Auctions and price guides in Tasmania

Tasmania has no rule of the Victorian kind telling an agent how a price guide must be written, or none that the research for this page found. The Property Agents and Land Transactions Act 2016 licenses agents and auctioneers, and CBOS describes the Property Agents Board legislation as addressing false advertising and vendor bidding. Beyond that, the price on a Tasmanian listing is what the vendor and agent choose to put there. Auction day is firmer ground. The auction rules and an auction information statement are on display, bidding accepts the contract on display, and there are no conditions and no cooling-off.

What a price guide may say

No format rule was found. There is no Statement of Information, no required range width and no ban on qualifiers such as offers over. The Act sets requirements for an agent's advertisements (section 55) and makes it an offence for a property agent to state anything the agent knows to be false or misleading about the sale of a property, with a fine of up to 500 penalty units. Nothing seen sets a format or a range width for a price guide.

That leaves "offers over" meaning what it means in the states without a rule. It is a floor the vendor would like the conversation to start at, not evidence of what buyers have paid. The national guide to "offers over" covers how to read it.

Underquoting

There is no named underquoting offence in what was read; the offence is the general one above, a knowingly false or misleading representation about a sale, with its 500-penalty-unit fine. What CBOS does say is that the Property Agents Board legislation addresses false advertising. Tasmania also requires the registration of real estate agents, property managers and auctioneers, subject to competency-based qualifications, and CBOS is the consumer regulator.

A complaint about an advertised price starts with the agency, then goes to CBOS through its online enquiry form. CBOS directs complaints about a property agent's conduct to the Property Agents Board. Keep the listing, the guide as it was worded on each date, and any written offer the agent rejected, since those are what a complaint rests on.

Reforms in train

None found. No announced or commenced change to Tasmania's price-guide or auction rules was found on the official pages checked. That is an absence in the research, not a statement that nothing is planned.

On auction day

CBOS describes strict rules about how an auctioneer runs an auction and how people attending must behave. The auction rules and the auction information statement, which sets out Tasmania's auction laws, are on display before and during the auction; read both before bidding. Prospective buyers bid, and the property is offered to the highest bidder. By bidding, a buyer accepts the terms of the contract on display before the auction.

Two things follow. The contract cannot be made subject to conditions such as getting finance, and there is no cooling-off period. Finance, the building and pest inspection and legal review of the contract all happen before the day. An owner is also allowed to auction their own property, without an agent.

Several things were not confirmed. Whether bidders must register before bidding. How many vendor bids are allowed; the Act does require a vendor bid to be identified as the owner's and made by the auctioneer personally, and the words "vendor bid" are enough. How the reserve is handled when a property is passed in, and the deposit payable on the day. The Act and its regulations hold the answers, and they are open items on the Tasmania hub.

Reading a guide against the sales

Without a statutory guide format, a price guide can only be read against the recorded comparable sales: similar type, similar land and internal size, similar condition, as recent as the evidence allows. A fair-value range built from those shows where the guide sits: under, within or above. No Tasmanian document requires an agent to say which sales support a guide, so the answer, or the lack of one, is information in itself.

How long the listing has run, whether the guide has moved and what the listing's language is doing are part of the same picture.