Where sold prices come from: Queensland's sales data and its limits

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Kooky

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

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Type an address into a property website and, more often than not, a figure appears: sold for $870,000 in March 2023. The site did not attend the settlement and the owner did not tell it. The number arrived by one of two routes, and knowing which explains most of what puzzles people about sold prices: why some appear within days and others after months, why "price withheld" turns into a figure later, why a price is on one site and not another, and why an owner who wants it gone usually cannot have it removed.

This guide follows a Queensland sale price from the contract to the screen. It covers the State database that sits behind the industry's products, the brokers licensed to distribute it, the code that limits what they and their customers may do with owners' names, and the two kinds of suppression an owner can ask for. It describes the system in general terms, from what the Queensland Government and the data providers publish about it.

Sources: Domain help centre; Queensland Government, land valuation privacy and suppression pages.

Two routes to the screen

The first route is the agent. When a property sells, the agency that sold it updates the listing in its own software, and that update flows to the portals where the home was advertised. The agent chooses how the result is shown. Domain's guidance for agents describes the three settings it offers: the price displayed, a price range, or "do not publicly disclose". This is why a sale can show as sold within a day or two of the contract, and why the same sale can show with no figure at all.

The second route is the government. Every transfer of land in Queensland is lodged for registration, and the price paid is part of what the State records. That record is supplied in bulk to licensed data companies, which feed it into the products agents, valuers and banks use and into the consumer websites.

The two routes run on different clocks. The agent's report follows the contract. The government record follows settlement and registration, which come weeks later, and then has to travel through the data companies. Domain puts the gap at one to three months after the sale.

The database behind the figures

The government record sits in a system called QVAS, the Queensland Valuation and Sales System. It exists for a purpose that has nothing to do with property websites. The Valuer-General must value every parcel of land in the state for rating and land tax, and under the Land Valuation Act 2010 collects property information to do it. The Queensland Government's privacy page for land valuations lists what is held: owners' names and addresses, each property's sale price and sale date, and its unimproved or site value.

The code of conduct that governs the commercial use of this data describes the contents of QVAS in three groups: property details, including the street address; transaction details, such as the purchase price and the type of sale; and the names and service addresses of sellers and buyers. A service address is the one an owner nominates for official correspondence about the property, such as rates and land tax notices. For an owner-occupier it is usually the home itself. For an investor it is somewhere else, which is one reason the data is commercially interesting.

A range of this information is public. Members of the public can buy valuation roll information through the department's business centres or from resellers of property data, the Government's page says. A buyer, a solicitor or a valuer can obtain an individual record over the counter for a fee.

From the State to the screen

Very few people obtain sales data that way. Most of it travels through a chain.

The brokers are the pivot. They hold bulk access under a licence agreement obtained through the department, and their customers, the code explains, include real estate agents, valuers, surveyors, financial institutions and members of the public, who reach the data through broker products that may add other material such as photographs or maps. Pricefinder, one of the licensed brokers, describes its own position in those terms in a help article of September 2024.

This is the layer where the two routes meet. A data company's record for a house can contain the agent's reported result, the government figure, or both, and the two are reconciled when the second arrives. It is also why different products can show different things for the same sale. Cotality's help centre explains that its professional research tool, RP Data, displays sale prices that agents marked as undisclosed, flagged as such, while its consumer-facing sites do not. The company attributes that policy to an industry consultation in 2018, in which it says 95 per cent of respondents supported showing recent sale prices in professional products while keeping them out of consumer ones.

Why a withheld price reappears

The most common complaint about sold prices follows directly from the two routes. A seller asks the agent not to publish the price. The agent sets the listing to undisclosed, and the portals show "price withheld". Weeks later the figure appears anyway.

Nothing has gone wrong and no one has broken a promise. The agent's setting governs the agent's report. It has no effect on the government record. Domain's guidance says so plainly: once the government price is received, it replaces "price withheld" on the listing. The company's stated reasons are that the information is useful to people searching for property and is already publicly available.

For a seller, the practical meaning of "price withheld" is therefore a delay, not a secret. An agent who offers to keep a price confidential can keep it out of the agency's own marketing and off the portals for a period. The agent cannot keep it out of the State's records.

Who may use the data, and for what

A database of every owner's name, address and purchase price is an obvious tool for marketing, and the arrangements around QVAS are built to stop that use.

The control is a code. The Personal Identification Information in Property Data Code of Conduct, first called the QVAS Code of Conduct, came into operation in October 2009. It was developed by the information brokers with the department, the brokers that want bulk access to names and service addresses have agreed to abide by it, and it is administered by a three-person committee. The Queensland Government's privacy page describes it as self-regulated and points to it as the answer to concerns about inappropriate use of the data for direct marketing.

Its central rule is short. Using the names and service addresses for unsolicited direct marketing, by mail, by telephone or by other means, is strictly prohibited.

Pricefinder's guidance to its own customers shows how far the rule reaches. Using the data indirectly for marketing is also a breach. A mailing list compiled from QVAS data is treated as tainted and cannot be used for direct marketing. The examples of misuse it gives are ones any agent would recognise: filtering units by whether the owner lives there or is an investor, and sending letters addressed to "The Home Owner". Breaches can lead to suspension or termination of access, removal of the identified information, an apology and required training, and the committee may impose sanctions for serious or repeated breaches.

For an agency this draws a line through a common practice. The data product on the desk may be used to research a property, prepare an appraisal or check a comparable sale. It may not be used to build a list of owners to ring or write to. That restriction sits on top of the general law on telemarketing, spam and privacy, which applies whatever the source of a contact.

For an owner it supplies a remedy. A person who believes their details from the State's data have been used to market to them can complain to the code's oversight committee, in writing, and the code's website sets out the process.

Suppressing a name and address

An owner who wants less of their information in circulation has two mechanisms, and they do different things.

The first is a suppression direction from the Valuer-General. It hides the owner's name and address from public access, including name searches of the titles register and local government land records. The Queensland Government's page is clear about who qualifies. The applicant must show that their safety, another person's safety or their property may be at risk if the details are public. Harassment, stalking and threats to personal security are the examples given. A general preference for privacy is not enough.

The application is made online or on a form, with a statutory declaration explaining the reasons and the nature of the risk. Supporting evidence is optional but encouraged: a police report, a domestic violence or restraining order, or a letter from a lawyer, social worker or other professional. The Valuer-General decides and notifies the applicant as soon as practicable. A direction lasts five years, and to keep it the owner applies again before it expires with an updated declaration. A refusal comes with reasons and a right of appeal to the Magistrates Court within 42 days, and the information stays suppressed until the appeal is decided.

The second is suppression from the brokers' data. Through the code's website an owner can lodge an application to have their personal identification information, the name and service address, suppressed, with the effect that it cannot be accessed by the brokers or their clients. This is aimed at the commercial products, not at the public registers, and it is the more direct answer to unwanted marketing.

What cannot be suppressed

Neither mechanism removes the price.

The Government's page on suppression directions says so in one sentence: a suppression direction does not hide details about the sale of a property. A Queensland conveyancing firm, Sunstate Conveyancing, summarises the position in a note of February 2024: the department cannot suppress the sale price in its records, an owner can ask individual data brokers to remove it, and the brokers are not obliged to agree.

The reason lies in what sale prices are for. A valuation system depends on knowing what properties sold for, and so does every valuation a bank orders and every appraisal an agent prepares. A sale that could be removed from the record at the owner's request would be a gap in the evidence everyone else relies on.

What a suppressed record looks like, then, is a sale with no person attached: an address, a date and a price, without the buyer's name or the address for notices. For someone whose concern is being found, that is the protection that matters. For someone whose concern is neighbours knowing what they paid, the system offers very little.

How accurate is the figure

A sold price from the government record is the price on the transfer. It is reliable as a statement of what the document says. It is less reliable as a statement of what a property is worth, for reasons a careful reader of sales data keeps in mind.

The price may cover more than the land and house. A sale that included furniture, or two lots sold together, or a house sold with a business, records one figure.

The parties may not have been strangers. A transfer between relatives or related companies, or a transfer of a part share, produces a price that says little about the market. Data products may flag such sales, and may not.

The date may not be the date the bargain was struck. A contract signed in a rising market and settled four months later appears with a price agreed under earlier conditions. For an off-the-plan sale the gap can be years.

And the agent's early report can simply differ from the final figure, where a price was renegotiated before settlement. When the government figure arrives, it should prevail.

None of this makes the data untrustworthy. It makes each sale a piece of evidence to be read with its circumstances, which is how valuers treat it.

What it means in practice

For a seller, the choice to withhold a price is a choice about the first weeks. It can spare a seller attention during the settlement period. It will not keep the figure private in the long run, and an agent who says otherwise is describing the agency's own listing, not the record.

For a buyer, the same facts cut the other way. The price of a recent comparable sale that a portal shows as withheld is very likely available: in the professional products an agent or a buyer's agent uses now, and on the public sites within a few months.

For an owner troubled by marketing that seems to know who they are and what they own, the questions to ask the sender are where the details came from and whether a licensed data product was the source. If it was, the code prohibits the use, and its committee accepts complaints.

For an agency, the lesson is about the boundary between research and prospecting. The licence that puts every owner's name on the screen comes with a condition that the name not be used to market to them. An agency's systems, and the habits of its newest recruits, need to reflect it.

And for anyone with a real fear for their safety, the route is the suppression direction. It requires a reason and evidence of it, it takes effect across the public registers, and it lasts five years at a time.

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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