New Queensland property forms slammed as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘comprehensively useless’

Auctioneer Haesley Cush from Ray White in action

Warning: This is an industry rant!

On August 1 we saw the introduction of the Form 2 in Queensland and some contract updates to the REIQ standard contract documents.

We have now had three months to use, test and review them in the market.

I was initially very critical of the Form 2’s and the land tax inclusion in the standard REIQ contracts.

It’s not their intention that I was critical of but their practical form and what was produced.

I can now confirm, after three months, that my initial concerns are 100 per cent validated. This document is ridiculous.

Last week at our Toowong office I saw a stack of papers sitting on someone’s desk – it was over 500 pages.

This was their Form 2. Five. Hundred. Pages. For one property transaction.

On eproperty transaction, one behemoth of a document

They are not creating transparency. They are creating a bottleneck.

They are so big in some cases that they can’t be easily sent electronically and they are too complex for someone to practically read.

We’re talking about documents that crash email systems and overwhelm document management platforms.

We have started using lawyers to produce them and even some of those are coming back with errors.

This has led to delays in settlements and even issues that have caused contracts to crash.

Real deals. Real buyers and sellers. Real consequences.

Here’s the fundamental problem: nobody reads 500 pages.

Not buyers, not sellers, not their solicitors if we’re being honest.

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No one is even reading it, says Ray White’s Haesley Cush. Photo: Supplied.

So what transparency have we actually achieved? We’ve created a legal fiction, a document so comprehensive that it’s comprehensively useless.

The easy solution for the land tax component is clear: this should be managed by the state government, not buried in real estate contracts.

Create a centralised portal. Make it searchable. Make it functional.

Stop downloading state administrative responsibilities onto private transactions and then wondering why the system is breaking.

But regarding the current Form 2, I don’t have solutions, I only have problems.

And that’s the point. This document needs a complete rewrite or review if they want to achieve the transparency they originally intended.

Right now, we’re not protecting consumers. We’re protecting ourselves from litigation with documents so exhaustive that nobody can claim they weren’t disclosed to, even though nobody actually reads them.

That’s not transparency. That’s absurdity wrapped in compliance.

The industry needs to speak up. Document your worst examples. Submit feedback to REIQ. Push back on unworkable requirements.

Because three months in, this isn’t working, and everyone knows it.

* Haesley Cush is an auctioneer and the co-founder of the Ray White Collective.

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