I've watched dozens of first-home buyers walk into an open inspection, hand their financing position to the selling agent, and assume that agent now represents them. They don't — and under Victorian conduct rules they cannot represent both sides of the same deal. Here is exactly where the line sits, and how to check it in a sentence. — Joey Don
Joey Don · Last updated · 2026-08-31
A real estate agent and a buyers agent in Victoria hold the same licence and are governed by the same Act, and the difference is who pays them and who they owe duties to. The selling agent is engaged and paid by the vendor under an authority to sell, out of the vendor’s settlement proceeds; Victoria sets no statutory commission rate, and Consumer Affairs Victoria requires the agent to tell the vendor that commission and expenses are negotiable before the authority is signed. A buyers agent is engaged and paid by the buyer — Consumer Affairs Victoria defines one as “a licensed estate agent who, for a fee, acts for a buyer instead of a seller”. PremiumRea charges a flat $15,800 + GST for a full acquisition regardless of purchase price, $12,500 + GST for a first-home-buyer engagement, $18,500 + GST for an SMSF acquisition, and $2,500 + GST for auction bidding only. The separation is not a matter of good intentions: under the Estate Agents (Professional Conduct) Regulations 2018 a licensee must act in the client’s best interests, must not put their interests in conflict with the client’s by acting for another person, and must not accept commission from both a client and a consumer for the same transaction. So the agent standing at the open inspection is helpful, is licensed, and is not your representative — not because they are hiding it, but because the role they are contracted into is the other one. The check takes one sentence: ask whether they are the vendor’s agent for this property, and ask any buyers agent whether they accept payment from selling agents for properties they show you.
The licence position, conduct duties, commission rules and compensation limits on this page were last verified on
The terminology is genuinely confusing: both are licensed estate agents in Victoria, both are bound by the Estate Agents Act 1980, they use the same portals, attend the same auctions and read the same comparable-sales reports. What separates them is not skill or ethics, it is the contract. One is engaged by the person selling the property and paid out of the price you pay; the other is engaged by you. Everything else on this page follows from that, and none of it requires anybody to behave badly.
A real estate agent — the selling agent or listing agent — is engaged by the vendor under an authority to sell and paid from the vendor's settlement proceeds. Victoria does not set a commission rate: the rate is negotiated in the authority, and Consumer Affairs Victoria requires the agent to inform the client that commission and expenses are negotiable before the client signs it. Where the fee is a percentage of sale price, as it commonly is, the agent earns more when the property sells for more. That is the incentive the vendor is buying, and it is entirely proper — it just is not pointed at you.
A buyers agent, also called a buyers advocate and interchangeable with it in Victoria, is engaged and paid by the buyer. Consumer Affairs Victoria defines the role as a licensed estate agent who, for a fee, acts for a buyer instead of a seller. PremiumRea charges a flat $15,800 + GST regardless of purchase price, $12,500 + GST for a first-home-buyer engagement, $18,500 + GST for an SMSF acquisition, and $2,500 + GST for auction bidding only. Percentage-based buyers agents exist too; we would rather not have a fee that rises with what you spend, but the money is at least being paid by you to your own representative either way.
So when you walk into an open inspection on a Saturday morning, the agent at the door is paid by the seller and is contracted to the seller. They are friendly, they are helpful, and they are not negotiating on your behalf. This is not a hidden agenda — it is the licensed structure of the role, and Consumer Affairs Victoria's own buyer guidance exists partly because the assumption-of-representation problem is common enough to need addressing.
The Estate Agents Act 1980 (Vic) creates two categories. A full estate agent licence lets the holder operate independently, run an agency, employ representatives and hold a trust account. An agent’s representative works under the supervision of a licensed estate agent and cannot operate as a principal. Both categories appear on both sides of transactions; neither is a "buyers" or a "sellers" licence.
The licence does not specify which side of a transaction the holder acts for — that is determined contract by contract through the engagement letter or the authority to sell. A licensed estate agent can lawfully act for a vendor on one property and for a buyer on an unrelated one. What they cannot do is act for both sides of the same transaction: under the Estate Agents (Professional Conduct) Regulations 2018 a licensee must not put their interests in conflict with the client’s by acting for another person, and must not accept commission from both a client and a consumer for the same transaction.
The same regulations attach the same duties to both roles: act in the client’s best interests except where that would be unlawful, unreasonable, improper or against instructions; act fairly, honestly, in good faith and to the best of your ability; disclose any personal or commercial relationship with a supplier you recommend; and do not use or disclose the client’s confidential information. The complaint pathway is also shared — a conduct complaint goes to Consumer Affairs Victoria. What matters to you is not the licence, it is which contract the person in front of you is standing inside.
One limit worth carrying with you: the compensation scheme behind the licence, the Victorian Property Fund, covers loss where an agent misuses or misappropriates trust money or property. Consumer Affairs Victoria says expressly that a claim cannot proceed simply because of unprofessional conduct, bad advice or misrepresentation about a property. The licence protects money in trust; it does not underwrite judgement, on either side.
The honest version of this is structural, not statistical. First, negotiation: someone is negotiating in that transaction whether or not you are, and if you are unrepresented the only professional negotiator in the room is contracted to the other party. In our own engagement files, savings measured against the initial asking price typically fall between $30,000 and $80,000 — but asking price is not a field in our published dataset, so that range comes from our records and is not independently reproducible from the DOI. Treat it as our observation, not as a market rate, and not as a promise about your purchase.
Second, comparables discipline. An unrepresented buyer is usually working from a single reference point — the range quoted by the agent selling the property — while the analysis that matters is what genuinely comparable property has recently settled for, adjusted for land, condition and position. That analysis is available to anyone willing to do it; the point is that most buyers do not, and the person who offered to help them is on the other side.
Third, access. Some property transacts without ever being publicly listed, through relationships between agencies. A buyers agency sees a share of that flow; an unrepresented buyer sees the portals. We are not going to publish a running count of how many off-market opportunities we hold at any moment, because it is not a number anyone outside the firm could verify.
Fourth, and hardest to price: which property gets bought at all. The costly mistake is rarely paying somewhat too much for the right property — it is buying the wrong property competently. A selling agent lists properties and has no reason to redirect you to a different suburb. A buyers agent’s job explicitly includes saying "this is not the right property for your brief, let us wait". We are not going to attach growth percentages to that argument; an earlier version of this page did, comparing "declining" and "comparable" suburbs with specific annual growth rates, and those were forward-looking projections we could not substantiate. They have been removed.
Roughly a third of the enquiries that reach our strategy call do not need a full engagement, and we say so on the call. The common cases: you have already identified a specific property and only want negotiation or auction help, which is what the $2,500 + GST auction-bidding tier exists for; you are buying at the top of your budget for reasons that are not financial — a school zone, proximity to family — so optimisation is not really the objective; or you are buying a familiar property type in a suburb you already know well, as a second or third purchase in your own neighbourhood.
The cases where representation is structurally most valuable: first-time investors, first-home buyers in unfamiliar suburbs, SMSF trustees who have already taken licensed advice on the fund, overseas-resident buyers, and anyone whose savings timeline means a single bad transaction would meaningfully delay the next one.
And a boundary that applies to us as much as to anyone: PremiumRea holds no Australian Financial Services Licence and no Australian Credit Licence. Whether to buy through an SMSF or a trust, whether to borrow and how much, and which lender or loan product to use are questions for a licensed financial adviser, a registered tax agent and a licensed mortgage broker. An estate agent licence authorises none of that, on either side of the transaction.
Ask, before any conversation about a specific property: "Are you the vendor’s agent for this property, or do you represent buyers?" A selling agent will tell you they act for the vendor — they are trained to, because the conduct rules require them to act honestly and in the vendor’s interests, and pretending otherwise would breach both. A buyers agent should say they act for buyers and take no payment from sellers. Anyone who says they "work with both sides" of the same deal is describing something the Regulations do not permit.
Then verify it on paper. On any buyers-agent engagement letter, look for an explicit clause that the agent will not accept a spotter’s fee or any other payment from a selling agent, developer or builder in respect of a property they show you. PremiumRea’s engagement letter carries this; ask every competitor for theirs in writing rather than accepting it verbally.
And verify the licence itself. The Consumer Affairs Victoria public register is free and shows licence numbers with grant, surrender, cancellation and suspension dates, the directors of a corporate licensee, the representatives it employs, and any tribunal or court orders affecting it. Search both the company on the letterhead and the individual you are dealing with — on either side of your transaction.
Who engages them and who they owe duties to. Both hold the same estate agent licence under the Estate Agents Act 1980 (Vic). The selling agent is engaged by the vendor under an authority to sell and paid from the vendor’s settlement proceeds; a buyers agent is engaged and paid by the buyer, and Consumer Affairs Victoria defines one as a licensed estate agent who acts for a buyer instead of a seller for a fee. The licence does not encode a side — the contract does.
No. Under the Estate Agents (Professional Conduct) Regulations 2018 a licensee must not put their interests in conflict with the client’s by acting for another person, and must not accept commission from both a client and a consumer for the same transaction. The same licensee can act for a vendor on one property and a buyer on an unrelated one; the prohibition is on both sides of a single transaction.
Yes. Consumer Affairs Victoria states that a buyer’s agent, also known as a buyer’s advocate, is a licensed estate agent who acts for a buyer instead of a seller for a fee. There is no legal distinction between the terms and the Act creates no separate class for "advocate" — some practitioners prefer it to emphasise the advisory nature of the work, others use "agent" because it is the term people search for.
Indirectly, through the price. The selling agent is paid by the vendor out of settlement proceeds, so it is funded from what you pay. Victoria sets no statutory commission rate — it is negotiated in the authority to sell, and Consumer Affairs Victoria requires the agent to tell the vendor that commission and expenses are negotiable before that authority is signed. We do not publish a typical Victorian commission percentage because we cannot source one; ask a vendor-side agent directly if you want to know what they charge.
Because the selling agent is not free and is not yours. Their fee is funded from the price you pay, and they are contracted to the other party. A buyer’s agent fee is an additional, visible cost paid by you to your own representative. Whether it pays for itself depends on your purchase: in our engagement files savings against the initial asking price typically fall between $30,000 and $80,000, but asking price is not a field in our published dataset so that range is our own observation and is not independently reproducible — and it is not a promise about your transaction.
Yes. Once we are engaged we contact the selling agent directly, so you do not need to raise it in passing. In practice the dynamic usually changes when a buyers agent is involved — communication becomes more direct and artificial-urgency tactics land less well, because the person on the other end deals with them weekly.
We attend and bid on your behalf to a written maximum agreed before the auction, which is the discipline unrepresented bidders most often lose in the moment. Note that there is no cooling-off period at a public auction, or within three clear business days before or after one, so all due diligence has to be finished before the hammer rather than after. If you have already found the property yourself, the auction-bidding-only tier is $2,500 + GST; inside a full engagement, auction representation is included in the flat fee.
Both. A private-treaty purchase runs through the same work — comparable-sales analysis, section 32 review, planning and overlay checks, and direct negotiation with the selling agent — with the negotiation happening before exchange rather than under the hammer. Private sales also carry a three-clear-business-day cooling-off period that auctions do not, which changes the sequencing rather than the substance. The only auction-specific service is the $2,500 + GST bidding-only tier.
Not by the licensing system, in most cases, and this applies to both sides. The Victorian Property Fund compensates loss where an estate agent or conveyancer has misused or misappropriated trust money or property; Consumer Affairs Victoria states expressly that a claim cannot proceed simply because of unprofessional conduct, bad advice or misrepresentation about a property. Conduct complaints go to Consumer Affairs Victoria and can lead to regulatory action against the agent, but that is not a compensation route for you.
The structural claim this page rests on — that the two roles are paid by, and owe duties to, opposite parties — is a legal fact with primary sources, listed below and checked on 31 August 2026. PremiumRea’s fee figures are our own contract prices rather than third-party facts. The negotiation range quoted in the text is an observation from our engagement files and is explicitly not reproducible from our published dataset; it is labelled that way where it appears.
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