NSW underquoting penalty 2026: what's in force and what isn't

Since June 2026 the property press has reported that underquoting in NSW now costs up to $110,000.

The figure is real. It's in the Act. It hasn't started yet.

Today the Property and Stock Agents Act 2002 still sets the maximum at 200 penalty units. That's $22,000, at section 73.

The higher figure sits in a part of the 2026 amending Act that hasn't started. It waits on a start date set by proclamation. No proclamation had been made when we checked, on 17 September 2026.

Here's what changed in June, what's still waiting, and the condition on the new penalty that almost nobody has quoted.

What the Act in force says today

Section 73 sets the maximum court penalty for underquoting at 200 penalty units.

A penalty unit is currently $110. That value is set by section 17 of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999. So the maximum is $22,000.

You can check this yourself in about a minute. The in force version is published at legislation.nsw.gov.au.

The notes under section 73 show no 2026 change. Dozens of other sections in the same document do.

What started on 29 June 2026

The 2026 amending Act got assent on 29 June 2026. Its full name is the Property and Stock Agents Amendment (Underquoting and Other Agent Conduct) Act 2026.

Section 2 of it splits the Act in two. Most of its changes started that day. The rest wait on a start date.

Two of the sections that started are aimed at agent conduct. Neither is a fine. Under the amended section 192, the Secretary may:

• require a person to publicise a breach of the Act or the regulations, in a way the Secretary

approves; and

• require a person to hire an independent valuer for a set period, to check the estimated selling

price, "without the costs of verification being passed on to the seller".

An independent valuer here means a member of the Australian Valuers Institute, the Australian Property Institute or RICS.

Both powers are live now, and they may bite harder than a fine does.

A fine gets paid and it's over. A published breach keeps working every time a vendor looks you up.

What's still waiting

The sections that haven't started include the ones most often written about as though they're current.

A price guide would become compulsory. A new section 72D would make an ad carry a selling price or a price range. For sale signs are exempt. So are classes set by regulation.

Advertised prices would get new floors. Section 73(1) already stops an agent advertising below the estimated selling price. The new version would keep that.

It would also stop them going below the highest bid by a registered bidder, where the property passed in at auction. Or below a written offer "rejected by the seller only for the reason that the amount offered was too low".

The maximum penalty would rise.

Those qualifiers matter and they get dropped in summaries. It's a written offer, knocked back only on price. It's a registered bidder's highest bid, at an auction that passed in.

The condition on the new penalty almost nobody quotes

This is the part worth knowing before it starts.

The pending maximum isn't simply $110,000. As drafted it's:

• if the property hasn't sold under the agency agreement by the time of sentencing: 1,000 penalty

units, currently $110,000; or

• if it has sold: the greater of 1,000 penalty units, or three times the commission paid under that

agency agreement for the sale.

Two things follow, and neither is obvious from the headline number.

First, the maximum stops being a fixed figure. Three times the commission passes 1,000 penalty units once the commission passes roughly $36,700.

That crossover is just arithmetic. It isn't a number written into the Act. But it's the point where the multiple takes over. Past it, every extra dollar of fee lifts the maximum too.

Second, the multiple only applies if the property sold. If it hasn't sold by then, the flat figure applies. The multiple isn't available at all.

So the exposure isn't spread evenly across an agent's stock. It sits in the campaigns that work, and it's biggest on the listings carrying the biggest fee.

Note whose commission the section means. It says the commission paid under the agency agreement to the real estate agent. That's the fee under the agreement, not a salesperson's split.

Underquoting enforcement is already running

On 4 September 2026 the NSW Government reported on its Strata and Property Taskforce.

Inspectors ran covert visits to almost 80 open homes over two months. That produced fines for 10 agents, 5 warnings and 16 education directives.

All of it happened under the current law, at the current maximum.

So the compliance question doesn't start when the new penalties do. It has already started.

What agents can do now

None of this is legal advice. Your principal or your solicitor is the right place for that. These are practical steps that cost nothing, and they're easier now, while the guide is still just a marketing decision.

1. Audit the guide on live campaigns. Take the campaigns most likely to exchange. Read the advertised guide against any written offer the vendor knocked back only on price. If the guide now sits under one of those, think about moving it. Verbal knock-backs don't engage the pending floors. Written ones would.
2. Write down what the estimate was based on, and write it again when it changes. The estimated selling price is exactly what a valuer can now be sent to check. The comparables and their dates are usually in the listing pack already. What's rarely recorded is why the guide stayed put after an offer got knocked back.
3. Have the vendor conversation early. Under the pending floors, a written offer knocked back on price would push the advertised guide up mid campaign. A vendor who hears that at listing is far less likely to read it later as your failure. Our piece on the pricing conversation and buying the listing covers the dynamic underneath it.
4. Diary the start date. NSW Fair Trading's page says the rest is expected later in 2026. No date is set. So the only reliable check is the in force version itself.

The reporting since June has been right about the figure and loose about the timing.

The timing is the part that decides what an agent is working under this spring.

The number in force is the one at section 73, and it takes a minute to check.

Related reading: winning listings from the database you already have, and what to say when a vendor isn't ready to sell.

There's a free week that runs on an agent's own quiet list. You hand me 200 quiet contacts from your own database. For seven days we work them with personalised email and text in your name. You make every call. If zero warm conversations surface, I send you $700 of my own money, because I run the week personally. Either way you keep the warmed list, the copy in your voice, and every hand-raiser.

See how the free week works.

Sources

• Property and Stock Agents Amendment (Underquoting and Other Agent Conduct) Act 2026 No 18 (NSW), legislation.nsw.gov.au
• Property and Stock Agents Act 2002 (NSW), in force consolidation, legislation.nsw.gov.au
• Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) s 17, legislation.nsw.gov.au
• NSW Fair Trading, "Changes to property and stock agents laws", nsw.gov.au
• Minister for Better Regulation and Fair Trading, "Open homes on notice in latest underquoting blitz", 4 September 2026, nsw.gov.au