Delivering seller disclosure in Queensland: email, links and proof

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Kooky

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

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Since 1 August 2025, a Queensland sale has carried a question that used to matter very little: at what moment, and by what route, did a bundle of documents reach the buyer? Under the seller disclosure scheme in the Property Law Act 2023, the seller must give the buyer a disclosure statement (Form 2) and a set of prescribed certificates before the buyer signs the contract. A statement that is complete and accurate, but arrives after the signature or by a route the law does not recognise, has not done its job.

The bundle does not have to be handed across a desk. It may be attached to an email from the agent, opened from a link, or sent through the same signing software that later carries the contract. Each of those routes is allowed, and each has its own conditions.

This guide is about delivery and evidence only: the permitted ways of giving the documents, what consent to email means, what an electronic link must do, how "before the buyer signs" works when everything happens on a screen, how the seller signs the statement, and what an auction changes. What goes into the statement, and what a buyer may do when disclosure is wrong or missing, are covered in the magazine's other guides. The sources are the Queensland Government's seller disclosure page (updated 21 July 2025), the Queensland Law Society's supporting materials for its seller disclosure roadshow (version 1, April 2025), an REIQ article for sellers (25 June 2025) and a Macpherson Kelley article on the ways of giving disclosure (22 July 2025).

Three duties, not one

The Queensland Government's page on the scheme compresses the seller's task into a sentence, and it is worth separating its parts.

The first duty is to give: the buyer must receive both the disclosure statement and the prescribed certificates. The government's page lists what those certificates include, among them a title search and survey plan, certain notices under environmental, building and planning legislation, a pool safety certificate where one applies and, for a lot in a community titles scheme, the community management statement and a body corporate certificate.

The second is timing. The documents must be given, in the page's words, "before the buyer signs the contract".

The third is proof. "You must prove that you gave the buyer the disclosure statement," the page tells sellers, and it adds that proof of delivery should be kept, giving a read receipt and a signed acknowledgement as examples.

The three are independent. A seller can meet the first two and still be in difficulty if nothing shows it. The government's page states the consequence in general terms: the buyer may have a right to terminate the contract at any time up to settlement if the disclosure documents are not given at all.

Who does the giving

The seller does not have to send the documents personally. An agent or the seller's solicitor may do it.

The Queensland Law Society's roadshow materials deal with this. They note that the provision setting out the seller's obligation, section 99 of the Property Law Act 2023, makes no specific reference to an authorised agent, but that section 97 provides that anything required or permitted to be done by a seller may be done personally or by an authorised agent. The materials add that there is no requirement for the authority to be in writing, but that recording it is prudent. The government's page is to the same effect, describing delivery by the seller or by someone acting with the seller's authority.

The same materials deal with the receiving end. The documents must be given before the buyer signs or, where there are several buyers, before the first of them signs. Macpherson Kelley's article adds, citing section 99(6) of the Act, that giving the documents to any one of several buyers satisfies the obligation for all of them. A couple buying together does not need two separate deliveries, but the single delivery has to come before either of them signs.

The four ways of giving

The Queensland Government's page names three channels: in person, by post, and by email or other electronic communication. The Queensland Law Society's materials break the rules down further, into four methods.

Three of the four need nothing from the buyer. The fourth depends on the buyer agreeing to it. The sections that follow take the electronic routes first, since they raise most of the questions, and then return to paper.

One point about section numbers. The two legal sources read for this guide place the delivery rules in different sections of the Act: the Queensland Law Society's materials refer to section 101, and Macpherson Kelley's article to sections 102 and 231. This guide therefore describes the methods without attaching a number to them.

Email: consent comes first

The Queensland Law Society's wording for the email route begins with a condition: "if the buyer consents". Without consent, an email is not one of the permitted methods, whatever it contains.

Macpherson Kelley's article describes what consent can look like. It may be given in writing, or it may be inferred from the buyer's conduct. The article does not give a list of the conduct that would be enough, and the safer end of that range is obvious: a buyer who has said in writing that the documents may be emailed to a particular address has consented beyond argument. A buyer who typed an address into an open-home register for another purpose is a less certain case, and nothing in the sources read for this guide says that this alone amounts to consent.

Once consent exists, the Queensland Law Society's materials describe three acceptable forms of email. It may attach the disclosure documents. It may set the documents out in the body of the message. Or it may include an electronic link that allows the buyer to view the documents and to obtain a copy of them.

The time of receipt matters because of the deadline. Macpherson Kelley's article explains that if the buyer has designated an email address for receiving communications, the buyer is taken to have received the disclosure documents when the email would be able to be accessed at the buyer's end. The test is whether the message was capable of being accessed, not whether the buyer opened it. A seller is not required to show that the buyer read the statement, only that it was given.

That places weight on the address. An email sent to an address the buyer designated, and capable of being accessed there, has been received. An email sent to a mistyped address, or to an address the buyer never nominated, has a harder path.

Links: what an electronic link has to do

A full disclosure bundle can run to many files, which makes a link an alternative to a heavy set of attachments. The rules recognise links in two places: inside an email, and printed on a physical document.

The Queensland Law Society's description of the email version sets the standard. The link must allow the buyer both to view the disclosure documents and to obtain a copy. A page that displays the documents but blocks downloading or printing does not obviously meet the second half of that description.

Macpherson Kelley's article adds two points about a link's life. The seller must be able to show that the link worked when it was provided and for a reasonable period afterwards. The article does not put a figure on "reasonable", and offers as a conservative approach keeping the documents accessible for the length of a 30-day settlement period. It also says the seller does not have to prove that the buyer actually used the link.

The printed version works a little differently. Under the Queensland Law Society's description, the buyer is handed or posted a physical document stating that the disclosure documents can be viewed by using an electronic link in the document, and that the buyer may ask the seller for a copy. Macpherson Kelley gives a printed flyer carrying a web address as an example, and says that when a buyer asks for a copy by one of the other methods, the seller must provide it.

A link changes what the seller has to keep. With an attachment, the sent email holds a copy of exactly what the buyer received. With a link, the email holds only an address. The record of which documents sat behind that address on that day, and of the link being live, has to be kept separately, because the seller carries the burden of showing what was given.

Paper and post still count

Nothing in the scheme requires electronics. The first two methods in the Queensland Law Society's list are personal delivery, to the buyer or by leaving the documents at the buyer's place of residence or business, and post to the same addresses. For a corporate buyer the addresses are the registered office or place of business.

Paper has one advantage and one drawback in this scheme. The advantage is that no consent is needed. An agent who hands a printed bundle to a buyer at an inspection has given the documents, whatever the buyer's views on email. Macpherson Kelley's article suggests that a handover be supported by timestamped evidence, and that the seller check that every prescribed certificate is in the bundle before it changes hands.

The drawback is time, and it is sharpest with post. The same article says that where documents are posted there is a presumption that the buyer will take 7 business days to receive them, unless tracking information shows when the package was actually delivered. A contract signed three days after a bundle was posted, with no tracking record, sits inside that presumed delivery time. Posting is therefore a method for sales with room in the timetable, or a supplement to a faster method.

Before the buyer signs, on a screen

On paper, the order of events is visible in the room: the bundle is handed over, then the pen comes out. On a screen, the order has to be reconstructed from time stamps, and the scheme asks for one order only. The disclosure documents come first. The buyer's signature on the contract comes after.

Where the bundle and the contract are sent as separate messages, the comparison is between two times: when the disclosure email became capable of being accessed at the buyer's designated address, and when the buyer signed. Where a signing platform is used, the same rule applies to whatever the platform does. A platform that emails the buyer an attachment or a link is, for the purposes of the methods described above, sending an email, and the buyer's consent to email is still required. None of the sources read for this guide gives signing platforms a method of their own.

The sequence below sets out an illustrative sale by private treaty with two buyers, to show where each record is made. The times are invented for the example.

Had the first signature been made at 9.30am on the Monday, ten minutes before the email was sent, the same documents and the same email would have arrived too late.

A seller may also ask the buyer to sign an acknowledgement of receipt. The government's page lists a signed acknowledgement as an example of proof of delivery. It is evidence that the documents were given and when; in the sources read for this guide it is presented as a way of proving delivery, not as a step that replaces it.

The seller's signature on the statement

The statement that is delivered must itself be a signed one. The Queensland Law Society's materials say the disclosure statement is required to be signed by the seller, citing section 99(2)(d) of the Act. The REIQ's article for sellers of 25 June 2025 says the same thing and answers the electronic question in a sentence: Form 2 must be signed by a seller and can be signed electronically.

Two practical points follow from that for delivery. The seller's signature is part of what is given, so it belongs on the statement before the statement is sent to the buyer, not added afterwards. And because section 97 allows a seller's acts to be done by an authorised agent, the question of who signed, and on what authority, is one the Queensland Law Society's materials suggest recording.

The REIQ's article also marks a boundary for agents who assemble the bundle. A sales agent may prepare Form 2 on a seller's behalf if authorised, it says, but cannot give the seller legal advice about what matters are required to be disclosed.

The date of the statement matters for a reason the Queensland Law Society's materials make explicit. The disclosure documents must be accurate at the time the information is given to the buyer. The moment of delivery is therefore also the moment at which accuracy is tested. The materials go on to say that there is no statutory obligation to update the information if it becomes inaccurate after the documents are given, while warning that a seller who knowingly stays silent about a change between delivery and signature may face a claim of misleading or deceptive conduct.

Proving it: the seller carries the onus

If the buyer says the documents never came, who has to prove what? Macpherson Kelley's article answers directly: where there is a dispute about a failure to give disclosure documents, the seller has the onus of proving that the buyer was properly given them. The government's instruction to sellers that they "must prove" delivery is the same rule from the other side.

The article lists the kinds of record a seller should retain: email delivery receipts, timestamped electronic signatures, and screenshots of Australia Post tracking for anything posted. The government's page adds the read receipt and the signed acknowledgement.

Read against the methods, those records answer four separate questions. What was given: the signed statement and every prescribed certificate, as a set. To whom: a buyer, at an address the rules recognise. By which method: and if by email, with what consent. When: before the first buyer signed.

Each question has its own weak point. The set is usually complete in the agent's folder but may not be complete in the email, where one attachment can be left off. The consent is often real but unrecorded. The time is recorded by the mail system, but only if the sent message is kept.

A disclosure bundle is finished twice: once when its contents are right, and again when the record shows who received it, how and when.

What an auction changes

An auction removes the quiet interval in which a buyer receives documents and later signs. The Queensland Law Society's materials explain the effect: at an auction the buyer is treated as having signed the contract at the fall of the hammer. The government's page puts the resulting duty this way: different rules apply for sales by auction, but the seller must still give or make available the disclosure statement and prescribed certificates to the buyer before the fall of the hammer.

The difficulty is that the buyer is not known until that moment. The rules therefore work through bidders. The Queensland Law Society's materials say that, to comply, a seller should give a copy of the disclosure documents to all registered bidders before the auction commences, and that the Act makes specific provision for a buyer who was not registered before commencement.

Macpherson Kelley's article, citing section 103 of the Act, sets out how the two groups are treated. Bidders who register before the auction starts are given the documents by the ordinary methods: personal delivery, post, paper with a link, or email with consent. For bidders who register only after the auction has started, the documents are made available at the auction itself. At an auction held in person, that means a full physical copy, or a physical document carrying the link, displayed at the venue. At an auction conducted electronically, the same material is provided in the electronic medium in which the auction is held. In both cases the documents must stay available from the start of the auction through to its completion.

The evidence changes accordingly. For auctions, the article suggests timestamped photographs of the display, screen recordings of an online auction, and file notes made by the auctioneer. The register of bidders becomes a delivery record as well: for each bidder registered before the start, the file should show how and when that person was given the documents.

The Queensland Law Society's materials deal with one other sale structure in which the order of events is unusual. For an option, disclosure must be given before the buyer signs the option. If the same parties then proceed to a contract when the option is exercised, no further disclosure documents are required. If a third party is nominated to take the contract, the seller needs to give disclosure documents to that nominee before the option is exercised.

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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