QCAT and property disputes: what the tribunal hears, and its limits

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Kooky

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"Take it to QCAT" is one of the most repeated sentences in Queensland property. A tenant hears it about a bond, an owner about a builder, a neighbour about a fence, a unit owner about a caretaking contract, an agent about a licence decision. The sentence is often right, and often incomplete: for most property disputes the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal is the second stop, not the first, and for some it is not a stop at all.

This guide maps the tribunal as it stands in October 2026, from its own pages and the legislation behind them: which property matters it hears, which body has to be tried first, the money limits, the fees that applied from 1 July 2026, the deadlines, and what happens between an application and an order that can be enforced.

QCAT case-type and appeal pages, read 9 October 2026; QCAT Annual Report 2024-25.

A tribunal with borrowed powers

QCAT describes itself as an independent tribunal that resolves disputes in a way that is accessible, quick and inexpensive. It opened on 1 December 2009, when 18 tribunals and 23 jurisdictions were folded into one body, and it sits within the courts and tribunals division of the Department of Justice. The annual report for 2024-25 counts 28,588 cases lodged in the year and 28,060 finalised.

The point that matters for a property dispute is on almost every page of the tribunal's website: the description of what it can hear is general information, and the relevant legislation decides its jurisdiction. QCAT has no general power to settle any argument put to it. Each kind of matter arrives through a specific Act, such as the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008, the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991 or the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997, and each Act sets its own conditions, limits and deadlines.

The tribunal's own Act sets the style. Under section 28 of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal Act 2009, QCAT is not bound by the rules of evidence or by the practices of the courts, and section 13 tells it to make orders it considers fair and equitable in a minor civil dispute.

Where each property dispute starts

Most property matters have a compulsory or expected step before the tribunal. The table sets out the first stop for each, and the limit on what QCAT can then decide.

Where a specialist regulator exists, the law sends the parties to it first, and the tribunal wants proof that this happened. The $25,000 figure belongs to one class of matter only, the minor civil dispute, which the 2024-25 annual report describes as a claim of $25,000 or under. It is not a general cap on what QCAT may award.

Tenancy: urgent, or conciliation first

Residential tenancy is the tribunal's busiest property list by a wide margin. The annual report for 2024-25 counts minor civil disputes in two ways. Its table of outcomes by jurisdiction gives 12,569 lodgements, a figure that leaves out applications dealt with by Magistrates Courts outside South East Queensland. Its statewide table, covering Brisbane and the Magistrates Courts, gives 17,668. Of those 17,668, 6,112 were urgent tenancy applications and 4,344 non-urgent ones. Together that is 10,456 matters, about 59 per cent of the statewide count.

The split between urgent and non-urgent decides the route. QCAT's tenancy page lists as urgent, among others: applications to end a tenancy for repeated breaches, hardship, objectionable behaviour or damage, emergency repairs, entry disputes, retaliatory action, abandoned premises and goods, tenancy database listings and domestic violence matters. These go straight to the tribunal.

Non-urgent matters must first go through the Residential Tenancies Authority's free dispute resolution service. The list includes bond disputes, general disputes between the parties, routine repair orders, pets, misrepresentation, breach of a conciliation agreement and, since 1 May 2025, disputes about attaching fixtures or making structural changes. If conciliation fails, or the Authority considers the dispute unsuitable for it, the Authority issues a Notice of Unresolved Dispute. That notice has to be attached to the QCAT application, which is made on Form 2.

The tribunal can decide tenancy claims up to $25,000, excluding interest. Larger claims go to the courts.

Building work: the QBCC letter comes first

For a dispute about building work, the Queensland Building and Construction Commission calls its own complaint process a mandatory first step. The Commission assesses whether the matter is eligible for its dispute resolution service. If it is not, or if the process ends without a result, the Commission sends a letter saying so. QCAT's building page is direct about what follows: without that letter, the tribunal may refuse the application at the counter or dismiss it later.

The money rules differ from the minor civil list. For domestic building work, which the tribunal's page describes as covering new houses and duplexes, renovations and repairs, kitchens and bathrooms, and associated work such as sheds, fences, pools and landscaping, there is no monetary limit. For commercial building work, QCAT may decide a dispute where the amount in issue is $50,000 or less. Above $50,000, counting either the claim or a counter-claim, it may act only if the parties consent in writing, and the consent must be filed with the application.

A respondent has 14 days from receiving the application to respond. If nothing is filed, the applicant may ask for a decision by default, made on the paperwork without a hearing.

Units, villages and home parks

A unit owner told to go to QCAT has usually been pointed to the wrong counter. The Office of the Commissioner for Body Corporate and Community Management handles most disputes in a community titles scheme: self-resolution first, then conciliation, then adjudication.

What reaches the tribunal is narrower. The Queensland Government's body corporate pages say the Commissioner's office cannot resolve complex disputes, which go to a specialist adjudicator or to QCAT. Under the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 these include an application to adjust the lot entitlement schedule, disputes about a contract engaging a body corporate manager or a caretaking service contractor or authorising a letting agent, the transfer of a letting agent's management rights, and the review of an exclusive use by-law. Except for lot entitlements, where the applicant is a lot owner, QCAT's page says these applications may be brought only by or against a body corporate, a body corporate manager, a caretaking service contractor, a letting agent or a service contractor.

The second route is the appeal. An adjudicator's order can be taken to the QCAT Appeal Tribunal, on a question of law only. It is not a second hearing of the facts. The Queensland Government's adjudication page gives six weeks from the date of the order to start it, unless the tribunal allows longer.

Retirement villages follow three steps set out on the tribunal's page. The resident or operator writes to the other side naming the dispute and proposing a meeting, with at least 14 days' notice, and the other side must answer in writing within seven days. If that fails, either can apply to QCAT for mediation. If mediation produces no agreement, or the dispute is not settled within four months of referral, a second application starts a hearing. Some matters, a threat to remove a resident among them, can skip the first two steps. For manufactured home parks, the tribunal lists site rent, utility costs, special terms, park maintenance, the ending of site agreements and changes to park rules.

Fences and trees

Both sit under the Neighbourhood Disputes (Dividing Fences and Trees) Act 2011, and both begin on the boundary, not in the registry.

For a fence, the owner who wants work done serves a notice to contribute on the neighbour, describing the boundary, the kind of fence, the estimated cost and the share sought, with at least one written quote. If the neighbours have not agreed within one month of the notice, either may apply to QCAT within two months of it. Fence claims are minor civil disputes, capped at $25,000, except where the fence forms part of a pool barrier, where the tribunal's page says the amount is unlimited. Retaining walls are not fences under the Act.

For a tree, QCAT must be satisfied that the applicant made a reasonable effort to reach agreement with the tree-keeper. It can then order maintenance, compensation for damage or, where nothing else will do, removal. Its page lists the limits: it has no power over trees on rural land or on land of more than four hectares, in council parks or community reserves, or planted for commercial purposes or as a condition of a development approval. A tenant has to ask the owner to apply, and in a unit complex the applicant is the body corporate, not the lot owner.

Two details matter in a sale. The tribunal may appoint an arborist as a tree assessor, at a cost its page puts at $1,200. And an order stays in force for 10 years unless the tribunal decides it has been satisfied, and is listed on a public register. A seller must give the buyer a copy of any application or order, and responsibility for the order passes to the buyer when the property transfers.

Agents: claim fund, discipline, licences

Three kinds of agent matter reach QCAT, and none of them starts with a member of the public filing an application against an agent.

Claims on the claim fund under the Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 go to the Office of Fair Trading. QCAT's page on property agents says so in terms: only the Office deals with a financial claim in the first instance. The tribunal comes in for three things: complex claims the chief executive refers to it under section 95, reviews of the Office's decisions, and requests to extend the time to claim. The time limit, as the tribunal's page states it, is the earlier of one year after the person became aware of the loss or three years after the event that caused it.

Disciplinary proceedings work the same way. Only the chief executive can refer a licensee or a registered employee to the tribunal, after the Office has investigated a complaint. Where the grounds are made out, the orders listed on QCAT's page are a reprimand, a fine, compensation to a person who suffered loss, conditions on a licence, suspension, cancellation and disqualification from holding a licence or registration certificate.

The third kind runs the other way. An applicant or licensee who disagrees with a licensing or registration decision can ask the tribunal to review it. QCAT then takes a fresh look at the evidence and may confirm, vary or replace the decision, or send it back.

What stays with the courts

Section 9 of the QCAT Act confines it to the matters it is empowered to deal with under that Act or an enabling Act, which makes its list of case types the practical test. The list has entries for tenancy, building, community living, fences and trees, consumer and trader claims, minor debts and reviews of government decisions. It has no entry for a dispute about who owns land, for a caveat lodged on a title, or for a contest between a buyer and a seller over a contract of sale.

The body corporate system draws a similar line. The Queensland Government's adjudication page lists questions of title among the matters an adjudicator cannot resolve, and sends the decision to terminate a scheme to the District Court. A civil claim that no Act sends to the tribunal is a matter for the courts, in the tier that matches the amount at stake: Queensland Courts gives the Magistrates Court disputes of up to $150,000, the District Court those between $150,000 and $750,000 and the Supreme Court those above $750,000.

The minor debt list is the nearest the tribunal comes to general money claims. It covers a fixed or agreed sum of up to and including $25,000 owed by a person, business or company. Whether a particular sum arising from a sale or an agency agreement fits that description depends on the facts, and registry staff, by the tribunal's own account, cannot say which category a claim belongs in or give legal advice.

Fees from 1 July 2026

QCAT's fees rise each 1 July. The current schedule, on a page last updated on 1 July 2026, reflects an increase of 3.4 per cent under the Government's indexation policy.

Most reviews of government decisions, licensing decisions among them, carry the same $405.60 application fee. A counter-application costs the same as a new matter of its type. A retirement village dispute can involve two fees, one for mediation and one for the hearing that follows if mediation fails.

A person on a full Centrelink or Veterans' Affairs pension or benefit, a person under 18, a protected person under a current domestic violence order or a person with a grant of legal aid can apply for the application fee to be waived, and pays a reduced fee of $113.30 on an appeal. A health care card does not qualify, and companies and other organisations cannot seek a waiver.

Deadlines that close the door

Each enabling Act sets its own clock, and the shortest ones are in tenancy.

Some limits can be extended. Under section 33 of the QCAT Act, a review application must be filed within 28 days after the relevant day, usually the day the applicant is notified of the decision. Section 61 allows the tribunal to extend a time limit for starting a proceeding, unless that would cause another party prejudice that an order could not repair. For a claim fund decision, QCAT's property agents page says the tribunal can extend the time for review only if the application is made within 42 days after notice of the decision.

From application to enforcement

Outside the minor civil list, a matter moves through the stages QCAT sets out on its civil process pages.

Minor civil disputes run on a shorter track. Fence claims under $1,500 are listed for hearing without mediation, and larger ones go to mediation first. In Brisbane, minor civil disputes are heard by adjudicators. In regional and rural Queensland they are heard by magistrates sitting as tribunal members, at the local courthouse.

Representation is the reverse of a court. Section 43 of the QCAT Act states that its main purpose is to have parties represent themselves unless the interests of justice require otherwise. A child, a person with impaired capacity and a party to disciplinary proceedings may be represented as of right. Anyone else applies for leave on Form 56, and the tribunal may agree where the matter is likely to involve complex questions of fact or law, where another party is already represented, or where all parties consent.

On costs, section 100 of the QCAT Act, as the Appeal Tribunal quotes it in its published decisions, says each party to a proceeding must bear its own costs, and section 102 allows a costs order only where the tribunal considers the interests of justice require it. In a minor civil dispute, the Appeal Tribunal has described the tribunal's rules as limiting any costs to the filing fee. The tribunal's own pages add that a party who fails to share evidence or causes delay risks a costs order.

QCAT publishes the time within which about three quarters of matters in each list were finalised over the previous twelve months. The figures below are those stated as at 16 March 2026; the remaining quarter of matters took longer.

An urgent tenancy matter is a question of weeks; a building or tree dispute is closer to two years, and reviews of government decisions sat at 99 weeks on the same page. The annual report shows the queue behind those figures: 15,006 cases were pending at 30 June 2025, 29 per cent more than a year earlier, even with a clearance rate of 98 per cent. The pending count leaves out minor civil dispute applications received by Magistrates Courts.

A decision binds the parties once delivered, and a party may ask for written reasons within 14 days. If the other side does not comply, enforcement is decided in the courts, not in the tribunal. Queensland Courts explains that a QCAT order must first be entered as a judgment in the relevant court. The successful party files a copy of the order with an affidavit obtained from the court registry, and once filed the decision is taken to be an order of that court and can be enforced in the same ways. Which court depends on whether the order is for money or for something else, such as rectifying building work. A warrant of possession after a tenancy termination order is carried out by police.

Appeals are narrow by design. Under section 142 of the QCAT Act, as the Appeal Tribunal sets it out in its published decisions, a decision in a minor civil dispute can be appealed only with the tribunal's leave. Section 143 allows 28 days, counted from notice of the decision or, where written reasons were requested, from the day they are given. Filing an appeal does not suspend the decision: that takes a separate order, called a stay.

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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