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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Somewhere in a great many Queensland homes there is a stiff sheet of paper headed "Certificate of Title", kept in a fireproof box, a solicitor's envelope or the back of a filing cabinet. For generations it was treated as the house itself in paper form: the thing to protect, the thing a bank asked for, the thing that changed hands at settlement. Since 1 October 2019 that sheet has had no legal effect at all. Nobody was asked to hand anything in, which is why the question still comes up every time a family clears out a desk or prepares a sale.
This guide explains what happened on that date and which Act of Parliament did it, what the electronic freehold land register is and what it records, what counts as proof of ownership today, what became of deeds that had been left with lenders as security, and how an owner can look at their own title. It draws on the Land Title Act 1994 as published on the Queensland legislation website, in the version current as at 1 August 2025, and on notes that Queensland law firms published when the change was made in 2019. One paragraph near the end deals with what the State stands behind; the magazine's guide to title fraud covers that subject in full.
Sources: Thynne + Macartney, 9 December 2019; HopgoodGanim Lawyers; Bruce Legal, 16 April 2019 (the 11% figure is that firm's estimate, "about 11%").
What changed on 1 October 2019
The change can be put in one sentence. From 1 October 2019 a paper certificate of title stopped being a document with any legal function in Queensland. Thynne + Macartney, a Brisbane law firm, summed it up in a note dated 9 December 2019: paper certificates no longer have legal effect, and those already in existence are simply documents of historical and sentimental value.
Related readCyber security duties of firms and lenders on a settlement networkThree practical consequences followed, each recorded by the firms that wrote about the change at the time.
The first is that no new paper certificate can be obtained. McInnes Wilson Lawyers, in a note dated 11 April 2019, told clients that from 1 October 2019 property owners would not be able to request a paper certificate of title from the titles registry. Before that date an owner could apply for one.
The second is that the registry stopped asking for them. Thynne + Macartney's note records that the registry does not require certificates to be presented or lodged when dealing with land. Before the change, where a paper certificate existed for a lot, it had to be produced before the registry would act on a transfer or a mortgage.
The third is that nothing had to be done with the paper already in circulation. Mullins Lawyers, in a note dated 16 May 2019, reported that there would be no requirement to bring paper certificates in to the titles registry, or to destroy or dispose of them. Owners were free to keep them, and many have.
The Act that made the change
The change was made by Parliament, by amending the Land Title Act 1994. HopgoodGanim Lawyers identifies the amending law as the Land, Explosives and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2019, which the Queensland Parliament passed on 26 March 2019. The firm's note describes the effect in the Act's own terms: from 1 October 2019, paper certificates of title would no longer be used and would cease to be an instrument under the Land Title Act.
Related readSigning a transfer without a pen: how digital signatures bind a firmThe trace of that amendment is still visible in the Land Title Act itself. In the version current as at 1 August 2025, the group of sections that used to deal with certificates of title, sections 42 to 46, is shown as repealed, and the endnote gives the reference "2019 No. 7, s 241". In plain words, section 241 of the seventh Act of 2019 removed them. The same amending Act added a new section 29A to the Land Title Act, which lets the Registrar of Titles remove particulars from the register when they are no longer needed and their removal will not prejudice a registered interest.
A little over six months passed between the vote and the start date, which gave owners, lenders and law firms time to look at any arrangement that still leaned on a paper deed.
- 1994The Land Title Act 1994 is made. Thynne + Macartney notes the electronic register has been in use since that year.
- 26 March 2019Parliament passes the Land, Explosives and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2019.
- 1 October 2019Paper certificates cease to be instruments under the Land Title Act and lose their legal effect.
Why so few owners noticed
For most Queensland owners the change altered nothing they could see, because they never held a paper certificate in the first place. Bruce Legal, in a note dated 16 April 2019, put the share of Queensland titles that still had a paper certificate at only about 11 per cent. The firm explained why the number was so low: Queensland had for some time been issuing titles electronically by default, and a paper certificate was produced only when an owner applied for one.
So the picture just before the change was this. Roughly nine titles in ten existed only as an entry in the register, with no paper counterpart anywhere. The remaining share had a paper certificate that someone had asked for, or one that dated from the years when paper was the norm. Those were the titles the 2019 amendment was really about.
Related readWorkspace, subscriber, signer: an e-conveyancing glossary for QueenslandThe register itself was not new in 2019. Thynne + Macartney's note points out that the electronic register had been used since 1994. The amendment did not create a digital system. It removed the last role that paper still played beside a system that had been digital for a quarter of a century.
What the freehold land register is
The Land Title Act 1994 sets up the register in a handful of short sections near its start. Section 7 requires the registrar to keep a land registry, made up of several registers: the freehold land register, the power of attorney register, the Foreign Ownership of Land Register and others. Section 27 is the specific instruction to keep a register of freehold land, which the Act calls the freehold land register.
Nothing in those sections says the register has to be a book, a card index or any other physical thing. Section 8 says the opposite: a register may be kept in the form the registrar considers appropriate, whether or not that is a documentary form, and the registrar may change the form. That one sentence is the legal footing for a land register that lives in a database.
What goes into it is fixed by section 28. The registrar must record particulars that identify every lot brought under the Act, every interest registered, the name of the person who holds a registered interest and, where that person is a minor, the minor's date of birth. The registrar must also record all instruments registered, and when each was lodged and when it was registered. Section 29 adds a discretion: the registrar may record anything else the registrar considers should be recorded so that the register is an accurate, comprehensive and usable record.
Related readFour doors, no counter: how a document reaches Queensland's land registerThree more sections describe how the register grows. Under section 30, when an instrument is lodged the registrar must register it if the requirements are met and it is not inconsistent with the law. Under section 32, the registrar notes the date and time of lodgement and an identifying reference for each instrument. And under section 31, once an instrument is registered in the freehold land register, the instrument itself forms part of the register.
| Section | What it provides |
|---|---|
| 7 and 27 | The registrar keeps a land registry that includes the freehold land register. |
| 8 | A register may be kept in any form the registrar considers appropriate, documentary or not. |
| 28 | Every lot, every registered interest, each holder's name and every registered instrument must be recorded. |
| 31 | A registered instrument forms part of the register. |
| 35 | A person may search the register and obtain a copy of the indefeasible title of a lot, for a fee. |
| 37 and 38 | The title is created by recording the lot, and consists of the current particulars about it. |
| 42 to 46 | Repealed by 2019 No. 7, s 241. These dealt with certificates of title. |
Source: Land Title Act 1994 (Qld), Queensland legislation website.
What proves ownership now
The Act answers this directly, in two sentences that are worth knowing. Section 37 says an indefeasible title for a lot is created on the recording of the particulars of the lot in the freehold land register. Section 38 says the indefeasible title for a lot is the current particulars in the freehold land register about the lot.
Read together, they mean that the title is the entry. It is not a document issued to the owner, and it is not something the owner holds. A person is the registered owner of a Queensland lot because the register currently says so. The law firms that explained the 2019 change used the same idea in everyday language. Mullins Lawyers wrote that the electronic title held in the titles registry would continue to be the point of truth for ownership. HopgoodGanim described the electronic title maintained by the registry as the evidence of ownership.
Two words in section 38 carry a lot of weight: "current particulars". A paper certificate was a snapshot. It showed what the register said on the day it was printed and could not show a mortgage, a caveat or a change of name recorded afterwards. The register is always the present state. That is the practical reason a snapshot could be retired without anyone losing anything: whenever the paper and the register differed, it was the register that counted.
Related readReserved, lodged, paid: how purchase money crosses between banksProof of ownership, then, is a search of the register made now. Section 35 gives any person the right to search the register and obtain a copy of the indefeasible title of a lot on paying the titles registry fee. The result of that search, usually called a current title search, is what a buyer's lawyer, a lender or a government office relies on. The magazine's guide to reading a title search explains what each line of that document means.
What an old paper certificate is worth today
In law, nothing. In a family's papers, possibly a good deal. Every firm that wrote about the change used nearly the same phrase: Bruce Legal and Mullins Lawyers said the certificates would hold only historic or sentimental value, McInnes Wilson said they would have no legal significance, and Thynne + Macartney called them documents of historical and sentimental value.
An old certificate neither helps nor harms a sale
The registry does not require a paper certificate to be presented or lodged when land is dealt with, according to Thynne + Macartney's note of 9 December 2019. Mullins Lawyers reported that there is no requirement to hand one in, destroy it or dispose of it. Losing it changes nothing on the register.
Several things follow from the certificate having no legal effect. Holding it does not make a person the owner, and it does not give the holder any say over what happens to the land. A buyer does not need to receive it. A seller who cannot find it has nothing to fix. An executor who discovers one among a deceased relative's papers has found a record of what the register once said, not a document the estate needs in order to deal with the property. And a certificate in the hands of someone other than the owner, a relative, a former partner, an old lender, gives that person no hold on the title.
Related readPaper or screen: the nine dealings Queensland lawyers must lodge onlineWhat an old certificate can still do is tell a story. It may show an earlier owner's name, the date a lot was first registered or an old mortgage long since released. As a record of a property's past it is a keepsake, and the law since 1 October 2019 treats it as exactly that.
Deeds left with lenders as security
The one area where the paper had real legal work to do, right up to 2019, was informal lending. For a long time a borrower could give security over land without registering anything, simply by leaving the certificate of title with the lender. The law treated the deposit of the deed as creating what is called an equitable mortgage: an interest the courts would recognise even though it did not appear on the register. The lender's comfort came from holding the paper, since the land could not easily be sold or mortgaged again while the certificate was out of the owner's hands.
Once the paper has no legal effect and never needs to be produced, that comfort disappears, and the amending Act dealt with the point expressly. HopgoodGanim's note, which refers to section 75 of the Land Title Act, explains that after 1 October 2019 an equitable mortgage is no longer created by leaving a certificate of title with a mortgagee. Handing a lender an old certificate today creates no security.
Arrangements made before that date were not wiped out. According to the same note, an equitable mortgage created before 1 October 2019 remains valid. The holder's position is harder than a registered lender's, though: the firm points out that such a mortgagee will still have to prove that the equitable mortgage was created, and has to enforce the security through an order of the court.
That is why law firms used the months before the start date to tell clients to look at their files. McInnes Wilson's note of 11 April 2019 suggested that financing arrangements in which a certificate had been provided as security be reviewed and amended, and that alternative security be documented, giving mortgages, security interests and personal guarantees as examples. The notes read for this guide do not describe a common procedure that lenders followed with the certificates sitting in their safes, and Mullins Lawyers' report that nothing had to be returned or destroyed applied to lenders as much as to owners. A certificate that comes back from a bank with old loan papers is, like any other, a keepsake.
Lost certificates: a problem that went away
The change also ended a small but real source of delay. Before 1 October 2019, a paper certificate that existed for a lot had to be produced when the land was dealt with, so a lost or destroyed certificate stood in the way of a sale or a new mortgage. Bruce Legal's note describes what had to happen: an application to dispense with the production of the paper certificate, which the Registrar of Titles then decided on the evidence submitted.
That application had a cost in time and paperwork, and it tended to surface at the worst moment, when a contract was already signed and a settlement date was approaching. Because the registry no longer requires a certificate to be presented or lodged, there is nothing to dispense with. An owner whose certificate was burnt, flooded, mislaid in a move or kept by a firm that has since closed is in the same position as the owner who has it framed on the wall, and the same position as the nine in ten who never had one.
How an owner checks their own title
Since the owner holds nothing, checking a title means asking the register. Section 35 of the Land Title Act sets out the entitlement. On payment of the titles registry fee, a person may search and obtain a copy of the indefeasible title of a lot, of a registered instrument, and of an instrument that has been lodged but not yet registered. The section provides for searches to be made at the land registry's offices or through entities the registrar has engaged for the purpose. The right is not limited to owners: the register is open, and anyone may search any lot.
What comes back reflects section 28. A search of a lot shows the particulars that identify the lot, the name of each registered owner, and each registered interest in it, such as a mortgage, together with the instruments recorded against it and their lodgement references. Because of section 38, what the search shows on the day it is made is the title.
There are a few moments when an owner has good reason to look. After a purchase, a search shows whether the transfer has been registered and whether the names are recorded correctly. After a loan is paid out, it shows whether the lender's mortgage has been removed. After a marriage, a death or a change of name, it shows whether the register has caught up. And before a sale, it shows the seller exactly what a buyer's lawyer is about to see. In each case a search made today replaces whatever paper the owner was given years ago.
What the State stands behind
The word in sections 37 and 38 that matters most to an owner is "indefeasible". It signals that the register is more than a public list: the recorded particulars are the title, created by the act of recording, and the State maintains the register on which every owner, buyer and lender relies. An owner is not asked to prove a chain of earlier documents, because the current entry stands in place of all of them. How far that protection reaches when an entry was obtained by fraud, and what compensation the State provides, are the subject of the magazine's separate guide to title fraud and are not repeated here.
Selling, borrowing and inheriting without paper
For anyone dealing with Queensland land today, the practical effect of the 2019 change is an absence. A seller is not asked for a deed, because the buyer's side searches the register. A borrower does not hand over a certificate, because a lender's security is the mortgage recorded under section 28 among the registered interests. An executor does not need to find one, because the register shows who the registered owner was. Where a paper certificate does turn up, the parties can note it and move on.
The same absence explains why a sale can now be completed entirely on screens. If ownership is the current entry in a register kept in electronic form under section 8, then changing ownership is a matter of changing that entry, and no object has to be passed across a table. The paper certificate was the last physical thing in a Queensland conveyance that the law cared about. It stopped mattering on 1 October 2019.
In Queensland the title is the entry in the register on the day you look. Everything on paper is a copy of some earlier day.
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.
