Auctions and price guides in South Australia

South Australia regulates the price guide by putting a floor under it. An agent may not advertise a likely price below the prescribed minimum advertising price. That floor is the higher of the agent's own estimate and the price the vendor has said is acceptable, both as written in the sales agency agreement. A range may not stretch more than 110% from bottom to top. On auction day there is no cooling-off, every bidder is registered, the vendor gets up to three announced bids through the auctioneer, and the deposit is usually at least 10%.

What a price guide may say

The Land and Business (Sale and Conveyancing) Act 1994 defines the prescribed minimum advertising price from the sales agency agreement. It takes the agent's estimate of the selling price and the price sought by or acceptable to the vendor, and the greater is the floor. When marketing for a vendor, the agent and their sales representatives must not put forward a likely price below it. Nor may they give a likely price range whose upper limit exceeds 110 per cent of the lower limit.

SA.GOV.AU's plain-words version for sellers: agents must not promote a price below their estimated selling price or the vendor's acceptable price, whichever is higher.

One carve-out matters when reading a listing. A statement of the price the vendor actually wants is not a "likely price" under the Act, provided it matches the acceptable price in the agency agreement at the time. Such a listing states a position, not an estimate. What an offers over figure can mean is covered in the national guide.

Underquoting

underquoting in South Australia is a likely price below the prescribed minimum, or a range wider than the 110% limit. The rule was written into the Act by the Statutes Amendment (Real Estate Industry Reform) Act 2007, and Consumer and Business Services regulates land agents. Section 24A of the Act carries a maximum penalty of $20,000 or imprisonment for 1 year.

Suspected breaches are reported to Consumer and Business Services, which regulates land agents. Because the floor sits in the sales agency agreement, a document the buyer never sees, a complaint rests on what was advertised, what was said at inspections and what the property sold for, so the listing and the agency's messages are the evidence.

Reforms in train

No reform to the price-guide or auction rules was found announced or commenced in this research. The price rules date from the 2007 reforms, the bidder-identifier rule from January 2014, and the current prescribed bidders guide, Form 4, is dated January 2025. Anything newer would appear on the CBS site.

On auction day

Any person who intends to bid at an auction for residential property must register, by giving the agent their details and proof of identity. That can be done any time before the auction, such as at an inspection, or on the day. Since January 2014 every bidder has a unique identifier, such as a number, letter or colour. The auctioneer must audibly announce each bid as taken from that identifier. Auctioneers must also keep accurate records of who bid, how much, and the outcome: passed in, held over or successful.

It is illegal for the vendor, or a person acting on their behalf, to bid at the auction; that is dummy bidding. The vendor is allowed up to three vendor bids, made by the auctioneer, which must be below the reserve and clearly announced as vendor bids. Below the reserve the property is passed in. Whether the reserve may sit above the advertised price was not confirmed at the time of checking; the Act and the bidders guide set out the auction rules.

There is no cooling-off period if the property is bought at auction. The deposit is usually a minimum of 10% of the price bid, and auction conditions are generally a 10% deposit and 30-day settlement. Everything a buyer would check in the cooling-off period, the Form 1 above all, has to be checked before the auction; the contracts page lists those checks.

Reading a guide against the sales

A South Australian guide tells you the floor the agent and vendor agreed to, and no more. The evidence sits in the recorded comparable sales nearby: similar type, similar size, similar condition, as recent as the evidence allows. Those sales support a fair-value range, never a single figure. A guide read against that range sits under, within or above it.