# Unlicensed staff in a Queensland agency: what they may and may not do
Receptionists, assistants, marketing staff and offshore helpers hold no licence. Where Queensland law draws the line between office work and an agent's work.
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Most people who work in a Queensland real estate office never sell a house. They answer the phone, book the inspections, build the listings, chase the paperwork and keep the diary of someone who does sell. Many of them hold no licence and no registration certificate, and for most of what they do, none is needed.
The difficulty is the edge of the job. A receptionist is asked what the owner would take. A personal assistant is left to run the last ten minutes of an open home. A virtual assistant overseas starts answering tenant emails about a rent increase. Each of those moments sits near a line drawn by the Property Occupations Act 2014, and the person who crosses it, and the agent who employs them, can both commit an offence.
This guide sets out where that line runs for staff with no licence or certificate: what the Act says, which tasks its own exception covers, which tasks the Office of Fair Trading lists as a salesperson's work, how open homes, trainees and offshore assistants fit in, and what unlicensed work does to a commission. It describes the general rules; how they apply to a particular role in a particular office depends on the facts.
200penalty units, the top fine for unlicensed work
$34,540that maximum in dollars for an individual
4 to 6 weeksapproximate processing time for a registration
Property Occupations Act 2014, section 97; Office of Fair Trading breaches and penalties page, updated 1 July 2026; Australian Business Licence and Information Service listing for salesperson registration.
## What the Act actually licenses
The Act does not license job titles. It licenses activities. Section 26 lists what a real estate agent licence authorises its holder to do "as an agent for others for reward": to buy, sell (other than by auction), exchange or let real property or businesses, or interests in them; to negotiate for any of those; and to collect rents. A licensed agent may do those things running a business alone or with others, or as someone else's employee.
Three ideas in that sentence do most of the work. The activity must be done for someone else, which is why an owner who sells or lets their own home needs no licence. It must be done for reward. And negotiating counts on its own: a person does not have to sign anything, or close anything, to be performing an agent's activity.
Section 97 then turns the list into an offence. A person must not, as an agent for someone else for reward, perform an activity that may be done under a property agent licence unless they hold a licence that authorises it or are otherwise permitted by law to do it. A property agent, under section 15, is an auctioneer or a real estate agent. The same section says a person also "acts as a property agent" by advertising or stating that they perform one of the activities, or by holding themselves out as ready to perform one. A business card or an email signature can therefore matter as much as what happens at a listing.
The second tier is the real estate salesperson. Section 115 of the Act deals with what a registration certificate authorises, and the Office of Fair Trading's registration page puts it in plain terms: a person must be registered to work as a salesperson for a real estate agent, and a salesperson can only work as an employee. A contractor needs a full licence.
## The exception that covers office staff
Read alone, the offence in section 97 would catch a great deal of ordinary office work. A receptionist who takes a tenant's rent at the counter is, on the face of it, collecting rent for a landlord, for an employer who is paid to do so.
Subsection (4) answers that. A person does not act as a property agent only because, as an employee of a property agent at the agent's registered office or other place of business, the person does one of three things:
- collects and issues receipts for rent;
- gives out a list of premises available for rent, prepared by or for the agent;
- does administrative work relating to the agent's property agent activities.
That short list is the legal footing for the unlicensed half of the industry, and each part carries a condition. The person is an employee. The employer is a licensed agent. The work happens at the agent's registered office or another place where the agent carries on business. And the task is either one of the two named ones or is "administrative work", a phrase the Act does not define.
Read the wording
The office exception follows the employee, the employer and the place
Section 97(4) protects an employee of a property agent who does rent receipting, hands out the rental list or does administrative work at the agent's registered office or other place of business. It is not a general permission for anyone to do paperwork for an agent from anywhere.
## Work that needs a registration certificate
If administrative work is one side of the line, the other side is set out by the regulator. The Office of Fair Trading's page on salesperson registration, last updated on 22 September 2026, lists what a registered salesperson may do. For everyone else in the office, it is the practical test.
According to that page, a salesperson may buy, sell, exchange or rent property, including houses, businesses and land; negotiate on behalf of a buyer, seller or landlord; open up and show property to buyers or renters; and inspect, assess and advertise property for sale or rent, including setting up signs. A salesperson may not conduct auctions and may not operate trust accounts.
The REIQ has described the same boundary from the other direction. In an article on Fair Trading requirements published in December 2019, the institute said a person without a certificate or licence should not undertake the activities involved in appraising, listing, showing, renting or selling real estate, and should not make representations to the public about properties.
Put together, the sources sort everyday tasks as follows.
Where common office tasks sitStaff with no licence and no registration certificate
Task
Where it sits
Basis
Receipting rent at the office
Covered by the exception
Named in section 97(4)
Handing out the rental list
Covered by the exception
Named in section 97(4)
Phones, diaries, data entry, typing documents as directed
Administrative work
Section 97(4), general limb
Negotiating price, rent or terms
Agent's or salesperson's work
Section 26; Fair Trading list
Opening up and showing a property
Agent's or salesperson's work
Fair Trading list
Appraising or assessing a property
Agent's or salesperson's work
Fair Trading list; REIQ
Listing a seller or signing up a landlord
Agent's or salesperson's work
Section 26; REIQ
Operating the trust account
Outside a salesperson's certificate too
Fair Trading list
Property Occupations Act 2014, sections 26 and 97; Office of Fair Trading salesperson registration page; REIQ article on Fair Trading requirements, 2019. Administrative examples are the usual ones; the Act does not list them.
Collecting rent sits on both sides. At the office counter, by an employee, it is expressly protected. Away from the office, or done by someone who is not the agent's employee, it is one of the activities in section 26.
## Receptionists, assistants and marketing staff
For the front desk, the exception fits neatly. Answering calls, taking messages, booking an inspection time that the property manager or salesperson has made available, entering an enquiry in the database, handing a visitor the rental list and receipting a rent payment are all either named in section 97(4) or plainly administrative.
What changes the picture is the content of the conversation. A caller who asks whether the property is still available is asking for information. A caller who asks whether the seller would accept less, or whether the landlord would agree to a pet if the rent went up, is opening a negotiation, and negotiating is a licensed activity by itself under section 26. Taking the question down and passing it to the person who holds the listing keeps the receptionist on the administrative side. The same goes for price: assessing a property is on the Fair Trading list of a salesperson's work.
Personal assistants and sales associates sit closest to the line, because their job is to extend a salesperson's reach. Preparing an appointment form or a contract for the agent to review and sign, compiling comparable sales into a report the agent will present, ordering photography and signboards, uploading a listing, booking building and pest access, and keeping buyers' details up to date are support for a licensed person's activity. Presenting an offer to a seller, telling a buyer what figure would secure the property, or sitting with an owner to sign the appointment is the activity. An REIQ careers article dated January 2025 lists the office administrator among the jobs done with a registration certificate, and many assistants are registered even when most of their day is administration.
Marketing staff raise a narrower question. "Advertise property for sale or rent, including setting up signs" is on the Fair Trading list of what a salesperson may do, and section 97 treats advertising that a person performs agency activities as acting as an agent. A designer laying out a brochure, or a coordinator scheduling a post for a licensed agent's listing, is working under direction on the agency's own campaign. The line comes closer when marketing staff answer the buyer enquiries the advertising brings in, or appear in content as the person to deal with on a sale.
> A job title decides nothing. What decides it is whether the person is helping a licensed agent do the work, or doing the agent's work.
## Helpers at an open home
Open homes are where support staff most often find themselves doing more than was planned. The Fair Trading list is direct on the central point: opening up and showing property to buyers or renters is something a registered salesperson may do. An open home is exactly that, so the person conducting it needs a certificate or a licence.
A helper alongside a licensed or registered person is a different matter, but the Act gives less comfort here than it does in the office. The exception in section 97(4) is tied to the agent's registered office or other place of business. A seller's lounge room on a Saturday is not obviously either. The tasks usually given to a helper at an inspection are narrow and practical: greeting visitors, taking names for the attendance record, handing out the brochure the agent prepared, watching rooms for security, and pointing questions to the agent.
A tribunal decision shows where the regulator has drawn the line in practice. In 2018 the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal dealt with a licensed agent who had employed a relative with no registration certificate, under the equivalent rule of the Act that preceded the current one. The tribunal found the relative had engaged with prospective buyers, including at open houses and in negotiations, and that the agent had been present while it happened. No consumer lost money. The agent was disqualified from holding a licence or certificate for three years. A licensed person in the room did not turn the helper's conversations into administration.
## Trainees waiting on a certificate
New entrants usually join an office before their paperwork is finished. The Fair Trading page says an applicant for registration must be at least 18, pass the required training, not be disqualified, and not have been convicted of a serious offence in the past five years; the training is a set of 12 units from the Certificate IV in Real Estate Practice.
On timing, the government's business licence service lists the processing time for a salesperson registration as approximately 4 to 6 weeks. The Fair Trading page itself gives no fixed period. As at its September 2026 update it said application volumes were higher than usual and affecting processing, that criminal history checks may take some time, and that a New Zealand criminal history request takes 20 working days.
Neither page describes a provisional status for a first-time applicant. The registration page states the rule without a qualifier: a person must be registered to work as a salesperson. Until the certificate is issued, a trainee is in the same legal position as any other unregistered employee, and the work available is the work in section 97(4).
From new starter to salesperson
TrainingThe 12 required units are completed through a registered training organisation. Office work is administrative only.
Application lodgedFees are paid and criminal history checks begin. Nothing changes in what the trainee may do.
Certificate issuedThe trainee may now show property and negotiate, as an employee of a licensed agent.
A trainee in the waiting weeks can still sit in on listing presentations, shadow inspections, build the database and draft documents for review. What waits for the certificate is the trainee's own dealing with buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants.
## Outsourced and offshore assistants
Many agencies now send work outside the office: to a contractor working from home, to an outsourcing firm, or to a virtual assistant in another country. Three separate sets of rules meet at that point, and no single piece of Fair Trading or REIQ guidance found for this guide deals with all of them together.
The first is licensing. The office exception in section 97(4) is written for an employee of the agent, working at the agent's registered office or other place of business. An outsourced assistant may be neither. That does not make every outsourced task unlawful, because a task that is not an agent's activity in the first place, such as bookkeeping data entry, formatting documents or retouching photographs, needs no exception. It does mean the tasks the exception protects, rent receipting in particular, do not obviously travel with the work when it leaves the office. The Fair Trading page on holding a licence makes a related point about engagement: a person working on contract rather than as an employee probably needs a full licence, and the page recommends independent legal advice on the question.
The second is privacy. Tenancy applications, identity documents and bank details are personal information. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner says the Privacy Act applies to organisations with an annual turnover of more than $3 million, and to some smaller businesses for particular activities, which it lists as including obligations under anti-money laundering law and residential tenancy databases. For an organisation that is covered, the commissioner's guidelines on Australian Privacy Principle 8 say that giving personal information to an overseas contractor to perform services is generally a disclosure. Before it happens, the organisation must take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient does not breach the principles, usually through an enforceable contract, and the Australian organisation generally remains accountable for what the overseas recipient does with the information.
The third is trust money. A registration certificate does not allow its holder to operate a trust account, so an unregistered assistant, onshore or offshore, starts further back still. In an article published by the REIQ in April 2023, the then Acting Fair Trading Commissioner advised principals to separate high-risk tasks such as receipting, creating new creditors and making payments, and wrote: "Limit access to trust account transactions to only a handful of employees, but never just one employee." The same article notes that a principal may be held jointly liable if an employee misappropriates trust money. Fair Trading's trust money page adds that each receipt must show the name of the person who completed it.
## The offences and their maximum fines
The Act creates matching offences for the person who does the work and for the business that puts them there. Section 97 covers acting as a property agent without a licence. Section 151 is headed "Acting as real estate salesperson", section 98 "Employment of persons in real estate business", and section 137 makes it an offence to sell, lend or borrow a registration certificate.
The Office of Fair Trading's breaches and penalties page, updated on 1 July 2026, gives the current maximums for individuals.
Unlicensed work: maximum penaltiesIndividuals, from 1 July 2026
Offence
Maximum fine
Imprisonment
Working without a licence or registration
$34,540
Up to 2 years
Employing an unlicensed or unregistered person
$34,540
None listed
Selling, hiring out or lending a licence or registration
$34,540
Up to 2 years
Claiming commission without the right to it
$34,540
None listed
Office of Fair Trading, property industry breaches and penalties, updated 1 July 2026. Section 97 sets the first maximum at 200 penalty units; $34,540 is 200 units at $172.70.
These are ceilings, not tariffs: a court sets the actual amount, and the examples further down show fines well below the maximum. The Fair Trading page notes that the figures are for individuals and that a corporation could face up to five times the maximum, which on $34,540 is $172,700.
Prosecution is only one route. A licensee or registered salesperson can also face disciplinary proceedings in the tribunal, as the 2018 decision described above shows.
## What unlicensed work does to the commission
The licensing rules reach the money as well. Section 89 of the Act restricts the recovery of reward or expense where there is no proper authorisation. The REIQ's legal commentary on the provision, written by a law firm partner and published in December 2020, summarises its effect: a person is not entitled to sue for, recover or keep a reward or expense for performing a property agent's activity unless the person held a property agent licence when the activity was performed. Keeping or pursuing the money is itself an offence, with the maximum shown in the table above.
The word "keep" matters. The same commentary describes a Queensland Court of Appeal decision about an unlicensed intermediary who introduced buyers to a developer's apartments for a fee. The intermediary sued for $70,000 plus GST in unpaid commission. The developer counterclaimed for the commission it had already paid, and the Court of Appeal ordered $121,000 to be refunded. The rule did not just block the unpaid invoice; it unwound the paid ones.
For an agency, commission rests on a chain: a licensed agent, validly appointed, with the work on the transaction done by people authorised to do it.
## Two outcomes from the public record
The Office of Fair Trading publishes court outcomes, and one entry from this year shows how the offences are charged in practice. On 27 May 2026 the Brisbane Magistrates Court dealt with a sole operator who had managed a property for its owner on short-term letting platforms: advertising it, letting it, collecting the rent and passing the income on. A Department of Justice statement, last updated on 2 June 2026, says the conduct ran from 3 September 2022 to 16 February 2023 and that the operator held no real estate licence.
The operator was found guilty of two offences under the Property Occupations Act: acting as a property agent, and recovering reward or expense without proper authorisation. The court imposed a $5,000 fine, ordered $9,594.70 in letting fees and expenses kept during the period to be repaid, and ordered $9,250 in costs, a total of $23,844.70. No conviction was recorded. In the statement, the Fair Trading Commissioner said licensing brings criminal history checks, training and the requirement to keep rental money in a trust account.
The case was not about an office employee, but it shows the two sections working as a pair: one for doing the work, one for keeping the fee.
The 2018 tribunal decision completes the picture from inside an agency: a licensed principal, a family member helping out, open homes and conversations with buyers, no loss to anyone, and a three-year disqualification for the person who held the licence. Unlicensed staff are a normal and lawful part of a Queensland office; both outcomes concern people who went on to let, show or negotiate.