In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →A Queensland law practice no longer chooses how to lodge a transfer. For the documents that make up an ordinary sale, a mortgage or a deceased estate, the choice was removed on 20 February 2023, when the eConveyancing mandate began. From that day a set of named instruments has had to reach the titles register through an electronic lodgment network when a professional or a company lodges them, unless a listed exemption applies.
The rule is short, but its edges are not obvious. It names some instruments and leaves others optional. It binds some lodgers and not others. It has exemptions that depend on who the parties are, on what the software can do and, in one case, on whether the internet was working that day. And it sits beside a paper channel that has never closed for people who act for themselves.
This guide sets out the mandate as Titles Queensland publishes it. Its sources are the registry's eConveyancing page, its page of questions and answers, its page of available instruments, exclusions and exemptions, and its forms page, together with the Queensland page of the Australian Registrars' National Electronic Conveyancing Council (ARNECC), which lists each version of the Queensland Participation Rules. The Land Title Regulation 2022 is described here through what Titles Queensland says of it.
Source: Titles Queensland, eConveyancing page and eConveyancing FAQs.
The rule in one paragraph
Titles Queensland states the mandate in a single sentence: it commenced on 20 February 2023 and requires that some instruments be lodged using eConveyancing. The registry says the requirement was introduced through the Land Title Regulation 2022, and its questions and answers point to section 4 of that regulation as the provision that lists the "required instruments".
Related readThe client authorisation: the form that lets a lawyer sign for youThree conditions have to be met before the rule applies to a particular lodgement. The document has to be one of the required instruments. The lodger has to be within the group the mandate covers, which the registry describes as all industry professionals and corporate entities lodging a required instrument. And the instrument has to deal with freehold land. If any general or instrument-specific exemption applies, the paper form remains open, accompanied by a form that says why.
The registry's page also explains the purpose in general terms. According to its questions and answers, the Queensland Government made eConveyancing mandatory to modernise conveyancing practice and to bring the state into line with other Australian states, which began mandating from 2016.
How the mandate arrived
Titles Queensland's own account of the history is brief, and it describes a long voluntary period followed by a single start date, not a series of phases.
- 2013eConveyancing becomes available in Queensland on a voluntary basis. ARNECC dates version 1 of the Queensland Participation Rules to December 2013.
- 2016Other Australian states begin to mandate electronic lodgement, according to Titles Queensland.
- 13 February 2023The date carried by version 1 of the Exemption Request Form on the registry's forms page.
- 20 February 2023The mandate commences for required instruments over freehold land.
- 2 April 2024Version 7 of the Queensland Participation Rules takes effect, the version in force for subscribers.
The decade between the first and fourth dates was not empty. ARNECC's Queensland page lists six versions of the participation rules made in that time, effective from December 2013, 25 May 2015, 9 November 2015, 27 May 2017, 25 February 2019 and 12 April 2021. Throughout, the system operated under the Electronic Conveyancing National Law (Queensland), which the registry names as the law regulating eConveyancing in the state, and under which, its page says, the Registrar of Titles determines the operating requirements for network operators and the participation rules for subscribers.
What changed in February 2023 was therefore not the system but the freedom to stay outside it. The registry's pages describe no staged rollout by instrument or by type of lodger. The one transitional allowance is itself an exemption: an instrument executed by any party before 20 February 2023 may still be lodged on paper.
Related readCyber security duties of firms and lenders on a settlement networkThe nine required instruments
Titles Queensland's eConveyancing page lists the instruments that have to be lodged electronically unless an exemption applies. Its questions and answers give the same list by category: transfers, mortgages, releases of mortgage, caveats, withdrawals of caveat, transmission applications, and priority notices with their associated dealings.
The same page lists a second group: instruments that can be lodged through eConveyancing but are not required to be. A lodger may still choose paper for these without claiming anything.
| Instrument | What it does | Electronic lodgement |
|---|---|---|
| Form 1 | Transfer | Required |
| Form 3 | Release of a mortgage of a lot | Required |
| Form 5 | Transmission by death, on a Queensland grant or a Queensland recognised grant | Required |
| Form 11 | Caveat for a lot | Required |
| Form 14 | Request to withdraw a caveat | Required |
| National Mortgage Form | Instrument of mortgage | Required |
| Priority notice | Priority notice for a lot | Required |
| Priority notice extension | Request to extend a priority notice | Required |
| Priority notice withdrawal | Request to withdraw a priority notice | Required |
| Form 4 | Request to record a death | Available |
| Form 7 | Lease | Available |
| Form 14, other requests | Removing a lapsed caveat or a statutory charge, removing a caveat by court order, cancelling a writ, recording a realignment or a notice | Available |
Source: Titles Queensland, eConveyancing page, lists of required and available instruments.
Two details of the list are easy to miss. The first is that Form 14 appears on both sides. A request to withdraw a caveat is required; other requests on the same form number, such as removing a caveat that has already lapsed, are only available. The second concerns priority notices: the registry's questions and answers say the requirement does not extend to priority notices over water allocations.
The list also shows what the mandate was designed around. A typical sale with finance produces a release of the seller's mortgage, a transfer and the buyer's new mortgage, often with a priority notice lodged beforehand. All four are required instruments.
Who the mandate binds
The registry's general statement is that the mandate applies to all industry professionals and corporate entities lodging a required instrument dealing with freehold land. Its pages identify legal practitioners, incorporated legal practices, financial institutions and corporate entities. The questions and answers put it in three lines: lawyers and law firms lodging required instruments, companies that are parties to instruments, and any subscriber to a network operator.
Related readSigning a transfer without a pen: how digital signatures bind a firmThe third line is the most general. A subscriber, under the national law, is a person authorised under a participation agreement to use an electronic lodgment network. An organisation that has joined a network cannot treat the paper channel as an alternative for required instruments merely because paper would be more convenient on the day.
The Titles Queensland page records that two network operators are approved to offer eConveyancing services in Queensland. The mandate does not direct a lodger to either; it requires that the instrument be lodged through an electronic lodgment network.
The mandate follows the land as well as the lodger
Titles Queensland frames the rule around required instruments dealing with freehold land, and its instrument page lists each one as available for fee simple lots. Transfers of other title types, such as water allocations or State leasehold, are listed among the dealings a network cannot take.
The general exemptions
Titles Queensland lists eight general exemptions. A required instrument that meets any one of them does not have to be lodged using eConveyancing.
| Ground | When it applies | Registry's example or note |
|---|---|---|
| Unrepresented individual | A party is a natural person who is not a subscriber and has no lawyer acting. | Applies even where the other party is represented. |
| No functionality | The network or the registry's system cannot complete the transaction. | Third-party transfers. |
| Beyond the lodger's control | Electronic lodgement was attempted and prevented. | A sustained internet outage, or the network being unavailable. |
| Combined lodgement | The instrument has to be lodged with another that cannot go through eConveyancing. | A transfer lodged with a survey plan. |
| Combined, with an individual | It has to be lodged with another instrument that has an unrepresented party. | None given. |
| Replacement | It replaces an instrument lodged electronically and then rejected or withdrawn, after the money has moved. | A withdrawn transfer lodged again with corrections. |
| Duties Act | The transaction is not an "ELN lodgement" or "ELN transfer" under section 156D of the Duties Act 2001. | None given. |
| Signed before the start | Any party executed the instrument before 20 February 2023. | None given. |
Source: Titles Queensland, eConveyancing page and eConveyancing FAQs.
The exemptions fall into three families. Two turn on the people involved. Three turn on what the technology can do, or was doing at the time. The remaining three turn on the history or legal character of the particular instrument.
The technology exemptions are tighter than they first sound. The questions and answers describe them in terms of a whole day: internet access unavailable for the entire day, or the network unavailable for the entire day, or the platform returning error messages that prevent lodgement. A slow morning does not appear in that list. The main page uses the words "sustained internet outages".
The replacement exemption deals with an awkward corner of electronic settlement. If a transfer is lodged electronically, the financial settlement completes and the registry later rejects the instrument or it is withdrawn, the corrected transfer cannot simply be run through the same settlement again. The exemption lets the replacement be lodged on paper.
Related readWorkspace, subscriber, signer: an e-conveyancing glossary for QueenslandExclusions built into each instrument
Beside the general exemptions, the registry publishes a page of inclusions and exclusions for each instrument. An exclusion describes a case the network cannot handle, which leads back to the functionality exemption and to paper.
Some exclusions are common to all instruments. The main eConveyancing page lists them. They include a party that is the trustee of the property of a bankrupt; party names too long for the system, with limits of 30 characters for a single given name, 60 for all given names together, 60 for a family name and 255 for an organisation's name; lots held on multi-lot titles such as timeshare arrangements; lodgements that are exempt from fees, with limited exceptions; registered owners recorded with a name suffix or as a minor; parties that are deregistered companies; partially cancelled titles; and, for most instruments, titles with an unregistered plan noted on them.
Others belong to one instrument. For a transfer, the registry's page excludes, among other cases, a transfer by a third party such as a mortgagee exercising power of sale, a transfer of an interest such as a lease or mortgage, a transfer of part of the land, a transfer by direction with an intermediate purchaser, a transfer creating a life estate, and a transfer where a party that is not an individual has no valid ACN, ABN or ARBN. A transfer has to cover all the lots on all the titles it is lodged over.
For a caveat, the page limits electronic lodgement to stated interests and grounds, and excludes registered owners' caveats, caveats that include a registered owner's consent, caveats needing supporting evidence such as restraining order caveats, and caveats where the caveator acts in a capacity such as trustee. The questions and answers give the reason for one of these: where a statute requires supporting evidence to be deposited and the electronic channel cannot carry it, paper is required, and they cite a registered owner's consent under section 126(1)(b) of the Land Title Act 1994.
Related readFour doors, no counter: how a document reaches Queensland's land registerFor a transmission by death, the page excludes a death before 1 January 1982 and the case where a personal representative has the same name as the deceased. For a release of mortgage, it requires that the release cover all the lots the mortgage is registered over and all the registered mortgagors. For a mortgage, all the registered owners have to be mortgagors.
These lists are operational, and Titles Queensland maintains them as the networks' capability changes. They are described here as the registry's page set them out in August 2026; a practitioner works from the current page.
How an exemption is claimed
There is no application in advance and no approval to wait for. The registry's instruction is that a lodger relying on an exemption completes an Exemption Request Form and deposits it together with the paper instrument at lodgement.
The forms page lists it as "Exemption Request Form - eConveyancing", version 1, dated 13 February 2023, one week before the mandate began. It is offered in three formats: an online form and a print form, both as PDF files, and a Word template. Two guides to completion sit beside it, one for professionals and one for individuals.
The questions and answers add the formalities. The form has to be properly completed, signed and dated. It may be an original or a photocopy, and it may be signed by hand or electronically. If it is deficient, Titles Queensland may issue a requisition, the registry's notice requiring the lodger to fix a problem before the dealing proceeds.
Related readReserved, lodged, paid: how purchase money crosses between banksTitles Queensland's pages state that consequence and no other; they set out no penalty for lodging a required instrument on paper without a form.
The party without a lawyer
Two different vocabularies meet at this point, and they are easily confused.
In the national rule books, "self-represented" often describes a subscriber acting for itself. ARNECC's Guidance Note 3 on certifications, for instance, speaks of a self-represented mortgagee: a lender that is a subscriber and signs its own mortgage or release. That lender is squarely inside the mandate.
Titles Queensland's exemption uses another term, the unrepresented individual. Its definition has three elements: the party is a natural person, not a company; the party is not a subscriber to a network operator; and the party is not represented by an Australian legal practitioner or an incorporated legal practice. A person selling or buying a home without engaging a lawyer meets all three.
For that person the mandate does not bite. The paper forms remain the channel, and the registry's forms page provides a completion guide for the Exemption Request Form written for individuals. The first element matters, though. A company is not a natural person, and the questions and answers list companies that are parties to instruments among those who have to use eConveyancing.
A transaction with one represented side
The harder case is the mixed one: a seller with no lawyer and a buyer whose law practice is a subscriber, or the reverse.
Titles Queensland answers it directly. Where a party to the instrument is an individual who is not a subscriber and is not represented by a lawyer, the instrument qualifies for the exemption and may be lodged in paper form, and the registry's answer says this holds even if the other party has legal representation. The represented side's practice, which would otherwise be bound to lodge electronically, lodges the paper instrument with an Exemption Request Form.
The fifth general exemption extends the same logic to instruments that travel together. If a required instrument has to be lodged with another instrument that includes an unrepresented party, it too may go on paper. In a sale, that is the position of the documents on either side of the transfer. A release of the seller's mortgage or the buyer's new mortgage may involve only represented parties and subscribers, yet if it has to be lodged with a transfer that has an unrepresented individual on one side, the combined lodgement exemption is available.
What the registry's pages do not describe is how the two sides arrange the settlement itself: where the documents and the money change hands when one party is not on a network. The mandate is a rule about lodgement. How a paper settlement is conducted is a matter for the contract and for the parties' arrangements, and is outside what Titles Queensland publishes on the mandate.
The mandate decides how a professional lodges. It has never required a private individual to join a network or to hire someone who has.
What the mandate changed for evidence
One consequence of electronic lodgement reaches every client of a represented party, whether or not they notice it.
On paper, supporting documents went to the registry with the instrument. Titles Queensland's questions and answers say that the supporting documentation ordinarily deposited with a paper instrument is not required with an eConveyancing instrument: the evidence is held by the subscriber under the participation rules. The registry's examples are a death certificate for a request to record a death and a Form 20 declaration used when a joint tenancy is severed.
The participation rules give that arrangement its force. Each time a subscriber digitally signs, it certifies, among other things, that it has retained the evidence supporting the instrument, and ARNECC's guidance on certifications puts the retention period at no less than seven years from lodgment. The registry receives the instrument and the certification; the file stays with the firm.
The registry's page adds a caution for subscribers that applies in the other direction. Warnings shown by a network do not stop a lodgement. They are alerts for the subscriber to review, and responsibility for the accuracy of the document and for the certifications stays with the subscriber.
Reading the mandate as a buyer or seller
For most people the mandate is invisible, because their law practice is bound by it and simply complies. It becomes visible in a few situations, each of which the registry's pages anticipate.
A person acting without a lawyer will find that the forms, the paper channel and an exemption written for them all still exist, and that a represented party on the other side has a published basis for lodging on paper too.
A person whose transaction falls outside what a network can do, for instance a transfer under a mortgagee's power of sale, a transfer of part of a lot or a caveat that needs an owner's consent, may find a represented matter proceeding on paper with an exemption form. That is the system working as described, not a departure from it.
A person told that a lodgement moved to paper because of an outage can check the registry's wording: the ground is circumstances beyond the lodger's control after an attempt, described in terms of a sustained or day-long loss of service.
In each case the general rule is the one set out here, and the answer for a particular dealing depends on its own instruments, parties and title. Titles Queensland's pages are the authority, and they are revised as the networks' capability grows.
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.
