500 Changes, the July 1 Valuation and a War on Auctions
4 Sept 2026 · 1h 46m
This week on Before the Weekend, Kasey McDonald and Peter Schravemade work through a week where every regulator wanted more from the industry and none of them wanted to talk to it. First, audits. NSW Fair Trading's strata and property taskforce finished a statewide sweep of agents holding consumer money: 34 businesses facing potential licence suspension, 41 overdue audits lodged, 32 warnings, three industry bans, six mandatory training orders and more than $200,000 in fines, with a Penrith agency losing its licence and copping $22,000. Nobody here is accused of stealing, they simply did not lodge the audit. Then the ones who did steal: a NSW property manager, 162 transactions and roughly $151,000 plus $36,000, gets a 12-month community sentence, while a Brisbane operator who took $131,000 gets four and a half years jail. Same crime, wildly different states. Then Scams Awareness Week and the email account somewhere in the transaction that criminals are watching for weeks. The rule is simple: anything over $5,000 gets a phone call before it moves. Then Victoria declares war on auctions. Reserves set 14 days out, a property price statement seven days before unconditional, all signed off by a premier who has since left the building. Peter's read is that buyers will simply drift to private treaty, which has no transparency at all. Then the Tenancy Skills Institute's Two Tides of Homelessness report, 327 property managers, nearly 126,000 tenancies, and 6.43 per cent of them at risk, up from 4.8 per cent a year ago. The finding that matters: in Queensland, portfolios with no referral pathway saw at-risk tenancies jump 150 per cent while those using PM Assist fell 18.47 per cent. Property managers themselves said 52 per cent of the 3,114 failed tenancies were preventable. Then a Gold Coast developer allegedly terminating five-year-old off-the-plan contracts under sunset clauses, the test case for the 2023 reform, and 1,522 NSW construction firms gone in a single financial year. Josh Stanton of Opteon joins to make sense of the 1 July 2027 valuation deadline from a regional desk in Gladstone: why metro investors should wait four to six weeks and regional ones until September or October, a worked Kirkwood example that lands $8,450 more tax under the new regime rather than the tens of thousands being reported, and the warning nobody else is making, do your renovations before 1 July, because the new system does not appear to treat them kindly. Then the interview that changes the mood. Aaron Barber, general manager of the REINSW, on 500 legislative changes in 18 months, a domestic violence regulation published on 7 June and handed to the institute on 7 August, and reforms that now require the property manager to notify the remaining co-tenant, change the locks and chase damage from a person who may be violent. Seven property managers have already refused the four-hour CPD course because it would be triggering. When Aaron asked the minister for a meeting, the response was: "You are playing games, stop playing games." Also this week: Kasey heads to the REIQ Property Insider Luncheon, Peter packs for PropTech Connect in London and the REACH portfolio gathering in Boulder, a licensed conveyancer allegedly short nearly $1 million, and why your real estate institute membership just earned its keep. If anything in this episode is close to home, 1800RESPECT is 1800 737 732.