Underquoting roundtable and action plan
In response to concerns raised by consumers, industry, and government, NSW Fair Trading has established an underquoting roundtable to bring together sector leaders and stakeholders.
The industry roundtable and action plan will allow NSW Fair Trading to continuously focus on addressing underquoting issues.
Underquoting roundtable structure
The roundtable is designed to:
- strengthen professional practices and standards in the property industry
- discuss regulation of underquoting and other price representations
- empower prospective buyers with accurate information
- protect the interests of home sellers
- promote leadership and accountability across agencies.
Action plan
The roundtable has developed a detailed action plan to guide regulatory, compliance, and education activities.
This plan sets out practical measures for targeting non-compliance, raising professional standards, and strengthening consumer protections.
Action plan register
Raising confidence and accountability through strong regulatory compliance
| No | Action | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Establish underquoting as a NSW Fair Trading regulatory priority, under which Fair Trading will deploy new and existing resources to create end-to-end visibility of complaints and other intel, compliance and enforcement. The Strata and Property Services Commissioner will be responsible for leading implementation of this action plan under the regulatory priority and measuring its success. | Complete |
| 2 | Deploy data and intelligence products to target repeat underquoting with a focus on products that scrape third party platforms. Build enhanced data analytics and intelligence capability within NSW Fair Trading to identify and target high risk practitioners and consumer harms. | Ongoing |
| 3 | Monitor the emergence of crowd sourcing platforms and capabilities, including the possible re-launch of the Auction Snitch app that showed early promise. Initiatives that empower consumers, deliver marketplace intelligence in real time, and surface evidence of systematic poor professional practices will be valuable in the campaign against underquoting. | On track |
| 4 | Deploy inspectors in metropolitan and regional areas for periodic blitzes of underquoting laws with each operation having minimum key performance indicators informed by data-led risk profiles. | Ongoing |
| 5 | Develop an underquoting manual for Fair Trading inspectors to standardise enforcement (including the appropriate response to identified misconduct), lift understanding in industry of how NSW Fair Trading will enforce laws and allow surge capacity within regulator to deploy additional inspectors during blitz operations. | Complete |
| 6 | Reinforce accountability of agency leadership and supervision in eradicating underquoting. The Strata and Property Services Commissioner to review the Supervision Guidelines for any uplift needed in the requirements for agency operational procedures on price representations and underquoting. | On track |
| 7 | Publicise compliance and enforcement outcomes including outcomes of compliance blitzes, enforceable undertakings, court proceedings or licence disqualification through social media and NSW Fair Trading newsletters. NSW Fair Trading to prepare standardised content for industry stakeholders to share among members and networks. | Ongoing |
Empowering regulators, consumers and industry through targeted legislative reform
| No | Action | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | NSW Fair Trading to prepare advice to Government for further legislative reform informed by this action plan, including: a) viability of prescribing a requirement for a Statement of Information based on Victorian model to be on all digital advertising and available at all inspections/auction of the property, | On track |
| 9 | Review the amounts of existing penalties, including PINs, and whether any new penalties need to be added, including lifting maximum penalties to be proportionate to commissions earned from sale, including considering imposing a maximum penalty of three times the commission. | On track |
Raising professional standards through leadership and education
| No | Action | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | Collaboration with real estate portals to set a baseline consumer sentiment relating to price transparency and minimum mandated standards for advertising and measure changes to sentiment over time as this action plan is implemented. | Not yet started |
| 11 | Launch of NSW Fair Trading mandatory underquoting course on the TAFE NSW platform (with thanks to REINSW for provision of subject matter expertise and content). Central themes are consumer protection, accountability and confidence. | Complete |
| 12 | Sector leaders, major brands and industry associations to champion best practice and low tolerance for licensed agents who undermine trust and professionalism in the real estate sector. This will include provision of intelligence sharing arrangements with NSW Fair Trading to limit market based retaliatory action when illegal or unethical practices are reported. | Ongoing |
| 13 | Industry and NSW Fair Trading to collaborate on consumer and regulatory education material deployed through NSW Government social media, industry social media and industry and consumer peaks networks that explains what underquoting is, agents’ obligations to provide accurate pricing to sellers and buyers and how consumers can enforce their rights. | Ongoing |
Reach out to NSW Fair Trading
Online: Contact us
In person: Service NSW centre