Licences. NSW Fair Trading licenses agents in two classes. A class 1 licence lets an agent work independently and be nominated as licensee in charge, the person who authorises trust account transactions; a class 2 agent can act for clients in a sale, negotiate, and collect rent, deposits and bonds, but can't be licensee in charge. Before class 2 comes the assistant agent certificate of registration, held while working under a licensee's supervision. Anyone can look an agent up on the public register at verify.licence.nsw.gov.au (opens in a new tab). NSW also says advertising, online as well as print, must name the licence holder, whether a person, company, registered business name or partnership, and disclose any interest an agent has in a property they advertise. We put the licence holder's name in the footer of every page.
Prices, now and from late 2026. The current underquoting rules already apply to anything on your site: an advertised price can't sit below the estimate in the agency agreement, a range can be no wider than 10%, and “offers over” or a “+” after a figure aren't allowed. The 2026 amendments raised penalties from 29 June 2026. Then, Fair Trading says (opens in a new tab), agency agreements entered into from 17 November 2026 bring a price or range in every residential sale ad, with non-compliant online ads to be fixed within one business day; a for-sale sign is exempt unless it shows a price, and Fair Trading won't take action over a QR code used in place of a price if it links to the property's main online ad showing the price. For agency agreements entered into after 8 February 2027, agents selling residential property prepare a Statement of Information in Fair Trading's approved form, with the comparable properties they identified, and include it or link to it in online ads. We publish the price wording your licensee approves; the detail belongs with Fair Trading's guidance.
Rentals. NSW's rental advertising rules (opens in a new tab) require a fixed price, rule out “offers from”, “by negotiation” and “no pets”, and ban inviting a higher rent, down to an icon labelled “make an offer”. Since 31 October 2024 applicants can't be charged for background checks or for preparing the lease. On 25 September 2026 the government announced further laws passed by Parliament and expected to start in early 2027: a standard rental application form, limits on what applicants can be asked, ID collected only from the preferred applicant, and disclosure when listing photos have been digitally altered or generated by AI to hide faults. Our property manager page covers the landlord side.
What's particular to Sydney. Where a rent roll includes apartments, the tenant rules add lines for them: a tenant in a strata scheme must be given the by-laws and told if a strata renewal committee has been set up, and an agent must not hide or misrepresent that local rules stop a tenant getting a parking permit where only paid parking is available. The City of Sydney's own policy warns that residents of a new property may not be eligible for any parking permit. A unit listing template with room for those lines saves retyping them for every apartment in Pyrmont or Zetland. And because vendors tend to search for an agent by suburb, the names matter: pages for the suburbs you really sell in, under their official names, do more than a claim to cover “all of Sydney”.
How we work. We're an Adelaide team on Hutt St and work with Sydney agencies by phone and email. Our Sydney clients include Resolve Forward, a family dispute resolution practice; we haven't built an agency site yet, and we'd rather say so up front. Your principal can review the draft between appraisals, and the agency pays only once it's approved.