by

Kooky

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

About Kooky and Shaka →

The Office of Fair Trading's list of breaches and penalties for the property industry was updated on 1 July 2026, and the figure that appears most often on it is $34,540. That is the maximum fine an individual faces for a long run of offences under Queensland's property agent laws, from acting for a client without a written appointment to working without a licence.

The update coincides with a new value for the penalty unit, the building block of almost every fine in Queensland law. The Queensland Government's page on sentencing fines and penalties gives the value as $172.70, current from 1 July 2026. The amounts on the Fair Trading list are multiples of that unit. This article sets out what the list now says, how the dollar figures are derived and where the list fits in the regulator's wider set of tools.

Queensland Government, sentencing fines and penalties page, and Office of Fair Trading, property industry breaches and penalties page, updated 1 July 2026.

How a penalty unit becomes a dollar figure

Queensland Acts rarely state a fine in dollars. They state a number of penalty units, and a separate figure, set by the government, says what one unit is worth. When the unit changes, every maximum fine in the statute book moves with it, without Parliament amending each Act.

With the unit at $172.70, the Fair Trading list can be read backwards. The $34,540 that recurs through it equals 200 penalty units, since 200 multiplied by $172.70 is $34,540. The $17,270 that applies to several licence offences is 100 units. The $8,635 listed for refusing to give an inspector identification details is 50 units, and the $172,700 attached to the most serious trust account offence is 1,000 units.

These are maximums. A court that convicts a person decides the actual fine within the ceiling, and the list itself notes that the figures are for individuals. Corporations, it says, could face up to five times the maximum. Five times $34,540 is $172,700, which is the figure the list gives for a corporation that operates premises without a licensed person in charge.

What the list says, offence by offence

The Office of Fair Trading arranges the offences by the part of an agent's work they relate to. The table below gathers the main groups as the page presents them on 1 July 2026.

The appointment group has four offences at $34,540 each, the page shows, including acting for a client without a written appointment and failing to explain the terms of an exclusive agency. The commission group covers calculating commission on a figure above the real sale price and claiming a commission that has not been earned.

Audit offences sit in a group of their own. Failing to lodge a final audit report within two months of ceasing to be a principal licensee is listed at $34,540 or two years' imprisonment. The premises offence, operating an office without a licensed person in charge, is $34,540 for an individual and $172,700 for a corporation. Offences about a substitute licensee, the person appointed to stand in when a principal is away, range from $17,270 to $34,540.

Why trust money carries the heaviest penalties

The one place where the list leaves the $34,540 ceiling behind is trust accounting. Wrongly converting trust money, which means treating money held for a client as the agent's own, carries $172,700 or five years' imprisonment. Using trust money in a way that was not authorised carries $34,540 or two years.

The reason is the nature of the money. A deposit paid on a house, or rent collected for an owner, never belongs to the agency. It sits in a trust account until the law or the contract says who is entitled to it. Queensland's rules therefore surround it with yearly audits, reporting duties and a claim fund that can compensate a person who loses money through an agent's breach.

The Office of Fair Trading's court outcomes register, which lists the results of its prosecutions, shows how far the courts can go in the worst cases. In March 2026 the Brisbane District Court sentenced a real estate agent to four and a half years' imprisonment, suspended after eight months, on three counts of aggravated fraud, the register records. Cases of that kind are prosecuted as fraud under the criminal law as well as under the licensing Act.

Unlicensed work and what else it costs

Working as a property agent without a licence is listed at $34,540 or two years' imprisonment. The most recent property entry on the court outcomes register shows the offence at the other end of the scale: on 27 May 2026 the Brisbane Magistrates Court fined a short-term letting manager $5,000 for acting as a property agent without a licence.

The fine is not the only consequence. An article published by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland and written by a partner of Carter Newell Lawyers explains that, under section 89 of the Property Occupations Act 2014, a person who is not appropriately licensed cannot sue for a commission or keep one. The article cites a Queensland Court of Appeal decision of 2008 in which an unlicensed intermediary was ordered to refund $121,000 in commissions already paid, although the sales it had introduced went through.

A licensed agent can run into the same provisions by letting a licence lapse. The Office of Fair Trading's renewal guidance says a holder must renew before the expiry date and has three months afterwards to apply for restoration. Past that point the licence has ended, and a person who keeps trading is unlicensed in the eyes of the law.

Advertising sits under a different, larger regime

One page updated on the same day points to penalties of another order altogether. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance on property advertising, also dated 1 July 2026, says that giving buyers a false impression of the price a seller will accept is bait advertising, and that setting a price knowing the vendor will not sell at that figure is prohibited.

Those breaches fall under the Australian Consumer Law, a national law, and its maximums are not built from Queensland penalty units. The page gives them as up to $2.5 million per breach for an individual and, for a corporation, the greatest of $100 million, three times the benefit obtained or 30 per cent of turnover during the period of the breach.

The same page ties price advertising to the appointment form. The price an agent advertises has to be consistent with what the seller recorded on the Form 6 appointment, and the guidance says an agent who knowingly allows inaccurate details onto that form is making a false or misleading representation.

What the regulator does short of a prosecution

A fine imposed by a court is the last step on a longer path, and the Fair Trading page says so itself. It refers to enforceable undertakings as an alternative to court proceedings. An undertaking is a legally binding agreement in which a business commits to stop a practice or to put something right, and it can be enforced in court if it is broken.

Other tools sit in the licensing system. The Office of Fair Trading's page on ending a licence says a licence may be suspended where it was obtained with materially incorrect or misleading information, where trust account irregularities are suspected, where audit reports have not been filed, where a receiver has been appointed or where property legislation has been breached. A suspension can last up to 28 days, the page says, and can continue indefinitely where an audit report is outstanding.

Cancellation is automatic in a narrower set of cases: conviction of a serious offence, personal bankruptcy or insolvency, or the winding up of a corporate licensee. A serious offence is defined on the same page as one punishable by three or more years' imprisonment, including fraud, violence and drug trafficking. The regulator can also attach conditions to a licence that limit what its holder may do.

Who the figures concern

For the great majority of agents, salespeople and property managers, the list is a reference they will never meet in a courtroom. Its practical value is as a map of what the law treats as the core duties of the job: a written appointment before any work starts, commission calculated on the true price, a licence kept current, an office with a licensed person in charge, cooperation with inspectors, disclosure of any personal interest in a sale and, above all, the separation of clients' money from the agency's own.

For principals, the list is also a guide to where corporate exposure is greatest. A company that holds a corporate licence faces up to five times the individual figure, which puts the common maximum at $172,700 for the corporation alongside the $34,540 that can apply to the individual.

For consumers, the figures show what stands behind the paperwork an agent asks them to sign. The appointment form, the disclosure of benefits and the trust receipt each correspond to an offence on the list if they are skipped.

The amounts stay in force for as long as the penalty unit stays at $172.70. The Queensland Government page describes that value as current from 1 July 2026 and gives no end date for 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 →