Reading a Queensland settlement statement, line by line

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Kooky

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

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A few days before a Queensland sale settles, an email arrives from the solicitor with a page of figures attached. For a buyer it usually ends in one number, the amount to send before settlement. For a seller it ends in another, the amount that will land in the bank account. Between the purchase price at the top and that last figure sit a dozen lines, some added, some taken away.

This guide walks through it in the order it is normally set out: the price and the deposit, the adjustments, the balance that passes between the two sides, where the seller's money is sent, what the buyer has to find on top of the price, and how the same numbers reappear in the electronic workspace where settlement happens. One worked example runs through the whole article. It uses invented figures for the sale itself and real, current Queensland rates for the duty and the registration fee.

Australian Taxation Office guidance on foreign resident capital gains withholding; Titles Queensland fee schedule for 2026-27; the REIQ standard terms for houses and residential land.

Two documents that arrive together

What people call "the settlement statement" is usually two things, and they answer different questions.

The first is the statement between the parties. It starts with the purchase price, takes off the deposit, adds and subtracts the adjustments and ends with the amount the buyer's side must hand to the seller's side on the day. Both solicitors work from the same version of it, so the buyer's copy and the seller's copy should show the same closing figure. The Queensland Law Society's e-conveyancing guidelines note that these figures are agreed between the two firms outside the electronic settlement platform, which has no adjustment calculator of its own.

The second is each client's own page, and the other side never sees it. A seller's version is often headed "payment directions" or "settlement proceeds": it takes the amount coming from the buyer and shows who it is paid to. A buyer's version is often headed "funds to complete" or "funds required": it adds the buyer's own costs to the amount owed to the seller, takes off the loan, and leaves the sum the buyer must provide.

Law firms lay these out in their own ways and name the lines differently. The logic underneath does not vary.

The top lines: price, deposit and balance

The first line is the purchase price in the contract. If the price was renegotiated, the statement should show the new one.

The second line is the deposit, shown as a deduction. It is taken off because the buyer has already paid it. It has not reached the seller yet: under the REIQ standard terms the deposit is paid to the deposit holder named in the contract, who holds it until one party becomes entitled to it, and the seller becomes entitled when the contract settles. The deposit holder is commonly the selling agent's trust account and sometimes a law firm's. A separate guide in this magazine follows where that money sits in the meantime.

The contract has a name for what is left. The REIQ terms define the balance purchase price as the purchase price less the deposit paid by the buyer. In the worked example the price is $780,000 and the deposit is $39,000, so the balance purchase price is $741,000.

Because the deposit is somewhere else, a seller's proceeds on the day do not include it, and the statement should show the amount that has actually reached the deposit holder.

Adjustments, summed up in one figure

Below the balance come the adjustments. They exist because bills for the property do not stop and start on the settlement date. Under the REIQ terms the seller is liable for outgoings, and entitled to any rent, up to and including the settlement date, and the buyer takes over from the next day. The contract's definition of outgoings covers charges levied on the land by an authority, such as council rates, water charges and fire levies, and it leaves land tax out, to be dealt with by its own clause.

On the statement the adjustments fall into two columns, even when they are printed as one list:

• In favour of the seller ("plus" or "allow seller"). The seller has already paid a bill that covers days after settlement. The buyer refunds those days, so the amount payable goes up.
• In favour of the buyer ("less" or "allow buyer"). A bill covering the seller's days is unpaid or not yet issued, or the seller has collected rent for days the buyer will own the property. The seller gives credit, so the amount payable goes down.

How each of those figures is worked out is the subject of this magazine's guide to settlement adjustments. On a unit sale, body corporate levies are divided in the same spirit under the unit version of the contract, using the figures the body corporate itself supplies.

What matters for reading the page is the net effect. The example has two adjustments. The seller has paid the council rates for the October to December quarter, $552.00 for 92 days, and settlement falls on Friday 13 November 2026, so the seller's share is 44 days and the buyer's is 48. At $6.00 a day the buyer refunds $288.00. Water used since the last bill has not been invoiced yet, and on the meter reading the seller's share comes to $96.50, which the seller allows to the buyer. The net adjustment is $288.00 less $96.50, or $191.50 in the seller's favour.

The worked example: the statement itself

Here are the assumptions in one place. A house sells for $780,000 under the standard contract. The buyers will live in it, are not first home buyers and are not foreign persons. They paid a deposit of $39,000 to the agent's trust account and are borrowing $620,000. The seller has a mortgage on the property. Settlement is on Friday 13 November 2026. Every figure for this sale is invented for illustration.

The last line is the only figure both sides must agree on to the cent, and it is the starting point of each client's private page.

The seller's page: who is paid before the seller

A seller's page starts with the balance payable and subtracts the people who are paid first. The standard contract is built for this. Under the REIQ terms the buyer pays the balance as the seller's solicitor directs, which is why the page is called payment directions: the seller is telling the buyer's side to split one sum into several payments.

The mortgage payout. If there is a loan secured on the property, the lender will not release its mortgage until it has been paid the amount it asks for. That payout figure comes from the lender, not from the solicitor, and it moves with daily interest. How the release and the money line up is covered in a separate guide.

Rates, water or land tax still owing. Where a bill has been assessed but not paid, the REIQ terms allow the amount to be drawn from the balance at settlement and paid to the authority. The same applies to land tax for the current financial year, which the contract makes the seller's liability and which can be paid to the Queensland Revenue Office out of the balance.

The seller's own legal fees and outlays. Many firms collect their bill from the proceeds, including what they have spent on the seller's behalf, such as the fee to register the release of mortgage and the platform's fee. If so, it appears as a line.

The agent's commission. This one is often not on the settlement-day page at all. Where the agent holds the deposit, the appointment commonly lets the agency take its commission and agreed marketing costs from that deposit once the sale settles and send the rest to the seller. The seller then receives two streams: money from settlement, and the remainder of the deposit from the agent. If the deposit is smaller than the commission, the difference appears as a deduction from the settlement money. The REIQ terms also let a seller direct the deposit holder, at least two business days before settlement, to pay the deposit towards a mortgage or an outgoing, in which case it enters the settlement figures instead.

The same total is reached from the price: $780,000.00 plus $191.50, less $412,650.00, $1,850.00 and $21,450.00.

The line that appears without a clearance certificate

One deduction can dwarf all the others, and it has nothing to do with whether the seller is in fact a foreign resident. Under the foreign resident capital gains withholding rules, the Australian Taxation Office says that for contracts signed on or after 1 January 2025 a rate of 15% applies to the value of all property, with no price threshold. Each seller must give the buyer a clearance certificate at or before settlement. If one is missing, the buyer must withhold the amount and pay it to the ATO.

In the example, a missing certificate would add a line of $117,000.00, which is 15% of $780,000. The seller's proceeds on settlement day would fall from $326,691.50 to $209,691.50. The payout to the lender would not shrink to make room.

On the statement the line is a deduction on the seller's page and a payment to the ATO on the buyer's. The ATO explains that the buyer lodges an online purchaser payment notification, which produces a payment reference number, that the amount must be paid on or before the buyer becomes the owner, and that in an electronic settlement the platform pays the ATO directly. Where the ATO has issued a variation notice, the line is calculated at the lower rate on that notice. With more than one seller, each needs a certificate in their own name.

The buyer's page: funds to complete

A buyer's page runs the other way. It starts with the balance payable to the seller and adds everything else that has to be paid for the purchase to complete and the buyer's name to go on the title.

Transfer duty. For most buyers this is the biggest extra. The Queensland Revenue Office publishes the general rates and the lower home concession rates. Under the concession table, a home priced between $540,000 and $1,000,000 attracts $10,150 plus $4.50 for each $100, or part of $100, over $540,000. For the $780,000 house in the example that is $10,150 plus 2,400 lots of $4.50, or $10,800, making $20,950. Under the general table, which starts that bracket at $17,325, the same purchase would cost $28,125, so the line depends heavily on which rate the buyer's circumstances allow. First home concessions and the surcharge for foreign buyers change the figure again. As to timing, the Revenue Office says duty is due 14 days after the transaction is lodged in its online system, and the Law Society's guidelines describe it as payable either beforehand or through the settlement itself, which is why it normally sits in the funds figure.

The fee to register the transfer. Titles Queensland's fee schedule for 2026-27 sets a lodgement fee of $248.04 for a transfer of one lot, plus $46.56 for each $10,000, or part of $10,000, of the price above $180,000. At $780,000 there are 60 such steps, so the extra is $2,793.60 and the fee is $3,041.64.

The fee to register the mortgage. A buyer who borrows also pays for the new mortgage to be registered. Lenders often take this, with their own settlement fees, out of the loan before it is advanced, which is why the "lender's funds" line can be a little lower than the loan amount. No figure is given for it here.

Legal fees and outlays. The firm's professional fee, the searches it ordered and the settlement platform's fee. These come from the firm's costs agreement and its invoice.

Less lender's funds. What the bank will actually send on the day.

The shortfall is the figure the covering email is really about. It is larger than "price less loan less deposit", which here would be $121,000, because duty, the registration fee, the legal bill and the net adjustment sit on top: $20,950.00, $3,041.64, $2,350.00 and $191.50 add $26,533.14.

The same numbers inside the workspace

Since Queensland made electronic lodgement compulsory for ordinary transfers, the statement is no longer a list of bank cheques. The REIQ terms now define a financial settlement schedule: the schedule in the electronic workspace that lists source accounts and destination accounts. Every line on the two private pages becomes either a source, money coming in, or a destination, money going out.

The Queensland Law Society's guidelines describe who builds what. The buyer's solicitor creates the source lines; the seller's solicitor creates the destination lines for the seller's balance and for third parties. A source can be the incoming lender's account or a law firm's trust account, and the guidelines note that a buyer cannot use a personal bank account as a source. That is why the shortfall is paid to the firm first.

In the example the two sources are $620,000.00 from the lender and $147,533.14 from the buyer's solicitor's trust account, a total of $767,533.14. The destinations are the seller's lender ($412,650.00), the seller's law firm ($1,850.00), the seller ($326,691.50), the Revenue Office ($20,950.00), Titles Queensland ($3,041.64) and the buyer's law firm ($2,350.00), which also total $767,533.14. The guidelines put the rule plainly: the amounts in the schedule must balance or the transaction will not proceed.

Two things are missing from the workspace on purpose. The deposit is not there, because in this example it stays with the agent and is dealt with afterwards. The adjustments are not there as lines either: they have already been folded into the balance payable. How the money then moves between the banks is the subject of another guide.

When the figures become final

A statement sent a week out is a draft. It firms up in stages.

The timings in the second to fourth steps are those the Queensland Law Society's guidelines describe for the outgoing lender and the platform; the two-business-day deadline for directing the deposit holder comes from the REIQ terms. If the parties have not agreed a time, the REIQ terms set it at 4pm in the workspace, and electronic settlement is taken to occur when the financial settlement is effected.

So three lines are not fixed until late: the mortgage payout, anything that depends on the settlement date, and the shortfall or proceeds that result from them.

Why a figure changes at the last minute

Most late changes come from a short list of causes, none of them sinister.

1. The payout figure moved. Interest accrues daily, a repayment was debited or reversed, or the lender added a discharge fee or a fixed-rate break cost that was not in the first estimate.
2. The settlement date moved. Every adjustment is counted in days, so a new date means new adjustments and a new payout. The Law Society's guidelines add that changing the date in the workspace unsigns the documents and the schedule, so everything is signed again.
3. A bill arrived or was paid. A rates notice issued between the search and settlement, a water reading came back, or the seller paid a bill that the draft treated as unpaid.
4. The lender's contribution changed. The bank deducted a fee, or the loan was approved for slightly less than expected, and the shortfall rose by the same amount.
5. A certificate did or did not arrive. A clearance certificate that lands late removes the 15% line; one that does not arrive adds it.
6. The duty assessment changed. A concession was confirmed or refused, which in the example is a difference of $7,175 between $20,950 and $28,125.

A shortfall in a source account that is not fixed on the day does not, under the Law Society's guidelines, give a right to step out of electronic settlement or to push the date back, which is why firms ask for the money with days to spare.

What to check before saying yes

A client is usually asked to confirm the figures in writing. The useful checks are the ones only the client can make.

For both sides: the price matches the contract and any signed variation; the deposit shown is the amount actually paid; the settlement date on the statement is the current one; and the adjustments rest on real bills, which the solicitor can show. The REIQ terms oblige a seller to supply a supported statement of outgoings and rent on written request.

For a seller: the payout matches the lender's own letter; every loan secured on the property is included, not only the main one; the commission and marketing costs match the appointment form signed with the agency; a clearance certificate exists in each seller's exact name; and the account for the proceeds is the right one. The Law Society's guidelines warn that the platform cannot cross-check an account name against its number, and that account details should be confirmed by telephone and never by email alone.

For a buyer: the duty line reflects the concession the buyer expects, or the reason it does not; the lender's funds match the loan documents after fees; the legal fees match the costs agreement; and the shortfall is sent to the account details confirmed by a call to a number already known, early enough to clear.

One last test works on any statement, however it is laid out: add up every line that brings money in, add up every line that sends money out, and compare. When a figure changes, the solicitor should be able to say which line moved and why, and the two totals should still agree.

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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