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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Nominations for the 2026 REIQ Awards for Excellence close at 5pm on Sunday 12 July, and the winners will be named at a gala at The Star Brisbane on Saturday 31 October. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland's call for entries was reported by Mackay and Whitsunday Life on 2 July 2026, with a new category for multi-office networks added to this year's program.
The reminder lands in the same week as a change in the institute's standing. Under the timetable the REIQ announced on 24 February 2026, its return to the Real Estate Institute of Australia took effect on 1 July 2026. For the people entering the state awards, that return is what connects a Queensland trophy to a national one.
REIQ 2026 Awards for Excellence nomination book; REIQ media release, 24 February 2026; Elite Agent, 25 February 2026.
What the call for entries says
The awards are the REIQ's yearly recognition program for its members and member agencies. According to the report of 2 July, the institute's chief executive, Antonia Mercorella, described them as the highest form of professional recognition in Queensland real estate, and said the new Multi-Office Network of the Year category was one that members had asked for.
The program covers the full spread of work that Queensland law groups under a property licence. The report lists residential and commercial sales, property management, buyer's agency, auctioneering and business broking, together with awards for multimedia, innovation and contribution to the community. Some categories are split between south-east Queensland and the regions, so that an agency in Mackay or Cairns is measured against its regional peers and not against inner Brisbane.
Related readWhat a Queensland agent must disclose to a buyer and to a sellerThe institute's nomination book sets the period being judged. Entries rest on work done and results achieved between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026, so the qualifying year closed only three days ago. An entrant has 12 days between the end of the year being assessed and the deadline for describing it.
The dates between now and the gala
The nomination book lays out the season in full, from the close of entries to the dinner.
- Sunday 12 JulySubmissions close at 5pm. They cover the year from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026.
- 27 July to 9 AugustJudging period. Each written entry is read and scored separately.
- 17 to 28 AugustFinalist interviews by video call, in the categories that require them.
- Wednesday 2 SeptemberFinalists are announced.
- Saturday 31 OctoberAwards gala at The Star Brisbane, where the winners are named.
Almost four months therefore separate an entry from its result. The interviews in the second half of August apply to selected categories only; the book names the main agency categories and the leading individual roles, such as salespeople, property managers and business brokers, among them.
How an entry is judged
The judging method is set out in the nomination book and is the same across the program. Every written submission is read and scored separately by at least two judges, on a scale of 100 points for each category. The final score is the total of the two judges' scores. The book describes the judges as people holding senior positions across a range of industries.
The institute keeps two safeguards. It may carry out reference checks by telephone or email where it considers them necessary, and the judges retain discretion to withhold an award if the entries in a category do not reach the standard expected. Being named a finalist is a recognition in itself: finalists are the highest-scoring entries, announced ahead of the ceremony.
A further rule deals with repeat winners. An entrant who wins the same category three years in a row enters the Hall of Fame and then stands aside from that category for two years, the book says. The effect is to open the field at regular intervals in categories that one agency or one agent might otherwise hold for a long stretch.
Related readWhat the REIQ is and what it does for Queensland's property agentsCategories built on judgment and categories built on numbers
The program mixes two kinds of award. Most are decided on a written case: what an agency or an individual did during the year, how clients were served and what was contributed to the profession. The nomination book lists agency awards by size, with small, medium and large residential agencies judged separately, alongside awards for commercial and industrial agencies, regional residential agencies, buyer's agencies and business brokerages.
Individual awards follow the roles of a modern office. They include salespeople in residential and commercial work, residential and commercial property managers, auctioneers, buyer's agents, business brokers, business development managers and agency support staff, with rising star awards for people early in a career in sales, property management and auctioneering.
A second group is performance-based. The book lists awards for residential salespeople and for sales agencies measured on settled commissions and on settled transactions, each split between south-east Queensland and the regions. These reward volume and value that can be counted, where the written categories reward how the work was done.
| Kind of award | What is assessed | How it is split |
|---|---|---|
| Written submission | A case scored out of 100 by at least two judges | By sector, role and agency size |
| Performance-based | Settled commissions or settled transactions | South-east Queensland and regional |
REIQ 2026 Awards for Excellence nomination book.
The Multi-Office Network of the Year award is the addition for 2026. It recognises agencies that operate across several offices, a structure that the single-agency categories, sorted by the size of one office, did not capture well.
Why the return to the national body matters to entrants
The REIQ left the Real Estate Institute of Australia in 2015. On 24 February 2026 it announced that it would rejoin, effective 1 July 2026, and Elite Agent reported the next day that the move ended an 11-year separation.
In that announcement, Ms Mercorella said the institute was confident that the direction and structure of the national body now suited Queensland's interests, and noted that real estate is governed mainly by state law while national questions do arise. The chief executive of the REIA, Scott Rollason, was quoted in the REIQ's release: "With every State and Territory now represented, REIA is once again a fully federated body."
Related readDuty to the seller, honesty to the buyer: what the law asks of an agentFor award entrants the practical point is eligibility. The REIQ's February statement recognised that the national awards and the national auctioneering championships are open to members of the federated institutes, and said the pathways would be available to Queensland winners from May 2026. The awards page for the 2026 state program says winners in eligible categories will have the opportunity to represent Queensland at the National Awards for Excellence in 2027. The nomination book puts it more cautiously: a state winner may become a national finalist, depending on the category.
What Queensland did on its first night back
The national pathway was tested before the membership formally resumed. In a media release dated 22 May 2026, the REIQ reported that its members had won five national titles at the 2026 National Awards for Excellence.
The winners, as the institute lists them, were Tristan Rowland of Bright Estate Agents, Residential Salesperson of the Year; Samantha Ellis of Property Zest, Residential Property Manager of the Year; Dustin Slypen of LINK Business Brisbane, Business Broker of the Year; Tamika Kent of McGrath Aspley, who received the Operational Support Award; and Gypsea Youngsmith of Kolloske Pty Ltd, who received the Achievement Award.
The same release covered the Australasian Auctioneering Championships, held in Melbourne from 19 to 21 May. Three Queensland auctioneers competed, one of them in the novice division, and the state did not take the championship title.
The five titles span sales, property management, business broking and office support. That spread mirrors the state program, which gives its property managers, brokers and support staff their own categories instead of folding them into awards built around sales.
Related readBecoming a real estate agent in Queensland: registration or licenceWhat the awards mean, and what comes next
Awards are sometimes read as marketing, and a trophy does appear in an agency's window. The structure of this program suggests a second purpose. A written entry scored by outside judges asks an agency to describe its training, its client service and its compliance over a full year, which is closer to an audit of practice than to a sales tally.
The timing adds weight this year. The qualifying period that closed on 30 June 2026 was the first full year in which Queensland agents, salespeople and auctioneers had to complete two approved continuing professional development sessions, a requirement that began on 6 June 2025 and that the REIQ says it advocated for. It was also the year in which agencies prepared for the anti-money-laundering obligations that started on 1 July 2026. Entrants writing about the past twelve months are writing about a year of unusual regulatory change.
For regional agencies, the south-east and regional split matters most. It means an office outside the south-east is assessed on the quality of its work and on its results within a comparable market.
Entries close on Sunday 12 July at 5pm. Judging runs from 27 July to 9 August, interviews from 17 to 28 August, and the finalists are due to be announced on Wednesday 2 September. The gala at The Star Brisbane follows on Saturday 31 October.
Winners in eligible categories then have a route to the national awards in 2027, the first full cycle in which Queensland enters as a member of the federated national body from start to finish.
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.
