Property searches in a Queensland purchase: a map of who holds what

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Kooky

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

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Somewhere in every conveyancing quote there is a line called "searches", with a dollar figure beside it that the buyer did not expect and cannot easily judge. It is usually the least explained part of the bill. It is also the part of the lawyer's work that most resembles detective work: a series of questions put to public registers, each chosen because the answer could alter what the buyer is getting, what the buyer pays, or whether the buyer goes ahead at all.

No single office in Queensland holds the full story of a parcel of land. Ownership sits in one register, rates with the council, land tax with the revenue office, road plans with a state department, contamination with another, and the seller's own financial standing with courts and a federal agency. A conveyancing lawyer's skill lies less in knowing how to order a search than in knowing which ones this property and this contract call for.

This guide is the map. It names each common search, the body that holds the record and what a result can change in the transaction. It then looks at how the seller disclosure regime, in force since 1 August 2025, has moved several of those answers to the front of the process. It draws mainly on the Queensland Law Handbook's chapter on searches, last updated on 18 March 2022, and on the Queensland Government's page on the seller disclosure scheme, last updated on 21 July 2025. It does not teach how to read any one result in detail, and it gives no fees: each record-holder sets and revises its own.

The map: who holds which record

The Queensland Law Handbook lists the searches a buyer's lawyer ordinarily considers before settlement. A handful are treated as the core of any purchase. The rest, in the handbook's words, depend on the location and characteristics of the property.

The table gathers the core group. Every row is a different office with a different record.

Beyond that core sit the conditional searches: the environmental registers, rail, electricity networks, building and pool records, company and securities registers, tree orders, heritage, mining tenures and, for anything in a community titles scheme, the body corporate. Each is taken up below.

Time shapes all of it. The handbook notes that the settlement period in a residential contract is usually 30 days, though the parties can agree otherwise, and that a buyer agreeing to a shorter period should allow enough time for search results to arrive. Some registers answer within minutes. Others reply by letter.

Title and plan: the search that is never skipped

The title search is the one the handbook says should be done as soon as possible. It is ordered from Titles Queensland, and it shows the registered owner together with mortgages, easements and other encumbrances registered against the land.

Its first job is identity. The lawyer compares the registered owner with the seller named in the contract, and the lot and plan on the title with the lot and plan in the contract. A mismatch at this point is the kind of problem that is far cheaper to find in week one than on the day of settlement.

Its second job is to show what will have to be dealt with before the buyer becomes owner. A registered mortgage is ordinary: the seller's lender releases it at settlement. An interest the contract did not mention is another matter, and what follows from it depends on the contract's terms.

The handbook pairs the title search with a copy of the registered plan, used to check the boundaries and dimensions of the land. Where real doubt remains about where the boundaries run or whether the buildings sit inside them, the handbook lists a survey as a further step, to identify the boundaries, the area and the location of improvements. A survey is a commission to a surveyor, not a register search, and it is ordered only when something on the plan or on the ground prompts it.

The title search is usually repeated close to settlement. The first tells the lawyer what the land looked like when the contract was signed. The last confirms that nothing has been lodged since.

Council: rates, water and the building file

The local council is the second fixed stop, and it answers several different questions at once.

The rates search shows the current amount and whether it has been paid. Rates run with the land, so the figure feeds straight into the settlement statement, where the year's charge is shared between seller and buyer according to the contract. Where water is billed separately from rates, the lawyer asks for the same information about the water account, and often for a meter reading timed to settlement so the usage can be divided to the day.

The handbook then lists what else a council can supply: the zoning and permitted use of the land, sewerage and drainage plans, any requirement for work to be done, flood history, and records of approvals for improvements already built.

These are not one search but a menu, and here judgement begins. A drainage plan matters a great deal to a buyer planning an extension or a pool, because it shows where pipes cross the lot. Approval records matter where the house plainly has additions: a deck, an enclosed lower level, a carport. For a recently built house in an estate, with nothing added since, a lawyer may reasonably order less.

What a result changes depends on what it shows. An unpaid rates balance is an arithmetic matter, settled out of the seller's proceeds. A notice requiring work, or a structure with no approval on file, raises the question of who bears the cost, and the answer lies in the contract and in what the seller disclosed.

Land tax and the revenue office

Land tax is a state tax, assessed on owners by the Queensland Revenue Office. The handbook lists a land tax search with that office as one of the core searches. It shows whether land tax is owing on the property or confirms that none is payable.

The reason a buyer cares about a tax assessed on somebody else is that the debt relates to the land being bought. The Revenue Office's answer to the question comes in a document it calls a land tax clearance certificate, for which it publishes an application form. The lawyer orders it early enough to act on the result, because an amount outstanding is normally dealt with in the settlement figures so that the buyer takes the land without the seller's tax debt attached to it.

It is one of the few searches where a clear result is itself the product. The certificate is kept on the file as the buyer's record that the question was asked and answered.

Transport and main roads

A road widening planned for a decade from now will not appear on a title search. The record sits with the Department of Transport and Main Roads, and the handbook describes what a search there provides: future development, current proposal and resumption information, and any current proposals or future intentions for roads.

Resumption is the power of a public authority to acquire private land for public works. A search result showing that part of a front yard lies within a future road corridor changes what the buyer is buying, even if nothing happens for years.

Location decides how far the lawyer goes. For a property near a rail corridor, the handbook lists a search with Queensland Rail for proposed railway lines. For land crossed by or close to major power lines, it lists searches with the electricity distributor and with Powerlink. A cul-de-sac house far from any arterial road, rail line or transmission easement may need only the main roads search. A property on a busy road beside a rail line may warrant all three.

The effect of a positive result depends on the contract and on timing. A proposal that the seller was required to disclose and did not is treated differently from one the buyer was told about before signing, which is why this group of searches has been reshaped by the disclosure regime described further on.

Contaminated land and environmental registers

Queensland keeps two registers of land affected by contamination or by activities likely to cause it: the Environmental Management Register and the Contaminated Land Register. Both are kept by the state's environment department, and the handbook lists a search of them among those that depend on the property.

The search reveals whether the lot is listed on either register. A listing can reflect a past use of the site, and it can bring conditions on how the land is used or what must be done before it is redeveloped.

The lawyer's judgement here turns on history. A lot that has always been a house block in a long-established residential street is a different proposition from a house on land that once held a workshop, a fuel depot or market gardens, or a new estate on former rural or industrial land. Older inner suburbs, where small industry and housing sat side by side for a century, are where this search most often earns its fee.

Two more registers sit in the same family. The Queensland Heritage Register, kept by the environment department, shows whether a place is heritage listed, which bears on what an owner may alter. Mining tenure records, published by the Queensland Government, show whether mining or exploration rights exist over the land, a question that matters in mining regions and hardly at all in the suburbs.

Units and townhouses: the body corporate layer

A lot in a community titles scheme comes with a second set of records that a house does not have. The buyer acquires the lot and also a share in the scheme, with its budget, its levies, its rules and its decisions.

The handbook treats body corporate records, and orders made about the scheme, as their own search category. The body corporate, or the manager it employs, holds the records. They show the financial position of the scheme, the levies on the lot and the restrictions that apply to it.

For the lawyer the question is depth. The certificate the body corporate issues about a lot answers the financial questions needed for settlement. A full inspection of the records, often carried out by a specialist searcher who attends and reads the books, goes further: minutes, correspondence, insurance, disputes, building reports. Whether to commission one depends on the scheme. A large or ageing building, a scheme with a lift and a pool, or a buyer stretching to the limit of a budget all point towards the fuller inspection. A duplex with two owners and almost no common property points the other way.

Flood and planning questions

Flood sits oddly among the searches, because it is the question buyers ask first and the one the formal paperwork answers least.

The handbook lists flood history among the information a local council can provide. That is a record of what the council knows about a lot. It is not a forecast, and it is not the same as the mapping councils and the state publish.

The planning questions travel with it. Zoning tells the buyer what the land may be used for. The council's records tell the buyer what has been approved on it. A buyer who intends to live in the house as it stands needs less of this than one who plans to subdivide, build a second dwelling or run a business from the property, and a lawyer told about those plans at the start will order accordingly. One told nothing can only order for the ordinary case.

This is the clearest example of a search whose value depends on the client's instructions. The register is the same for every buyer. The right question to put to it is not.

The seller: courts, bankruptcy and company searches

The searches so far are about the land. The last core group is about the person selling it.

The handbook lists searches of the Supreme Court and District Court registers and of the bankruptcy register. They show whether there are judgments against the seller or whether the seller is bankrupt. The handbook's explanation is brief and precise: these searches will indicate if certain termination rights may be available under the contract.

The reasoning is practical. A buyer about to hand over the purchase price needs to know that the person signing the transfer is in a position to give it, and that nothing in the seller's financial standing stands in the way.

Where the seller is a company, the equivalent search is made with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, whose register records the company's details. The lawyer checks that the company exists, that its name matches the title, and who may sign for it.

One further register matters when goods are part of the sale. The Personal Property Securities Register records security interests over personal property. If the price includes items of value that are not part of the land, a search shows whether a financier has an interest in them that needs to be released.

Two property-specific records round out the list. The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal keeps a register of orders about trees made under the Neighbourhood Disputes (Dividing Fences and Trees) Act 2011. The Queensland Building and Construction Commission holds building records and the pool safety register, which shows the status of any pool on the property.

What seller disclosure now shows before signing

Until 1 August 2025, most of these answers reached a Queensland buyer only after the contract was signed, when the buyer's own lawyer ordered the searches. The seller disclosure scheme under the Property Law Act 2023 changed the order of events. According to the Queensland Government's page on the scheme, a seller must now give the buyer a disclosure statement and prescribed certificates, and several of them are the very documents this guide has been describing.

The government page lists what the statement covers. It includes title details, registered and unregistered encumbrances, and any residential tenancy or rooming agreement. It covers zoning, transport infrastructure notices, resumption notices, listings on the contaminated land and environmental management registers, tree applications and orders, and heritage listing. It covers whether there is a pool, and certain notices under building and planning legislation. The prescribed certificates include a title search and survey plan, a pool safety certificate where one applies, and, for a lot in a community titles scheme, the community management statement and a body corporate certificate.

Read against the map, the effect is clear. The title search, the plan, the transport and resumption notices, the environmental registers, tree orders, heritage and the body corporate certificate now arrive before the buyer commits. The council file, flood and the seller's own solvency do not.

The scheme also carries a consequence. The government page says a buyer may be able to terminate the contract if the disclosure documents were not given, or if they were inaccurate or incomplete in a way that was material and on which the buyer relied. It lists exceptions too, among them sales between related parties and sales above $10 million where the buyer waives disclosure.

How the lawyer decides what to order

Disclosure has not made the buyer's searches redundant. It has changed their purpose. A lawyer acting for a buyer now reads the seller's documents first and then decides what still has to be asked, and when.

Several considerations guide the middle step.

The date on the seller's documents. A search is a snapshot. A certificate obtained when the property was first listed may be months old by the time a contract is signed, and the lawyer weighs whether to refresh it.

The property type. A house, a unit, a vacant block and an acreage property each call for a different set. The handbook's phrase, the location and characteristics of the property, is the working test.

The buyer's plans. Renovation, subdivision, a pool or a home business each add a reason to look harder at council and planning records.

The lender. A buyer borrowing to purchase is not the only party relying on the searches. The lender's requirements can add to the list.

Proportion. Every search costs money and some take time. Ordering everything on every file is not careful practice, only expensive practice. The better approach is to match the searches to the risks this property actually presents, and to tell the client which ones were left out and why.

A search is only as useful as the question behind it. The register never changes for the buyer; the lawyer's choice of what to ask it does.

A buyer reading the searches line in a quote can ask the questions a lawyer would expect: which searches are included, which were considered and left out, which of the seller's documents are being relied on, and which will be repeated before settlement. The answers turn a dollar figure into a short account of how this particular purchase is being checked.

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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