Stopping a search: how a Queensland buyer's agent appointment ends

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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 buyer who signs with a buyer's agent usually expects the story to end with a set of keys. Sometimes it ends differently. The search runs for months without a purchase, the budget changes, a job moves interstate, or the buyer simply decides to look alone. At that point the questions are practical ones: is the appointment still running, how is it brought to an end, and what happens to the money already handed over?

Queensland's best-known rules on agent appointments, such as the 90-day limit, belong to appointments to sell. This guide sets out which rules reach an appointment to buy, what the approved form says about the term and about ending it, how an engagement fee and a later success fee are treated, where money paid in advance must sit, what a client can expect if an agency closes, and where a money dispute goes. Much of the answer sits in the written appointment itself, and the guide says so wherever that is the case.

Office of Fair Trading pages on agent appointments and on claims for financial loss; QCAT's page on consumer and trader disputes, updated 4 August 2026.

The appointment a buyer signs

A buyer's agent in Queensland works under a real estate agent's licence, and the Property Occupations Act 2014 treats the buyer as that agent's client. The Office of Fair Trading states the starting rule on its page about appointments: a property agent cannot provide services until the client has appointed the agent in writing. For residential property the document is Form 6, which the Office of Fair Trading titles "Residential agent appointment or reappointment". The version in use since 1 May 2024 says on its face that the client may be an owner or a prospective buyer, and it lists "purchase" among the services an agent can be appointed to perform.

What the form must contain is the subject of an earlier guide in this magazine, so only the parts that matter at the end are repeated here. The appointment has to say whether it is a single appointment or a continuing one, what service is to be performed, any conditions or limits the client places on that service, the commission and other fees, and when each amount falls due. The REIQ's published commentary on the form traces those requirements to sections 102, 104 and 105 of the Act.

How long an appointment to buy can run

The figure most people remember is 90 days. It is real, but it is narrower than its reputation. The Office of Fair Trading describes the 90-day maximum as the limit on a sole or exclusive agency for selling one or two properties. The section of the Act that requires an agent to explain that limit is headed as a rule for sole and exclusive agencies, and speaks of the term of an appointment for a residential sale.

An appointment to find and buy a home is not a sole or exclusive agency to sell one. The approved form draws the line in plain words: for a sole or exclusive sale of one or two residential properties the term is negotiable up to 90 days, and for other appointments there is no limit on length. So a buyer's appointment may run for three months, for twelve, or as a continuing appointment with no end date.

Other seller protections sit in the same group and should not be assumed for a buyer, among them the printed notice on sole and exclusive agency and the guaranteed minimum of 60 days before such an agency can be ended by notice. A buyer's protection comes from different places: the requirement of a written appointment, the trust account rules and the Australian Consumer Law.

Single or continuing: why the box matters

The Office of Fair Trading describes a single appointment as one made for a one-off service and a continuing appointment as one for services over a period. A buyer's engagement can be written either way.

The choice changes how the appointment ends, and the table below sets the main cases side by side, including the seller's cases for comparison.

A single appointment that reaches its end date without a purchase simply expires. The agent then needs a fresh written appointment, or a reappointment, before doing any more work for that client. The form's reappointment part says a reappointment can be signed only in the last 14 days before the appointment ends, and that a new form is needed if any term or condition changes.

Ending it early: notice and agreement

The rule is in section 114 of the Property Occupations Act 2014, and it is short. An appointment of a property agent may be revoked by either party giving the other at least 30 days' written notice, unless the two agree in writing to an earlier day. The section sets aside two kinds of appointment for separate treatment, the open listing and the sole or exclusive agency, and both are appointments to sell. An appointment to buy is neither, so the general rule applies to it whether it is written as a single appointment or a continuing one, and whether or not it has a fixed term.

The Act then protects that right. Under the same section, a party is only required to give 30 days' written notice despite any agreement to the contrary, and a provision of an agreement is void if it requires notice of revocation to be given in any other way. Section 106 adds that the appointment must itself state, in writing, that it may be revoked on 30 days' written notice or on an earlier day the parties agree in writing.

This matters because the approved form can be read more narrowly. The Office of Fair Trading's page and the form's termination part state the 30-day rule for a continuing appointment, and the form says that fixed-term appointments other than residential sales may be ended early by mutual agreement. Read alone, that wording suggests a buyer on a fixed term needs the agency's consent to leave. Section 114 does not draw that line: agreement is one way out, and 30 days' written notice is the other. How the section applies to a particular appointment is still a matter for advice on that document.

In practice three routes are open, and they are not exclusive.

1. Agree an early end in writing. Any date both sides settle on will do.
2. Give at least 30 days' written notice. Notice should be dated, sent in a way that can be proved, and should name the appointment it ends.
3. Let a fixed term expire and decline to sign the reappointment.

Whichever route is used, the end of the appointment does not undo what was done before it. Section 114 says a revocation does not affect existing contracts the agent entered into on the client's behalf.

The engagement fee already paid

A buyer's agent arrangement often has two parts: an amount paid at the start, called an engagement or retainer fee, and a larger amount payable if a purchase happens. How those fees are set is covered in the magazine's guide to how buyer's agents are paid. The question here is narrower: when the search stops, does any of the first amount come back?

The Property Occupations Act does not fix the answer. It requires the appointment to state the fees and when they are payable, and leaves the bargain to the parties. Three wordings lead to three different results.

If the appointment describes the opening amount as a fee earned on signing, for work such as taking the brief and beginning the search, it is the agency's money from that moment and is generally not refundable when the client leaves. If it describes the amount as a payment on account of the final fee, or as a deposit against it, then the terms should also say what happens to it when no purchase occurs; where they are silent, there is a real argument about who keeps it. If the appointment promises a refund in stated circumstances, the promise applies as written, including any conditions the client had to meet.

Behind the written terms sit the consumer guarantees of the Australian Consumer Law. The ACCC explains that a service bought for personal or household use must be delivered with due care and skill, must be fit for a purpose the consumer made known, and must be delivered within a reasonable time where no time was agreed. They do not promise that a search will succeed, and a buyer who changes course is not owed a refund for that reason alone. They do mean the words "non-refundable" are not a complete answer where a service was not performed with ordinary competence. The ACCC lists refund, cancellation and compensation among the possible remedies, depending on the problem.

A success fee after the appointment ends

The second fee is the one that can surprise a former client. A buyer ends the appointment in March and in May buys a house the agent had inspected and recommended in February. Is the success fee payable?

Again the written appointment decides. The form requires the commission to be stated together with the time it becomes payable, and for a purchase that statement is usually tied to a contract being signed or settled. Appointments may also carry a clause that keeps the fee alive for a period after the end date where the client buys a property the agent introduced during the term. Where such a clause exists and is clear, ending the appointment does not switch it off.

Where the appointment has no such clause, the position is less certain. In sale appointments the idea of the agent being the effective cause of the transaction is familiar, and the approved form uses it for open listings. Whether the same reasoning carries over to a purchase depends on the appointment's wording and the facts.

A buyer leaving an appointment can reduce the room for argument by asking the agency, in writing, for a list of the properties it says it introduced during the term. The list fixes what any continuing clause can apply to while both sides still remember the search.

Ending an appointment stops the search. What was promised about money while it ran lasts as long as the paper says it does.

Money paid in advance and the trust account

Not every dollar a client hands to an agency is the agency's own. The Agents Financial Administration Act 2014 applies whenever an agent receives an amount for a transaction, or receives an amount together with a written direction about how it is to be used; the Act's own example is money given for advertising. Section 16 requires such an amount to be paid into the agent's general trust account before the end of the first business day after it is received, with a maximum penalty of 200 penalty units or two years' imprisonment.

For a buyer's agent's client, the clearest case is money handed over for a specific outlay, such as a building and pest inspection. That is money held for a purpose, and under section 21 it stays in trust until it is paid out as the Act allows. Section 22 lets the agent draw fees or expenses from it only where the agent is authorised to, and once the transaction is finalised the balance must be paid to the person entitled within 14 days of a written request, or within 42 days if no request is made.

An engagement fee that the appointment describes as earned on signing is a different thing: on that wording it is payment for a service, not money held for the client. A payment held against a future fee is closer to the line, and its treatment depends on the appointment's wording. When an appointment ends, the useful request is a written account of anything held in trust and payment of any unspent balance. The magazine's guide to agent trust accounts covers the account rules themselves.

If the agency closes or becomes insolvent

An agency can stop trading for many ordinary reasons. When a company is placed into liquidation, clients fall into two groups, and the difference between them is large.

Money properly held in a trust account is held for the people it belongs to, and the Agents Financial Administration Act gives the chief executive power to appoint a receiver over trust property in defined circumstances, such as a licensee losing the licence or abandoning the business. A client with money in trust looks to that account, not to the general pool of the company's assets.

A client who paid a fee for a service that was then not delivered is in a different position. ASIC's guide for creditors of a company in liquidation says a person who has paid for goods or services and not received them may be a creditor, and without security over the company's assets that person is an unsecured creditor. The same guide gives the order of payment: the costs of the liquidation first, then employee wages and superannuation, then employee leave, then retrenchment pay, and only then unsecured creditors, each class paid in full before the next receives anything. The liquidator reports to creditors within three months of being appointed, and a creditor who wants to share in any distribution lodges a proof of debt with supporting documents when the liquidator calls for it, with at least 14 days' notice of the deadline.

For a former client this means keeping the appointment and the receipts, and answering the liquidator's notices on time.

What the claim fund covers, and what it leaves out

The claim fund is established by the Agents Financial Administration Act and administered through the Office of Fair Trading. It compensates people who lose money because of particular wrongs by an agent or an agent's employee. It is not a guarantee of every dollar paid to a licensed business.

Read against a failed search, the table explains a hard result. A fee that was the agency's own money under the appointment, paid for a service that was performed badly or not finished, is a contract and consumer law dispute, not a claim on the fund as the Office of Fair Trading describes it. An outlay that should have been in trust and was not is what the fund is for.

The process has firm deadlines. The Office of Fair Trading says a claim must be lodged within one year of the person becoming aware of the loss and no more than three years after the event, and that QCAT can be asked to extend the time. Once a claim is lodged the agent has 14 days to respond and 28 days to settle directly; if there is no settlement, the claimant must ask in writing within 30 days after that period for the claim to continue. Simple claims are decided by the Office of Fair Trading and more complex ones are referred to QCAT. A decision can be taken to QCAT for review within 28 days. Lodging a claim costs nothing.

Unfair terms in a standard form appointment

The approved form is set by the State, but terms an agency attaches to it are the agency's own. Where they are offered to every client on the same basis, they are what the ACCC calls a standard form contract: one prepared in advance that the customer can only take or leave. A contract is presumed to be standard form unless the party that prepared it proves otherwise.

Under the Australian Consumer Law, as the ACCC explains it, a term in such a contract is unfair if it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations, is not reasonably necessary to protect the legitimate interests of the party it benefits, and would cause financial or other harm if enforced. The ACCC's examples include terms that allow one party but not the other to end the contract, to change its terms, or to penalise the other side for ending.

Two limits matter for a fee dispute. The law does not apply to a term that sets the upfront price or defines the main subject of the contract, and it does not apply to a term that another law requires or permits. So the size of an engagement fee disclosed at the start is not open to challenge as unfair merely for being high. A term about exit is a different kind of term, and one that lets only one side end the contract is among the ACCC's own examples. Since 9 November 2023 it has been unlawful to propose, use or rely on an unfair term in a standard form contract made or renewed from that date, and a term found unfair is void while the rest of the contract continues if it can.

Only a court can finally decide that a term is unfair. The ACCC points consumers first to the business and then to the consumer protection agency of their State, which in Queensland is the Office of Fair Trading.

Complaints and money disputes: where each goes

A question about conduct, meaning whether the agent acted as the licence requires, is covered in the magazine's guide to complaints about a Queensland agent. A question about money, meaning whether a refund is owed or a fee is payable, follows the path below.

The Office of Fair Trading's page on consumer disputes, updated 2 April 2026, says it normally replies within 10 working days of receiving a complaint and aims to resolve most conciliations within 30 days. It also says plainly that it cannot make judgments or orders and cannot force a business to give a refund; only a tribunal or court can.

For most engagement fee disputes that tribunal is QCAT. Its page on consumer and trader disputes, updated 4 August 2026, sets the limit at $25,000 excluding interest for a dispute arising from a contract for services between a consumer and a trader. Larger claims go to the Magistrates Court, which hears up to $150,000. QCAT says claims above $1,500 go to mediation before any hearing, and that proceedings must generally be started within six years. An agency seeking an unpaid success fee uses the same system from the other direction. The magazine's guide to QCAT and property disputes covers the tribunal's process and fees.

Every one of these stops begins by asking for the signed appointment, and decides the matter largely on what it says about term, notice and fees.

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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