Underquoting laws and what your listing pages are allowed to say

In most industries, how you display a price is a marketing decision. In Australian residential real estate it is a regulated one, and the regulation is different depending on which state the property is in.

Underquoting rules exist because advertising a property well below its likely selling price wastes buyers' time and money. They have teeth, and enforcement has been getting more active rather than less. For anyone building an agency website, that turns price into a field with rules attached rather than a box you type into.

Most agency sites treat price as free text. That is where the trouble starts.

Why free text price is a liability

A text field lets an agent type anything. "Offers above $750,000". "$750,000 plus". "Contact agent". "Auction". "$700,000 to $800,000". Some of those are fine, some are risky, and the website has no idea which is which.

It also makes the rest of the job harder. You cannot filter reliably on a text field, so your search results are approximate. You cannot check consistency between what the listing says and what the agency agreement says. And when the rules change, which they do, you have no way to find the listings that need updating other than reading all of them.

Structured price data fixes all of that at once. A price type (fixed, range, auction, expressions of interest), a lower bound, an upper bound where relevant, and the fields the site needs to display it correctly. The template then renders it in a consistent, compliant format every time, and an agent cannot invent a new format at nine at night.

Auctions change what the page has to do

Auction is the default sale method in large parts of Australia, and it makes the listing page work harder than a fixed price listing does.

A buyer looking at an auction listing needs the auction date and time, the inspection times, the deposit expectation, and where the required documentation sits. If your template was designed around a price and a description, all of that gets crammed into the description as prose, where it cannot be filtered, cannot be added to a calendar and reads as clutter.

Inspection times in particular deserve real fields. They are the most time-sensitive thing on the page, they change weekly, and they are the reason a lot of people visit the listing at all. If updating them means editing a paragraph, they will go stale.

Your website is not the primary channel, and that is fine

Worth being honest about something. In Australia, realestate.com.au and Domain get the buyer traffic. Your own website is not going to beat them for a search like "houses for sale" in your suburb, and building as though it might is a waste of money.

What your site is actually for is different, and more valuable per visit.

It is where a vendor checks you out before deciding who to list with. That is the money decision in your business, and it happens on your site rather than on a portal. It is where a buyer who met you at an inspection looks you up. And it is where you can publish the things portals do not host: genuine local market commentary, recent sale results with context, and the case for why someone should trust you with the largest transaction of their life.

Most agency websites are built as a worse version of a portal. The ones that pay for themselves are built for the vendor, not the buyer.

That reframing changes what belongs on the homepage. Recent sales with real numbers. Named agents with track records. Suburb pages that say something a portal cannot. Not a search box competing with an app the buyer already has.

Practical things to check

1. Is price a structured field or free text? If an agent can type anything, you have no controls.
2. Are inspection times editable without touching the description? If not, they are probably out of date right now.
3. Does an auction listing show date, time and inspection details clearly? Without scrolling through prose.
4. Can you list every current listing and its price type in one view? If not, you cannot audit compliance.
5. Does your homepage speak to vendors or buyers? Most speak to buyers by default and should not.

Common questions

Do underquoting rules differ by state?

Yes, and that is the point most easily missed. The obligations and the enforcement approach are not identical across states, so an agency operating across a border cannot assume one set of habits covers both. Check the requirements for the states you actually operate in rather than relying on general advice.

Should we display a price guide for auction properties?

That depends on your state's rules and on the agency agreement for the property. The website design point is separate and applies either way: whatever you display should come from a structured field so it renders consistently and can be audited, rather than being typed fresh each time.

Is "contact agent" a safe option?

It is common, and whether it is appropriate depends on the state and circumstances. From a purely commercial view, be aware that a listing without any price indication converts worse, because buyers filter by price on portals and a listing with no figure often does not appear.

Should we bother with our own listings if the portals dominate?

Yes, but for the vendor rather than the buyer. Your listings demonstrate how you present property, which is exactly what a prospective vendor is assessing. Treat them as a portfolio.

What should a suburb page contain to be worth having?

Something a portal cannot generate automatically. Recent sale results with your commentary on why they went the way they did, what is happening with local supply, and what you would tell a vendor thinking about timing. Generic suburb statistics are already everywhere.

How often should sale results be updated?

Often enough that the most recent one is not embarrassing. A results page whose newest entry is from last year says something about the agency that no design can fix.

If your listing template predates all this

Most do, and moving price and inspection times into structured fields is usually a couple of days rather than a rebuild. Send us a link to a live listing and we will tell you what we would restructure first.