Property 101: NSW private treaty agency agreement price offer disclosure

The requirement that the agency agreement for the sale of a NSW residential property by private treaty, state the price at which the property is to be offered for sale applies from 15 August 2016.

The requirement was previously removed as it was considered that the recent underquoting law reforms in the Act made this requirement redundant. However, stakeholders asked for this requirement to be reinstated. This was to reinforce the importance of clarifying the offer price for the seller and agent, and may help prevent underquoting. This ‘price offer’ information may also be useful for NSW Fair Trading when investigating claims of underquoting.

Following consultation with industry stakeholders, the following ‘price offer’ requirement is reinstated. It applies to agency agreements for the sale of a residential property:

If the agreement provides for the property to be offered for sale by private treaty, the agreement must specify the price at which the property is to be offered.

Agents who are using an agency agreement for the sale of residential property, on or after 15 August 2016, should check that the offer price term is in the agreement. If not, they should insert the term in the agreement and have the agent and seller each initial and date the insertion.

This requirement is included in clause 5 in Schedule 8 of the 2014 Regulation.