News
If you sell residential property in Queensland, the rules changed under your feet.
From 1 August 2025, sellers are legally required to provide a Form 2 disclosure statement to buyers before a contract is signed. The disclosure is mandatory. The signing is electronic. And the workflow that ties them together is where most agencies are still working things out.
This is a guide for real estate agents, conveyancers, and property managers who want the new regime to work for them — not against them.
What changed in Queensland
The Property Law Act 2023 (Qld) commenced on 1 August 2025, replacing the Property Law Act 1974 and introducing a mandatory seller disclosure regime for residential property.
In plain English: before a buyer signs a contract of sale, the seller must give them a Form 2 disclosure statement and a set of prescribed certificates. If the seller doesn't, the buyer can terminate the contract any time before settlement — and walk away without consequence.
This is a significant shift. Under the old regime, disclosure was patchy and largely buyer-led through searches and enquiries. Under the new regime, the seller carries the disclosure obligation, and the burden falls on the listing agent to make sure it happens before the contract is signed.
What Form 2 actually contains
Form 2 is the prescribed disclosure statement under the new Act. It must accompany a set of prescribed certificates that cover:
Title search and registered interests
Body corporate information (for community title properties)
Local government rates and charges
Land tax
Building, pool, and pest information where applicable
Encumbrances, notices, and orders affecting the property
The full set of prescribed certificates can take days to compile manually. For a busy agency, that's days of admin time per listing — multiplied by the number of properties on the market.
Where the friction lives
The practical workflow problem is straightforward.
The agent lists the property. The seller commits. The disclosure pack needs to be ordered, compiled, checked, and provided to the buyer. The contract of sale needs to be drawn. The buyer reviews the disclosure. The contract is signed. Settlement begins.
In practice, three things slow this down:
Compiling the disclosure pack manually. Phoning council, ordering searches, chasing body corporate certificates — each request adds days.
Getting the disclosure to the buyer. Email attachments, lost PDFs, missed receipts. The buyer needs to confirm they've received it before they sign.
Getting the contract signed. Wet signatures, scanned PDFs, emails between agents and conveyancers. Every back-and-forth adds delay.
Under the old regime, slow disclosure was an inconvenience. Under the new one, it's a contract risk — the buyer can terminate.
The disclosure-to-signing flow
This is where the right tools matter. A clean Queensland workflow looks like this:
Agent lists the property and orders the Form 2 disclosure pack through a service like SearchX, which compiles the prescribed certificates automatically.
Disclosure pack is delivered to the seller for review and to the agent's listing record.
Buyer is identified and the disclosure pack is sent for receipt acknowledgement — often via eSignature, so there's a timestamped record that the buyer received the disclosure before they were presented with the contract.
Contract of sale is sent for eSignature, with the disclosure cross-referenced and an audit trail of when the buyer viewed and signed each document.
Settlement begins with the conveyancer holding a complete digital record of the disclosure delivery, the contract execution, and the audit trail — ready for any later challenge.
Done manually, this is a five-day process. Done well, it's a same-day process.
Why eSigning matters specifically here
The Queensland regime makes the timing of disclosure as important as the disclosure itself. The buyer must receive the Form 2 before signing the contract. If you can't prove they did, the contract is at risk.
A proper eSign platform doesn't just collect a signature. It produces a Certificate of Completion that timestamps every action: when the disclosure was sent, when the buyer viewed it, when they acknowledged it, when the contract was sent, when they signed.
That audit trail is the evidence chain. If a buyer later argues they didn't receive the disclosure in time, the timestamps say otherwise — with IP addresses, signing method, and a tamper-evident hash on each document.
For an agent or conveyancer, that's not just compliance. It's risk management.
What to look for in a QLD property eSign workflow
If you're picking tools for the new regime, the checklist is short:
Australian data residency. Property and disclosure data should not leave Australia.
Tamper-evident audit trails on every document, with timestamps, IP addresses, and signing method captured.
Bulk send capability for portfolios with multiple listings running concurrently.
Templates for Queensland-specific contracts (REIQ contract of sale, Form 2 acknowledgement, agency agreements) that can be reused without rebuilding fields each time.
Integration with disclosure providers like SearchX, so the disclosure pack and the signing platform talk to each other rather than living in separate inboxes.
Identity verification options for higher-value transactions or where the agent wants stronger evidence of who signed.
The agent's incentive
There's an underplayed point worth raising. The agent doesn't just benefit from the time saved — they benefit from the risk transferred.
Under the new regime, a contract that's signed before disclosure is delivered is a terminable contract. If that termination happens between exchange and settlement, the agent's commission is at risk along with everything else.
A proper disclosure-to-signing workflow with a real audit trail makes that situation much harder for a buyer to engineer. Every action is timestamped. Every document is hashed. The chain of evidence is complete.
This is the strongest argument for going digital end-to-end on Queensland property workflows. Not speed. Not convenience. Defensibility.
The bottom line
The new Queensland disclosure regime isn't a paperwork tweak. It restructures who carries disclosure risk and when in the deal it has to be discharged.
For agents and conveyancers, the tools that fit the new regime are the ones that connect disclosure to signing in a single auditable flow. The platforms that don't — generic eSign tools without disclosure integration, or disclosure providers without eSigning — leave gaps in the evidence chain that the new Act puts pressure on.
The market will work this out fast. Better to be ahead of it.
Frequently asked questions
Q. When did the new Queensland seller disclosure regime start?
The Property Law Act 2023 (Qld) commenced on 1 August 2025, introducing mandatory Form 2 seller disclosure for residential property.
Q. What is Form 2 disclosure?
Form 2 is the prescribed seller disclosure statement under the Property Law Act 2023 (Qld). It must accompany a set of prescribed certificates and be provided to a buyer before they sign a contract of sale.
Q. What happens if disclosure isn't provided before signing?
The buyer can terminate the contract at any time before settlement, without penalty. This makes the timing of disclosure delivery critical.
Q. Can contracts of sale be signed electronically in Queensland?
Yes. Electronic signatures on contracts of sale are accepted in Queensland under the new Property Law Act 2023, provided the platform meets the standard ETA 1999 requirements.
Q. How does eSigning prove the buyer received disclosure before signing?
A proper eSign platform produces a timestamped audit trail showing when the disclosure was sent, viewed, and acknowledged — and when the contract was sent and signed. The timestamps are the evidence chain.
