In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Titles Queensland opened a new online lodgement channel at 8:30am today, Monday 20 July 2026. The Titles Electronic Drop Box, which the registry calls TED, lets people who are acting for themselves lodge certain documents with the land registry from a computer, tablet or phone, and lets anyone who receives a requisition from the registry answer it online. The registry announced the launch in a Titles Alert dated 30 June 2026.
The channel does not touch the way a sale settles. Solicitors, conveyancers and lenders continue to lodge transfers and mortgages through electronic conveyancing, which Titles Queensland has required for those documents since February 2023. What changes is the fringe of the system: the simple, single-party dealings that owners often lodge on their own, several of which have to be registered before a property can be sold at all.
Titles Queensland, Titles Alert of 30 June 2026 and lodgement service information.
What opened today
Until now, a person lodging a title document without a lawyer has done so on paper, by post or by leaving it in the drop box at the registry's Brisbane office. TED is the online equivalent. Titles Queensland describes it as a new online lodgement channel that allows self-represented individuals to lodge securely from anywhere.
The registry's published information sets out how it works. The service is web-based and runs on a desktop computer, tablet or smartphone. Documents are uploaded as PDF or TIFF files of no more than 15 megabytes each. Up to three dealings can be lodged at a time. Payment is by credit card through a secure portal, and the registry says there is no additional cost for using the channel: the standard lodgement fees apply.
Related readAfter settlement: registration, keys, notices and what arrives laterThe launch comes less than three weeks after the registry's fees for 2026-27 took effect on 1 July, under a separate alert. Nothing in the drop box alert changes those fees: a change of name lodged online costs what it would have cost on paper. The saving for the customer is in postage, travel and time, and in knowing by email that the document has arrived.
The service has two functions. One is new lodgements, for a defined list of dealings. The other is requisitions, which is the function the registry's alert emphasises for all customers and not only for those acting for themselves.
The eight dealings it accepts
TED is not a general alternative to electronic conveyancing. It takes eight kinds of document, each involving a single party and none involving a payment between buyer and seller.
| Form | Dealing |
|---|---|
| Form 4 | Request to record a death |
| Form 5 or 5A | Transmission by death, where a grant has been issued |
| Form 14 | Change of name of an individual |
| Form 14 | Change of name of a company |
| Form 14 | Correction of an owner's details |
| Form 14 | Correction of a company name |
| Form 14 | Appointment of an administrator |
| Form 14 | Change of a body corporate's address |
Titles Queensland, lodgement service information for the Titles Electronic Drop Box.
The list has a common thread. These are the dealings that bring the register up to date with a change in an owner's circumstances, as opposed to a change of owner by sale. A person who has married and taken a new name, an owner whose name was misspelt on the title when they bought, a surviving joint owner after a death and an executor dealing with an estate under a grant of probate are the people the list is written for.
A transfer between a seller and a buyer is not on it, and neither is a mortgage or its release. Those remain within electronic conveyancing.
Requisitions move online
A requisition is the registry's way of saying a lodged document cannot be registered as it stands. The registry sends a notice identifying what needs to be corrected or supplied, and the document waits until the answer arrives.
Related readARNECC briefs industry on tighter rules for settlement platforms and firmsTitles Queensland's alert says the new service processes requisitions electronically, sends notifications by email and allows responses to be made online for requisitions issued after the launch date. The registry's information adds that the requisition notice itself will say how the dealing is to be returned, and that questions about a requisition are to be sent by email using its requisition enquiry template.
For a self-represented person, this removes a second trip to the post office from a process that already involved one. For the registry, it removes paper from a step that sits between lodgement and registration. The registry's stated processing time for an instrument that is correctly lodged is five business days; a requisition stops that clock, so how quickly it can be answered affects how long a dealing takes overall.
Why these dealings matter before a sale
None of the eight dealings is a sale, but several of them commonly have to be completed before one.
A transfer is signed by the registered owner. If the register shows an owner under a former name, or with an error in the name, the mismatch has to be explained or corrected before the transfer can be registered. If the register still shows two joint owners and one has died, the death has to be recorded so the survivor appears as the owner. If the registered owner has died and the property is being sold by the estate, the personal representative first has to be recorded as owner by a transmission by death.
In an ordinary sale the seller's solicitor or conveyancer notices such gaps when the title is searched and deals with them as part of the conveyance. But some owners attend to them earlier and on their own, particularly after a death in the family, when there may be no sale in prospect. Those are the lodgements that until now have gone into an envelope or the Brisbane drop box.
Related readAUSTRAC guidance: delayed checks due 28 days in, or 3 before settlementThe practical link to settlement is time. A name that does not match, or a death that has not been recorded, found in the last week before settlement can hold up a sale, and the standard Queensland contract makes time of the essence. A correction lodged and registered months earlier is one problem fewer on the day.
What does not change for a settlement
Titles Queensland's alert is explicit that professionals using the existing electronic lodgement and electronic conveyancing channels are unaffected.
The registry's mandate, in force since 20 February 2023, applies to industry professionals and corporate entities lodging any of nine required instruments over freehold land. The list includes the transfer, the release of mortgage, the national mortgage form, the caveat and the priority notice. Two operators of electronic lodgment networks are approved in Queensland, PEXA and Sympli, and a professional lodges through one of them.
The mandate has always had exemptions, and the first on the registry's list is an unrepresented individual. A person selling or buying without a solicitor or conveyancer is not required to use electronic conveyancing. TED does not replace that exemption or extend to it: a self-represented party to a sale still lodges a transfer on paper. The registry's information says paper lodgements may be posted to its GPO box in Brisbane, that mail goes through security screening and that it may need extra processing time.
The other general exemptions on the registry's list cover cases where the electronic system cannot handle a transaction, circumstances beyond a lodger's control, lodgements that combine a required instrument with one that cannot be lodged electronically, documents rejected or withdrawn after the money has already changed hands, and certain exemptions under the Duties Act. In each of those cases a professional may still lodge on paper, so the closure of the physical drop box later in the year reaches them as well.
One overlap is worth noting. A transmission by death is among the nine instruments professionals must lodge electronically, and it is also among the eight dealings TED accepts from people acting for themselves. The channel depends on who is lodging, not only on the form.
The dates ahead
The launch is the first of three dates in the registry's alert.
- 20 July 2026The Titles Electronic Drop Box opens at 8:30am for eight dealing types and for requisition responses.
- 31 July 2026Lodger boxes at the registry close.
- 4 September 2026The physical drop box at the Brisbane office closes at 4pm.
The sequence gives self-represented customers a little under seven weeks in which the old and new channels both exist. After 4 September, a person acting for themselves will choose between the online drop box, for a dealing on the list, and the post, for anything else.
The registry has described the changes as an evolution of its lodgement service. They follow the same direction as the 2023 mandate: documents arrive electronically, and the counter and the paper tray play a smaller part each year. For most buyers and sellers, whose representatives lodge everything for them, the change will pass unnoticed. For an owner tidying up a title after a marriage or a death, it means the job can be done without a trip into the city.
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.
