Seller disclosure wrong or missing: a Queensland buyer's right to terminate

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Kooky

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

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For most of Queensland's history the rule in a property sale was buyer beware. A seller had to answer questions honestly and stand behind the promises printed in the contract, but there was no general duty to volunteer information before the buyer signed. That changed on 1 August 2025, when the seller disclosure scheme in the Property Law Act 2023 began.

The scheme has two halves. The first is an obligation: before a buyer signs, the seller must hand over a disclosure statement and a set of certificates. The second is a remedy: if the seller does not, or if what was handed over is wrong in a way that matters, the buyer can end the contract at any time before settlement and get the deposit back.

This guide is about the second half. It explains the two grounds for termination in section 104 of the Act, what a buyer has to show under each, what counts as a material matter, which mistakes do not qualify, what happens to the deposit, and where the right stops. It draws on the Queensland Government's published guidance, the Queensland Law Society's notes for practitioners and the REIQ's guidance for agents. The scheme is still young and has not yet produced a body of court decisions, so some edges remain untested; where that is so, the guide says so.

Property Law Act 2023, section 104, as summarised by the Queensland Government and by the REIQ's legal counsel (June 2025).

What a seller must hand over, and when

The right to terminate only makes sense against the duty it enforces. Under the Queensland Government's guidance, a seller of residential property, commercial property or vacant land must give the buyer two things before the buyer signs the contract.

The first is the disclosure statement itself, the approved Form 2, completed and signed by the seller. It has four parts: the seller and property details; title and encumbrances, including unregistered ones and any residential tenancy; land use, planning and environment, covering zoning, transport and resumption notices, contaminated land listings, tree orders and heritage status; and buildings and structures, including whether there is a pool and whether certain building or planning notices have been issued.

The second is the bundle of prescribed certificates. The guidance lists a title search, the survey plan, relevant environmental and building notices, a pool safety certificate where one applies, and, for a lot in a community titles scheme, a body corporate certificate. Holding Redlich's summary of the scheme adds the community management statement for scheme lots.

Timing is the whole point. The documents must be given before the buyer signs. For an auction, the guidance says they must be given or made available before the fall of the hammer. They may be delivered in person, by post, by email or by other electronic communication, and the Law Society's practitioner FAQs confirm that the certificates do not have to be attached to the form or sent in the same message: sections 99 and 101 of the Act allow them to arrive separately and by different means, as long as all of them arrive before signing.

One sentence in the Government's guidance should stay with every seller: the seller must be able to prove the statement was given. The burden of showing that disclosure happened, and when, sits with the person who had to make it.

The first ground: something was not given

The simpler of the two grounds is failure to give. If the seller did not give the buyer the disclosure statement and the prescribed certificates before the buyer signed, the buyer may terminate at any time before settlement.

As the REIQ's legal counsel explained to agents ahead of the scheme's start, this ground needs nothing more. The buyer does not have to prove loss, disadvantage or that the missing document would have changed anything. Non-provision alone is enough.

It follows that the ground is about completeness as well as existence. A seller who gives Form 2 but leaves out a required certificate has not given everything. The Law Society's FAQs make the point with a common example. A pool safety certificate, or the notice that takes its place where there is no current certificate, is a prescribed certificate that must be given with the initial disclosure. A seller who plans to supply it at settlement instead has not complied, and section 104(2) gives the buyer a termination right with, in the FAQs' words, no materiality test before it is exercised.

The practical exposure for sellers is therefore front-loaded. Every certificate the property calls for has to be identified and obtained before the first buyer signs. For a unit that includes the body corporate certificate, which has to be requested from the body corporate and paid for. For any property with a pool it includes the pool paperwork. A missing page that nobody noticed in the rush to get a contract signed can leave the sale open to termination for its entire life.

The second ground: something given was wrong

The second ground covers the harder case, where the documents were given on time but were inaccurate or incomplete. Here the Act does not let a buyer walk away over any error at all. The REIQ's guidance sets out three things the buyer must show, and all three are required.

The Queensland Government's guidance describes the same test in plainer terms: the issue must be material, the buyer must have been unaware of it at signing, and the buyer would not have signed had they known.

Each element does separate work. The first is about the property and the document. The second is about what the buyer actually knew, from any source: a buyer who was told about an easement by the agent, or saw the drain it protects during an inspection, will find it harder to say the error on the form kept them in the dark. The third is about cause. It asks whether this buyer, knowing the truth, would have gone ahead anyway.

That third element is the one most likely to be argued over. A buyer who terminates on this ground is asserting something about their own state of mind at the moment of signing, and a seller who disputes the termination will look for evidence that the matter was not important to the buyer at all.

What counts as a material matter

The Act leaves the expression largely to be worked out case by case. The REIQ's guidance describes a material matter as any fact or circumstance that could reasonably be expected to influence a buyer's decision to purchase the property. Its examples give a sense of scale: an undisclosed easement that restricts development, a zoning that prohibits the use the buyer intended, a contamination notice, or an unregistered lease that limits the buyer's right to possession.

All four share a feature. They affect what the buyer can do with the land or when the buyer can occupy it. They are not cosmetic, and they are the kind of thing a buyer would ordinarily want to know before agreeing a price.

Holding Redlich's analysis, published two days before the scheme began, observed that the legislation leaves the term open for interpretation and suggested courts could be expected to take a buyer-friendly approach, given the scheme's protective purpose. That is a prediction, and as at mid-2026 it has not been tested in a reported decision. Professor Sharon Christensen, who worked on the reform, argued in the Law Society's journal in April 2026 that the scheme's fixed list of questions is itself a source of certainty: clear and consistent disclosure rules are easier to apply than an open-ended argument about what a seller should have mentioned.

Mistakes that do not open the door

The scheme is not designed to let buyers escape on a technicality. Two limits are built in.

The first is the materiality test itself. The REIQ's guidance says plainly that minor technical errors, such as spelling mistakes, do not qualify. A wrong middle initial in the seller's name or a transposed digit in a document reference that causes no confusion is not a ground to terminate.

The second is a short list of matters the legislation takes out of the test altogether. The REIQ's summary names three: information about whether there is a pool, rates information and water services information. Holding Redlich's reading is that the Act expressly excludes information about council and water rates. One practical reading is that rates and water charges are apportioned between the parties at settlement in any case, so a small error in the figure is corrected then.

The pool exclusion needs care, because it can look as if it contradicts the first ground. It does not. If a required pool safety certificate was never given, the first ground applies and no materiality test is needed. The exclusion is about the second ground: an inaccuracy in the form's statement about a pool is not, by itself, a material matter.

How long the right lasts

Both grounds run to the same deadline. The Queensland Government's guidance says a buyer may terminate at any time up to settlement. Once the sale settles, the statutory right is gone.

This is a long window compared with the other exits a buyer has. The statutory cooling-off period lasts five business days from the day the buyer receives the signed contract, and the Government's guidance notes that a buyer who uses it can be charged a penalty of up to 0.25 per cent of the price. The finance and inspection conditions in the standard contract each expire at 5pm on a date written into the schedule. The disclosure right, by contrast, lasts for the whole of the contract, however long the settlement period is, and according to the REIQ's guidance it carries no cost or penalty for a buyer who uses it validly.

The length of the window is the main reason the scheme changes behaviour. A seller who cut a corner on disclosure does not become safe when cooling-off ends or the contract goes unconditional. The risk stays open until the money changes hands.

Termination is exercised by notice to the seller before settlement. Because the right depends on dates, documents and, on the second ground, the buyer's own knowledge, the notice and the reasons for it are something buyers ordinarily settle with their solicitor or conveyancer before acting. A buyer who purports to terminate without a valid ground risks being the party in breach.

What the buyer gets back

A valid termination under section 104 unwinds the sale. The REIQ's guidance says the seller must refund the deposit, with any interest earned on it, within 14 days. Holding Redlich's summary describes the entitlement as a full refund of all money paid under the contract, including accrued interest.

Both summaries describe a refund of what was paid under the contract. Neither describes a statutory entitlement to recover what the buyer spent elsewhere in reliance on the sale, such as inspection reports or loan application costs, and a buyer in that position would need advice on whether any other claim is open.

There is a consequence for the seller's agent as well. The REIQ has warned its members that where an agent's entitlement to commission depends on the sale completing, a contract terminated for defective disclosure may mean the commission is lost. Agents are often the people who physically deliver the disclosure documents, and the Government's guidance allows them to do so where authorised, so the profession has its own reasons to see that the bundle is complete before a buyer picks up a pen.

Contaminated land runs on a separate track

One category of missing document is handled differently. Where a lot is recorded on the environmental management register or the contaminated land register, the Environmental Protection Act 1994 has long required the seller to give the buyer written notice. Form 2 asks about those registers, but the Law Society's FAQs stress that ticking yes on the form is not enough: a separate notice under section 408(2) of that Act, with any site management plan, must be given, and it counts as a prescribed certificate.

If that notice is not given before the contract, the buyer still has a right to terminate, but section 104(4) of the Property Law Act hands the matter to the Environmental Protection Act's own regime. According to the FAQs, that regime lets the seller repair the failure by giving the notice after the contract is signed, and the buyer's right to terminate then lasts for 21 days after the notice is given.

It is the one place in the scheme where late disclosure can cure a default and start a clock running. Everywhere else, what was not given before signing cannot be fixed afterwards.

The contract's own warranties still apply

The statutory right sits on top of the standard contract and does not replace it. The contract published by the REIQ and the Queensland Law Society contains the seller's own warranties, and in places they go further than Form 2.

The Law Society's FAQs give two examples. Form 2 asks whether the seller has received a notice of a transport infrastructure proposal affecting the land. Clause 7.7(1)(b) of the contract is wider: it applies to such proposals whether or not the seller has been given formal notice. And clause 7.4(1)(e) and (f) require a seller to disclose facts or circumstances that may lead to the land being classified as contaminated in future, which the form does not ask.

So a buyer who discovers a problem after signing may have two possible routes. If the problem is something Form 2 covers and the form was wrong, section 104 may apply. If it falls under a contract warranty, the FAQs confirm the buyer keeps the contractual right to terminate or claim compensation, even though the matter is outside the statutory scheme. The Law Society notes that sellers sometimes remove or narrow these warranties by special condition, which is a reason for a buyer to read the special conditions with the warranties in mind.

When no disclosure is owed

The right only exists where the duty does. The Queensland Government's guidance lists the main exceptions: sales where the buyer is the State, a government body, a constructing authority or a listed corporation; sales between related parties; sales for more than $10 million where the buyer agrees to waive disclosure; and sales by a local council recovering unpaid rates. Holding Redlich's summary adds transfers between co-owners, transfers under court orders or financial agreements, boundary realignments, and the exercise of an option where compliant disclosure was given when the option was granted. Some of these depend on a waiver notice being given, so they are not automatic.

Two other boundaries matter. The scheme applies to contracts made on or after 1 August 2025; the Law Society's guidance at the time was that a contract signed by both parties before that date was not subject to it. And it does not apply to proposed lots sold off the plan, which Holding Redlich notes remain governed by the Land Sales Act 1984 and the Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997, each with its own disclosure rules and remedies.

What the right was never meant to cover

The last limit is the one buyers most often misunderstand. A right to terminate for inaccurate disclosure can only bite on matters the seller was required to disclose. The Government's guidance is explicit that Form 2 does not cover the structural soundness of buildings, the property's flooding history, or past building and development approvals.

The Attorney-General confirmed the position on natural hazards in a written answer to a parliamentary question on notice asked on 14 May 2026: the scheme does not require a seller to disclose information about natural hazards, and the form instead warns buyers that flood and hazard information can be obtained from the local government, with the FloodCheck Queensland portal named as a resource.

A buyer who finds termite damage, an unapproved deck or a flood history after signing therefore cannot rely on section 104 simply because the seller said nothing. Those risks are still managed the older way: a building and pest condition, council searches and the buyer's own enquiries before the contract goes unconditional.

Disclosure tells a buyer what the registers and notices say about a property. It does not tell them what the building is like, and the right to terminate follows the same line.

Read together, the two halves of the scheme set a clear bargain. The seller's job is to deliver a complete and accurate bundle before the buyer signs and to keep proof of having done it. The buyer's job is to read it, and to keep doing the checks it was never designed to replace.

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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