New Price Disclosure Rules for Homes in Victoria

This is the change with the most direct effect on the relationship between a vendor and their agent, and it has been almost entirely absent from the coverage. The reserve price conversation — historically a phone call, a coffee, or a chat in the kitchen on auction morning — is now a prescribed written process with a named instrument.

When an agent asks a seller for their reserve price, that request must be in writing and must be accompanied by “a statement of advice for setting a reserve price,” which must include a recommended reserve price for the property, “along with reasons for their recommendation” and an explanation that the reserve must be expressed as a single dollar amount. The agent must also explain how the seller can respond.

The seller then has three options: accept the recommended reserve with signed confirmation, reject it and ask for another recommendation, or specify their own reserve price with signed confirmation. Sellers retain full control of the number — including setting it above the price range advertised before the reserve was set.

Read that from a vendor’s perspective. Your agent must now put a number in front of you in writing, explain why they have arrived at it, and give you a documented mechanism to disagree.

Several published summaries have framed this as a prohibition on raising a published reserve — one puts it as the reserve simply “cannot be raised”, another as a reserve that “may be lowered but not increased”. That is not what the rule does, and the actual mechanism is both broader and more consequential.

CAV is direct: “Yes, but if the seller changes the publicly disclosed reserve price before the auction or fixed-date sale, the 7-day period starts again. The auction or fixed-date sale cannot take place until the revised reserve price has been publicly available for a further 7 days.” And asked whether this applies only to increases, the regulator answers: “It applies to any change to the published reserve price – either an increase or a decrease.”

That means that a vendor can move it either way if necessary after a campaign starts to accrue feedback. However they cannot move it at the last minute, as any change to the reserve price will necessitate moving the auction (or fixed date sale) date to at least seven days after the change is made.

That is a more significant constraint than the version being reported, which downnplay or ignore the possiblity of a price reduction in a sideways/declining market. A vendor who publishes an ambitious reserve and then wants to meet the market cannot simply lower it in the final week and proceed. The practical effect is that the reserve decision now has to be concluded a clear week out, with no late adjustment in either direction. For well-prepared campaigns with realistic pricing, that is a minor change. For campaigns where vendor and market are some distance apart, it removes the week that would otherwise be available to adjust.

Two related mechanics are worth knowing. Once the reserve is published, “only the seller’s reserve price should be displayed as the advertised price” — the reserve replaces the price guide in advertising, while the Property Price Statement carries both the reserve and the indicative selling price. And online advertising must be updated within one business day after the agent receives the reserve price.

Where a reserve comes in below the agent’s estimated selling price, the indicative selling price continues to reflect the agent’s estimate; if the vendor sets a reserve higher than the indicative selling price, the indicative price must be updated.

If the seven-day rule is the constraint, the pre-auction offer is the relief, and CAV is unambiguous:

“Pre-auction offers are treated as a private sale. They can happen as normal, without the 7 day-requirement. An offer can be accepted ahead of auction and the auction then cancelled as it is no longer required, as happens currently.”

This is the most useful operational detail in the package and it has been widely missed — in some coverage reported as the opposite. A vendor whose published reserve and the market have ended up some distance apart does not adjust the reserve and postpone the auction. They transact before auction day.

The treatment of a rejected pre-auction offer is also set out . If the seller rejects an offer because they wish to proceed with the auction as planned, nothing needs to change. If they reject it because they consider it too low, the agent must update the indicative selling price in the Property Price Statement and in all other advertising — and while the seller may also choose to update their reserve, they are not required to; if they do, the revised reserve must be published and the auction cannot be held for at least another seven days.

Two further obligations protect vendors here. Agents must pass on all verbal and written offers to the seller unless the seller has instructed otherwise in writing — and where that written instruction exists, the agent must tell prospective buyers their offer will not be submitted. A written offer is broader than a signed contract: it is an offer in any written format stating the price offered and any other proposed terms.

The commentary on sale method has generally been accurate as far as it goes: several sources have noted that a vendor who does not want to publish a reserve can change how they sell. However, it is not a route to keeping the results of a sale quiet.

Private sales with no fixed date sit outside the reserve disclosure requirement. CAV confirms the reserve rules do not apply to “commercial property sales, private sales without a fixed date, or sales managed directly by a property owner without using an estate agent.”

However they, and all other sales, are subject to a separate but related sold price disclosure obligation. For off-market sales, CAV states that an agent selling a residential property without publicly advertising it does not have to advertise a reserve but must still prepare the Property Price Statement, provide copies at inspections or on request, include the sale price within seven days of the sale becoming unconditional, and “publish the Property Price Statement online with the sale price, even if the property was not publicly advertised or listed.”

So a quiet off-market campaign avoids a published reserve and avoids a public price guide. It does not avoid a published result. Any vendor who has been told that going off market keeps their number private has been given incorrect advice.

On method, two clarifications. A “boardroom auction” — the gathering of interested parties to bid prior to an auction — fits “under the definition of ‘fixed date sale’,” and an agent conducting one “must wait the full 7 days after the reserve price has been published.” Where an agent invites offers by a certain date and time, the regulator is more nuanced with explicit mention of expressions of interest campaigns: “This could constitute a fixed-date sale and requires the seller’s reserve price to be disclosed for 7 days before the sale can proceed.” An expression-of-interest campaign with a hard closing date should be approached on the assumption that it is caught.

This is where the new rules land hardest, and it is not a matter of interpretation — the regulator’s guidelines name apartment buildings directly.

The comparable sales obligations sit at the centre of the package. An agent’s estimated selling price must be reasonable and must take into account the sale prices of the three properties most comparable to the property for sale, similar to the previous “Statement of Information”. The estimated selling price must be given to you before you sign that engagement, and be expressed as either a single figure or a range whose upper limit is no more than 10% greater than the lower limit

The estimated selling price itself must be given to you before you sign that engagement, in the form approved by the Director, expressed as a single figure or a range whose upper limit is no more than 10% above the lower.

CAV’s plain-English Industry Q&As describe the three-most-comparable requirement as “no longer a subjective test based on what the agent reasonably considers to be the most comparable properties.” The Director’s Guidelines — the instrument issued under section 47AD(1) of the Estate Agents Act 1980 that agents must actually apply, and which are published on CAV’s agent page — put it more precisely. Where more than three comparable properties exist, the agent “must take into account the three that they consider to be the most comparable,” and the Director may require an agent to substantiate “the reasonableness of any determination of the 3 most comparable properties.”

So judgement survives, subject to review for reasonableness. The practical point for a vendor is narrower and more useful than “no discretion”: your agent chooses which three comparables to use, but that choice is documented, reviewable, and overridden in one specific case relevant to apartment complexes:

Under the heading Substantially similar properties, the Director’s Guidelines provide that where a property sold within the relevant timeframe and distance is substantially similar to the sale property — giving as examples “duplexes, villa units, apartments in the same complex, houses built on the same street or in the same estate by the same builder” — the agent “must take that property into account when determining an estimated selling price.”

That is a mandatory inclusion, not a selection preference. An apartment in your building that sold inside the window is not one candidate among many for the three-comparable slots; the Guidelines require it to be taken into account.

One further requirement is worth knowing if you own in a precinct where new stock is still being delivered. The Guidelines treat build status, that is if a property is already built, under construction or sold off the plan as a mandatory consideration and state that comparable properties “should be of the same build status as the property for sale where available,” noting that a newly built or renovated property may not be comparable to an older or unrenovated one.

Then two provisions that change the picture materially:

“Agents must use all data and information they have about recently sold properties, including the details of undisclosed property sales, to select the 3 most comparable property sales.”

“Agents cannot avoid their obligations to select and provide the 3 most comparable property sales in a Property Price Statement by entering into or relying on any confidentiality agreement (verbal or written) with a seller or buyer that restricts them from using or disclosing information about the sale of a property.”

Put those together and the effect on a tower is substantial. A St Kilda Road, Southbank or Docklands building with thirty broadly similar apartments generates a dense set of recent in-building sales that sit within the 6-month, 2-kilometre window, are expressly named in the Director’s Guidelines as substantially similar properties that must be taken into account, must be used even where the price was not publicly disclosed, and cannot be shielded by a confidentiality arrangement.

Price discovery in the apartment market therefore changes character in a way it does not for houses. A terrace in Richmond has few true comparables; its value depends on attributes that resist direct comparison. Apartment 1204 in a tower has a floor of near-identical neighbours, and their recent results are now mandatory, documented inputs into what your apartment can be advertised at.

This change protects you against being talked down on a selectively chosen set of comparables — the agent must identify the most comparable sales, keep records of how they selected them, and can be required to produce documents substantiating that determination, with penalties for failing to comply without reasonable excuse. Equally, it removes the ability to argue a premium that recent in-building evidence contradicts. If three apartments on your floor have sold in the past six months, those numbers are part of your campaign whether they help or not.

One further change benefits buildings with thin recent trading. Previously, where fewer than three comparable sales existed, agents did not need to take comparables into account at all. Now, if only one or two exist, the agent must take those into account — and must state on the Property Price Statement why fewer than three were available.

The new Property Price Statement form sets out in fixed fields exactly what a prospective buyer now receives. It carries the property’s address and its six key features; the indicative selling price as a single figure or a range; the seller’s reserve price once the agent has received it, or “N/A” where the property is not going to auction or a fixed-date sale; a suburb median for the same property type, with the period it covers and the source it came from both disclosed; then three comparable property blocks, each with address, sale price, date of sale and the full set of key features; a mandatory written explanation where fewer than three comparables were used; and finally a sale outcome box carrying the sale price and unconditional sale date.

The median figure has a defined window of its own — the form specifies a 3-to-12-month period ending no more than six months before the statement was prepared — which is a useful check for a buyer, since a median drawn from a stale window in a moving market tells you less than it appears to.

That is a considerably fuller disclosure than the old Statement of Information, and it now has to sit immediately next to the advertised price on the first visible part of the listing rather than hyperlinked at the bottom.

It is worth being precise about what this limb of the reform is intended to address. Victorian sale prices have long been publicly available in some form. However, an increasing number of sales are reported as “price withheld” obfuscating a growing proportion of the market from the public, especially for underperforming listings.

The Valuer-General publishes sales statistics, but at suburb level rather than address level: annual sales statistics across 79 municipalities with yearly suburb medians over a ten-year series, and the quarterly Victorian Property Sales Report giving suburb medians for houses, units and vacant land. Useful for trend work, no help at all if you want to know what the apartment two floors below yours actually sold for. The lag is also material — the March quarter 2026 report was published in September 2026, roughly six months after the quarter closed.

Address-level sale evidence does exist however much of it missing from the public internet, and it can be difficult to access. For any curious reader Domain offers the most user-friendly, publicly available way to view past sales and price estimates for any given property, provided that the selling agent/vendor opted to disclose the sale price (Dingle Partners can also provide a complimentary report on your property and activity in your suburb). Meanwhile complete data is behind paid commercial subscriptions potentially distorting the view of the market for buyers and vendors alike. As valuer Greville Pabst put it when the reform was announced, “a lot of this data is not freely available like it used to be” — a shift he attributed to commercial data companies that acquire the records and sell them back to the industry. Add to that the ability to list a result as “price withheld”, which Pabst noted was happening more frequently, and the practical position was that a buyer or a vendor could be making a six or seven-figure decision against evidence that was either six months old, coarse, paywalled, or simply absent.

So the reform does three things. It removes the option to withhold a result. It collapses the lag from months to seven days. And it standardises the presentation, putting the number on an approved form next to the advertisement rather than in a subscription product. For a market where price discovery has been genuinely difficult at the individual-property level, that third point matters nearly as much as the first two.

What applies now: within 7 days of a sale becoming unconditional, agents must publish the final sale price as part of the Property Price Statement, and must keep that statement published online, free of charge, for at least 18 months following the date the sale became unconditional.

CAV spells out how much earlier that is than the lodgement process it sits alongside: “This is earlier than the current process, under which sold prices are disclosed to the Valuer-General following settlement, which may occur 30 to 90 days after the contract is signed.” Note that this is a separate pathway to the published statistics described above — one is the reporting of a price into the system, the other is what eventually comes back out of it, and each carried its own delay.

Melbourne’s sale evidence used to arrive with a one-to-three-month lag, which meant a campaign running today was being priced against a market that existed a quarter ago. From now on it arrives within a week. In a market that has been moving as much as this one has through 2026, closing a two-to-three-month information gap materially changes how accurately both sides can price.

The sold price is part of the property’s price statement and stays visible for eighteen months. It is durable and public, but it is not yet a searchable state register — the obligation to provide sold price information to the Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria does not begin until 1 December 2027.

The grandfathering is narrower than it first appears. The requirement applies to sales that become unconditional on or after 1 October 2026. “even if the property was listed for sale or the contract was signed before then” CAV’s example is a contract signed in September whose cooling-off period runs past 1 October. The exception requires both that the agent’s written engagement predates 1 October 2026 and that the engagement contains a term requiring non-disclosure. An older appointment alone is not enough.

The exemption pathway is narrow and time-limited. A seller, purchaser or agent may apply to the Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria for an exemption in circumstances related to family violence or personal violence involving the seller or purchaser, and the application must be made within 7 days after the unconditional sale date. CAV is explicit that “a seller’s or buyer’s general preference not to disclose the sold price will not be enough on its own to justify an exemption,” and that where an exemption is granted or still pending, publishing the sold price is an offence. Agents are separately expected to advise clients of their right to seek an exemption and help them apply where relevant.

The practical upshot for vendors who value discretion — deceased estates, separations, and others with understandable reasons — is that there is no general privacy route. The method of sale changes what is published during the campaign, not whether the result is published afterwards.

The indicative selling price must be a single figure or a range of no more than 10%, and cannot sit below the agent’s estimated selling price, the seller’s asking price, or a price in a written offer the seller has already rejected as too low. Qualifying words and symbols such as ‘offers above’, ‘from’ and ‘+’ are not permitted. Where an estimated selling price changes or a higher written offer is rejected, online advertising must be corrected within one business day.

The Property Price Statement must be displayed at all open for inspections, shown prominently on the main online advertisement — “displayed or linked on the first visible part of the main advertisement … and immediately next to the advertised price,” a change from the current practice of hyperlinking it at the bottom — included on physical advertising via a web address or QR code, and provided to a prospective buyer within two business days of a request. A generic sign carrying no specific property information, such as “Forthcoming auction”, does not require the link.

Penalties are substantial. Agents who fail to publish sold prices as required may face maximum penalties of 240 penalty units, currently $48,842, with existing underquoting offences continuing to apply alongside. For more serious breaches — setting an unreasonable estimated selling price, or advertising below it — agents may also lose any commission received on the sale.

On enforcement posture, CAV has signalled a constructive opening position. Its stated first priority is “to support the industry to understand and comply with the new laws,” taking an “intelligence-led, risk-based, and outcome-focused regulatory approach”, with the Underquoting Taskforce continuing to monitor online campaigns, review sales files and attend auctions. Where information such as a comparable property’s internal floor area genuinely cannot be found, the property can still be included with the gap marked “not available”, and CAV will consider whether the agent took reasonable steps, kept evidence, selected appropriate comparables and acted in good faith.

Three further changes are scheduled. From 1 June 2027, section 32 vendor statements must be available earlier — within 14 days after a private sale property is advertised, and at least 14 days before an auction or fixed-date sale. From 1 July 2027, the early-release-of-deposit process is repealed in favour of a contract condition, and agents must not take commission directly from a deposit released before settlement. From 1 December 2027, sold price information must be provided to the Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria.

When did Victoria’s new reserve price disclosure rules start?

The laws commenced on 1 October 2026, but the reserve price disclosure requirement applies to auctions and fixed-date sales held on and from 16 October 2026. For an auction on 16 October, the reserve needed to be disclosed by 9 October. The new Property Price Statement applied to private sales from 1 October and to auctions and fixed-date sales from 16 October — so the relevant date depends on how the property is being sold.

Can a reserve price be changed after it has been published?

Yes, but the auction cannot proceed until the revised figure has been publicly available for a further seven days. CAV confirms this applies to any change, “either an increase or a decrease” — so a vendor cannot lower a reserve in the final week to meet the market and still auction on the scheduled date. The constraint is timing rather than direction, and it catches downward adjustments as well as upward ones.

Can a vendor accept an offer before auction once the reserve is published?

Yes. CAV treats pre-auction offers as a private sale: they “can happen as normal, without the 7 day-requirement,” and an offer can be accepted ahead of auction with the auction then cancelled. This is the practical route for a vendor whose published reserve and the market have ended up some distance apart.

Does an expression of interest or off-market campaign avoid the new rules?

Partly, but only for one of the two obligations. The reserve disclosure requirement does not apply to private sales without a fixed date, to commercial sales, or to sales an owner manages without an agent — and a boardroom auction is caught, while inviting offers by a set date and time “could constitute a fixed-date sale” and should be treated as caught. But sold price disclosure is separate and applies regardless. On off-market sales CAV requires the agent to publish the Property Price Statement online with the sale price “even if the property was not publicly advertised or listed.”

How long do sold prices stay public in Victoria?

The sale price must be added to the Property Price Statement within seven days of the sale becoming unconditional, and that statement must remain online, free of charge, for at least 18 months from that date. The more significant change is the speed: previously sold prices reached the Valuer-General after settlement, 30 to 90 days after the contract was signed. There is no searchable central register yet — reporting to the Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria begins 1 December 2027.

What do the new rules mean if I am selling an apartment?

More than if you were selling a house. The Director’s Guidelines treat a substantially similar property as a mandatory inclusion when determining the estimated selling price, naming “apartments in the same complex” among the examples — so a recent sale in your building that falls inside the six-month, two-kilometre window must be taken into account rather than simply considered. Agents must also use all sale data they hold, including undisclosed sales, and cannot rely on a confidentiality agreement to avoid using a sale as a comparable. In a building with many similar apartments, recent in-building results are documented inputs into your pricing, which protects you from selective comparables and equally removes room to argue a premium the building’s own evidence contradicts. Working the other way, the Guidelines also make build status a mandatory consideration, so off-the-plan and new-build results in your precinct are not automatically comparable to an established apartment.

Can a vendor keep their sale price private?

Only in narrow circumstances, and the method of sale is not one of them. The single exemption pathway relates to family violence or personal violence involving the seller or purchaser, applied for to the Director of Consumer Affairs Victoria within seven days of the unconditional sale date; CAV states that a general preference not to disclose “will not be enough on its own.” Separately, a sale sits outside the requirement where the agent’s written engagement predates 1 October 2026 and contains a non-disclosure term — both conditions must be met. Selling privately or off market changes what is published during the campaign, not whether the result is published afterwards.