30, 60 or 90 days: how a settlement period is chosen in Queensland

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Kooky

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

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Every Queensland sale contract has a box for the settlement date. Buyers and sellers often give it less thought than the price, the deposit or the building inspection, and accept whatever the agent writes in. Yet the number in that box decides how long the buyer's lender has to produce the money, how long the seller keeps paying a mortgage on a home that is sold, when two households can book removalists and, in some months of the year, who pays a tax bill.

This guide looks at the settlement period as a choice. It explains what the law and the standard contract leave open, what has to be done inside the period whatever its length, how short, standard and long settlements differ in practice, and which dates on the calendar deserve a second look before the box is filled. It draws on the standard contract published by the Real Estate Institute of Queensland and the Queensland Law Society in its first edition of August 2025, on Queensland Government and Queensland Revenue Office guidance and on AUSTRAC's guidance on customer checks. It is general information; what suits a particular sale depends on the people and the finance involved.

Queensland Government guidance for home sellers on settlement day; standard contract (08/25), clause 6.2.

A period set by agreement, not by law

Nothing in Queensland legislation says how long a sale must take. The settlement date is whatever the buyer and seller write in the reference schedule at the front of the contract, either as a calendar date or as a number of days from the contract date. It is negotiated with the rest of the offer.

The Queensland Government's guidance for home sellers describes the usual result. Settlement, it says, typically happens four to six weeks after both parties sign, and generally falls between 30 and 90 days. Queensland sits toward the short end of national practice. In a submission to AUSTRAC announced in December 2025, the Real Estate Institute of Australia said that across the states and territories a typical settlement period is 30 to 90 days, with 42 to 60 days the average.

Because the date is a term of the contract, it carries the contract's weight. Clause 6.1 of the standard contract makes time of the essence, and clause 5.1 requires settlement by 4pm on the settlement date. A period that is too tight is therefore a risk taken at the moment of signing, not a problem to be solved later.

What has to fit inside the period

Whatever its length, the period has to hold the same sequence of tasks. Some have dates written into the contract; others depend on lenders and searches.

The contract's own conditions come first. If the purchase is subject to finance, the buyer has until the finance date in the reference schedule to obtain approval. If it is subject to building and pest reports, clause 4.2 gives the buyer until 5pm on the inspection date to say whether the condition is satisfied, waived or the contract is ended. Until those dates have passed, neither side can be sure the sale will proceed, and little of the settlement work is done.

Since 1 July 2026 there has been a federal deadline as well. AUSTRAC's guidance on customer due diligence allows a real estate agent to delay its identity check on the other party to a sale, and a conveyancer or lawyer to delay its check on a buyer client, only until the earlier of 28 days after exchange of contracts or three days before the settlement date as first agreed. In a contract of fewer than 31 days it is the three-day rule that applies.

Then comes the work that follows an unconditional contract. The buyer's lender issues loan documents, has them signed and returned, and books a settlement. The seller's lender is asked for a payout figure and prepares to release its mortgage. The buyer's representative orders searches for rates, water and land tax so the price can be adjusted. Both representatives prepare and sign the documents in the electronic workspace through which, Titles Queensland says, most transfers have had to be lodged since February 2023. In the last days the buyer may make a final inspection, a right the contract gives once.

The length of the period does not shorten any of these steps. It only decides how much slack lies between them.

Short settlements: a fortnight to three weeks

A short settlement appeals to a seller who wants certainty and to a buyer who has the money ready. It is most realistic for a purchase without finance, or one where approval was in place before the offer.

The pressure falls on three points. The first is the lender, where there is one. A bank that needs a valuation, signed documents and time to book the settlement has little room in fourteen days, and the buyer carries the consequences if it is late. The second is the seller's own mortgage: the outgoing lender also needs notice to calculate its payout and prepare a release. The third, since July, is identity. With a fourteen-day contract the delayed-check allowance runs out on the eleventh day, so the buyer's documents need to be with the agent and the conveyancer in the first week.

The standard contract does give a short contract a cushion. Under clause 6.2 either party may extend the settlement date by written notice given before 4pm on the day, to a date no more than five business days after the scheduled date, and may do so without the other's consent. A buyer who agrees to a fourteen-day settlement can, in effect, take up to five business days more. A seller who needs the money on a particular day should know that too.

The standard month to six weeks

The four to six weeks the government describes as typical is long enough for the common pattern: a finance condition of two to three weeks, a building and pest condition of one to two weeks, and a fortnight or more of preparation once the contract is unconditional. Those condition periods are examples; the contract leaves the parties to write their own dates.

In a contract of 31 days or more the federal identity deadline arrives on the 28th day, which in a six-week contract falls about two weeks before settlement and after the conditions have usually been met. That is the situation the 28-day period was designed for, according to the Real Estate Institute of Australia's submission, which argued that a check falling due before a contract became unconditional would lead to work being done twice.

A standard period suits most financed purchases. Its weakness is the chain. Where the buyer is also selling, or the seller is also buying, a month to six weeks gives little room to line up two or three settlements on the same day.

Long settlements: 60 to 90 days and beyond

A long settlement is usually chosen for a reason: a seller who has not yet found the next home, a buyer waiting on the sale of another property, a tenant whose lease has months to run, or a family timing a move around a school year. It costs neither side anything directly, but it shifts several things.

The first shift is risk. Under clause 8.1 the property is at the buyer's risk from 5pm on the first business day after the contract date. A buyer with a 90-day settlement insures a house they cannot live in for three months, and bears the risk of a storm season in the meantime. The seller's obligations under clause 8.3, to use the property reasonably and not to alter it significantly, run for the same three months.

The second is finance. A loan approval is given for a limited time and on the borrower's circumstances at the date it was given. A long period raises the chance that an approval has to be renewed, or that something in the buyer's position has changed, before the money is drawn. The length of an approval is a matter for each lender, and a buyer planning a long settlement has good reason to ask about it before signing.

The third is the price, which does not move. It is fixed on the contract date, so whatever the market does over three months is the buyer's gain or loss. The deposit stays with the deposit holder for the whole period; the contract allows either party to direct that it be invested in an interest-bearing account, with the interest following whoever ends up entitled to the deposit.

Dates on the calendar that change the sums

Some settlement dates are worth more thought than others, whatever the length of the period.

The end of June is the clearest. The Queensland Revenue Office assesses land tax on the land a person owns at midnight on 30 June, for the whole of the financial year that follows. For a buyer who will live in the home this is usually of no consequence, because a principal place of residence is generally exempt. For an investor, or anyone whose total holdings approach a threshold, a settlement on 30 June and a settlement on 1 July can produce different land tax positions for the coming year. The Revenue Office also notes that a land tax clearance certificate, the search a buyer obtains to confirm no tax is owing on the land, is valid only until 30 June, so a contract that runs across that date may need a second one.

The end of December is the second. The contract's definition of a business day leaves out Saturdays, Sundays, public holidays in the place for settlement and every day from 27 to 31 December. A settlement date counted in business days, or an extension of five business days given just before Christmas, reaches into January. Offices of lenders, councils and conveyancers are also thinly staffed in that fortnight, which is a practical reason and not a legal one.

Public holidays matter all year, and they are local. The definition refers to holidays in the place for settlement, so a show holiday in one region is not a business day for a contract settling there, while it is an ordinary day elsewhere. Rates and water periods are the last consideration: they do not change who pays what, because the contract apportions them by the day, but a settlement just after a rates notice has been paid produces a larger adjustment in the seller's favour than buyers sometimes expect.

Lining up a sale and a purchase

Many settlement periods are chosen to match another transaction. Someone selling one home and buying another generally wants both to settle on the same day, so the proceeds of the first fund the second and the household moves once.

A matching date is only as reliable as the weaker of the two contracts. If the buyer of the first home extends by five business days under clause 6.2, the second settlement is short of funds unless it can be extended as well. The same clause is available in the second contract, since either party may use it, but only up to five business days from that contract's own scheduled date.

Two other arrangements depend on agreement. A seller who needs to stay after settlement, or a buyer who needs to move in before it, is asking for something outside the standard exchange. For early possession the contract supplies terms in clause 8.5: the buyer occupies under a personal licence that the seller can revoke at any time, must insure the property to the seller's satisfaction and must keep it in the condition it was in. For a seller staying on, the standard terms are silent, and the arrangement has to be written as a special condition or a separate agreement.

Changing the date after signing

A settlement date can be moved in three ways. The parties can agree, in writing, to any new date they like. Either party can take the short extension in clause 6.2 on its own initiative. And the Property Law Act 2023 and the contract itself supply extensions for particular events, such as a computer system failing or a workspace becoming unsigned in the last hour, which the contract's definition of the settlement date recognises.

Each has limits. Agreement needs both sides, and a party who has arranged finance, removalists or another settlement around the original date has no obligation to give it. The clause 6.2 extension is capped at five business days from the scheduled date however many notices are given. The statutory extensions respond to events, not to convenience. None of them turns a period that was too short into one that is comfortable.

There is also the federal deadline to remember. AUSTRAC's guidance ties the delayed identity check to the settlement date as originally scheduled, so moving settlement does not move that date.

Questions worth settling before the box is filled

The settlement date is easiest to negotiate before the contract is signed, when it can be traded against price and conditions. A few questions cover most of what goes wrong.

For a buyer: how long does the lender say it needs from unconditional approval to being ready to settle, and how long is the approval good for? When will insurance start, given that risk passes the day after signing? Is there another sale that has to settle first?

For a seller: how much notice does the outgoing lender need? Is the next home secured, and for what date? Does the date fall just before or after 30 June, and does that matter for land tax?

For both: does the date land on or beside a public holiday in the place for settlement, or in the last week of December? And if either side used the five business days in clause 6.2, would the other be able to cope?

The settlement date is chosen in a minute and lived with for weeks. It deserves the same attention as the price.

A period that fits the slowest participant, with a few days to spare, is the one most likely to end on the day written in the contract.

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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