Title searches rise to $25.71 as Titles Queensland lifts fees on 1 July

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Titles Queensland confirmed on 15 June 2026 that its revised fees for the 2026-27 financial year take effect at 9:00am on Wednesday 1 July. The notice, numbered Titles Alert 239, says the current fees keep applying until 30 June and that the registry's online fee calculator will switch to the new amounts at the same moment.

For most people the titles registry is something a conveyancer deals with. Since 1 August 2025 that has been a little less true. Queensland's seller disclosure scheme requires every seller to hand a buyer a title search and a copy of the registered plan before the buyer signs, so the price of those two documents is now part of the cost of putting almost any property on the market. Under the fee list published with the alert, a current title search goes from $24.69 to $25.71 and a registered plan image from $26.46 to $27.56.

Titles Queensland fee lists for 2025-26 and 2026-27, standard fees, published with Titles Alert 239 of 15 June 2026.

What the registry announced

Alert 239 is short. It states that the revised fees for 2026-27 commence on 1 July 2026 under the Queensland Future Fund (Titles Registry) Act 2021, that the fee calculator on the Titles Queensland website will show the new figures from 9:00am that day, and that the full list is available as a document on the same site. It is the second notice on the subject: Titles Alert 238, dated 19 May 2026, first told practitioners that revised fees were coming on 1 July and pointed them to the same list.

Neither alert quotes a percentage. The two fee lists, read side by side, supply it. The standard fee for a current title search rises by $1.02, which is 4.1 per cent. The historical title search rises by $1.51, the plan image by $1.10 and the image of a registered dealing by $2.00, each a rise of about 4.2 per cent. The lodgement fees move by the same proportion. Across the lines that matter in a house or unit sale, the increase sits between 4.1 and 4.2 per cent.

The alert also says that pricing for the registry's Fast Track and Pre-Examination services is set out separately on its services page. Those are optional services used mainly by developers and surveyors and are outside the ordinary run of a home sale.

The two searches every seller now buys

The reason a routine fee notice matters more than it once did lies in the Property Law Act 2023. From 1 August 2025, the Queensland Government's guidance on the seller disclosure scheme says, a seller of residential property, commercial property or vacant land must give the buyer a completed disclosure statement, known as Form 2, together with a set of prescribed certificates, before the buyer signs the contract.

Two of those certificates come straight from the titles registry. The first is a title search, the one-page record of who owns the lot and what is registered against it: mortgages, easements, covenants, caveats. The second is the survey plan that shows the lot's boundaries and dimensions. The Government guidance lists both among the documents a seller must obtain, alongside pool safety certificates where there is a pool, certain building and environmental notices, and a body corporate certificate where the lot is in a community titles scheme.

Before the scheme began, these searches were usually ordered by the buyer's side after the contract was signed, as part of checking what had been bought. They are still ordered then. What has changed is that the seller now orders them first, before the property can be put under contract at all, and the buyer's conveyancer generally repeats the title search close to settlement to confirm nothing has been registered in the meantime. One sale can therefore involve the same search several times over.

What the searches cost, before and after

The table sets out the registry's standard fees for the documents most often pulled in a residential sale. They are Titles Queensland's own fees as shown on its two published lists. The lists also show a lower fee for what the registry calls designated entities: for those users a current title search goes from $20.23 to $21.07 and a plan image from $21.98 to $22.89.

For a seller of a freestanding house with a clear title, the registry part of the disclosure bundle is the first two rows: $51.15 until the end of June and $53.27 from July, a difference of $2.12. The amount is small. It is also unavoidable, because the Property Law Act gives a buyer the right to end the contract at any time before settlement if the prescribed certificates were not handed over before signing.

The fourth row matters when the title search shows something registered against the lot. An easement for drainage or access, a covenant about building materials or a registered lease is described on the search only by a dealing number. To see what the document actually says, someone has to buy its image, and from July each one costs $50.16. A lot with two easements and a covenant can add three of those to the bundle. Because Form 2 asks the seller to disclose encumbrances on the title, sellers and their advisers have good reason to read those documents before signing the statement.

Lodgement fees move by the same margin

The larger registry fee in any sale comes at the other end, when the transfer is lodged for registration after settlement. Settlement itself is another subject; the fee list simply shows what the same 1 July change does to that line.

On the 2026-27 list the base fee to lodge a transfer of one lot is $248.04, up from $238.14. Where the price is more than $180,000, the list adds $46.56 for each $10,000 or part of $10,000 above that figure; this year's amount is $44.71. Each additional lot in the same transfer also costs $46.56, up from $44.71.

A worked example, using only the wording of the two lists, shows the scale. Take a transfer of a single lot at a price of $800,000. That is $620,000 above $180,000, or 62 steps of $10,000. Lodged on 30 June, the fee is $238.14 plus 62 times $44.71, which comes to $3,010.16. Lodged on or after 1 July, it is $248.04 plus 62 times $46.56, or $3,134.76. The difference is $124.60. The figures are illustrative and leave out any concession or other fee that may apply to a particular transaction.

Most other instruments, a mortgage among them, fall under the list's general lodgement fee, which is the same $248.04 from July.

Why the date matters for sales already under way

The alert draws the line by time, not by contract date. Fees in the current list apply to anything done up to 30 June; the new list applies from 9:00am on 1 July. A sale that is signed in June and settles in July will see searches bought at the old price before signing and a transfer lodged at the new one after settlement.

For sellers preparing a property for a winter listing, the practical point is narrower. A title search bought in June is $1.02 cheaper than one bought in July, but a search is a snapshot of the register on the day it is produced. The Government's guidance on the scheme says the disclosure statement must be accurate when it is given to the buyer, and a seller who gives inaccurate information about a material matter risks the contract being terminated. A search ordered early to save a dollar and handed over weeks later, after a new mortgage or caveat has been registered, would defeat its own purpose.

Where the fees come from

Both alerts say the revision is made under the Queensland Future Fund (Titles Registry) Act 2021, the statute both notices cite as the authority for the registry's fees. The alerts do not explain how the new amounts were calculated, and the fee lists carry no commentary. What the two lists show is consistency: every line checked for this article moved by between 4.1 and 4.2 per cent, which points to a single adjustment applied across the schedule and not to a change in how any one service is priced.

The same lists show the structure of the fees is untouched. The $180,000 threshold above which the transfer fee starts to climb is the same on both. So is the $10,000 step. Only the dollar amounts have changed.

What happens next

Three things are already fixed by the alert. The current fees apply through 30 June 2026. The new fees and the updated calculator apply from 9:00am on 1 July. The complete 2026-27 list is published now, so conveyancers, settlement agents and search providers can update their own disbursement schedules before the changeover.

For buyers and sellers the change will mostly appear as slightly larger numbers on a conveyancer's account. For sellers it lands a month before the disclosure scheme's first anniversary on 1 August, at a point when ordering a title search and a plan before listing has become an ordinary first step in selling a Queensland property.

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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