Knowing Your State: the Australian property rules that change at the border

The property rules that change at the border. All eight Australian jurisdictions, side by side.

Most property advice tells buyers there is a cooling-off period. In Western Australia there is none. Most advice says to be suspicious when an agent will not give a price guide. In Queensland, an agent selling at auction is prohibited by law from giving one. The generic advice does not merely fail to apply in those states, it points the opposite way. There are more of these inside.

This booklet covers the three areas where the difference between states is large enough to change what you should actually do:

Cooling off. Whether you get one, how long it runs, when the clock starts, what it costs to use, and how it can be signed away.

Price guides and underquoting. What an agent is allowed to advertise, what is banned, and what the absence of a number tells you.

Auctions. Which protections disappear the moment a property goes under the hammer, and the back doors several states have closed.

For each jurisdiction there is also the name of the regulator and where a complaint goes, which is the single most useful piece of information nobody publishes next to the rules.

It deliberately does not cover stamp duty rates or first home buyer concessions, because those change at every state budget and a printed table would be wrong within a year. It points you to the source instead.

A companion to The Property Playbook. PDF, instant download.

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Published by Lantern Path Books. General information only, not financial or legal advice. Property law is state law and it changes; check anything here against the current rules before you rely on it.