---
title: "Red Flags When Interviewing Listing Agents: How to Spot an Inflated Appraisal Before You Sign"
url: "https://agentfind.com.au/red-flags-interviewing-listing-agents/"
markdown_url: "https://agentfind.com.au/red-flags-interviewing-listing-agents.md"
type: "post"
date_published: "2026-09-15T21:43:31+00:00"
date_modified: "2026-09-16T10:30:14+00:00"
language: "en-US"
renderer_version: "3"
---

# Red Flags When Interviewing Listing Agents: How to Spot an Inflated Appraisal Before You Sign

## Summary

NSW lifted the maximum underquoting penalty from $22,000 to $110,000 in June 2026. The same disclosure rules that protect buyers give vendors a way to test an inflated appraisal — here are the eight red flags to check before you sign an agency agreement.

## Content

*By the AgentFind Editorial Team — Australian Property Professional Directory, Sydney*

 ![Agent and vendor shaking hands over a signed agency agreement](https://agentfind.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/photo-1681505531034-8d67054e07f6-1024x683.jpg) The listing presentation is a sales pitch aimed at you. It should survive being fact-checked.

**The agent who quotes you the highest price is statistically the least likely to achieve it. Inflating an appraisal to win a listing — “buying the listing” — is the most common and most expensive thing that happens to Australian vendors, and unlike underquoting a buyer, it is barely regulated. What has changed is the paper trail: from 29 June 2026 NSW lifted the maximum court penalty for underquoting from $22,000 to $110,000, or three times the agent’s commission, whichever is higher, and the disclosure regime that came with it hands you a document you can use to test any appraisal you are given.**

## Key Takeaways

**Judge a listing presentation on its evidence, not its number. Ask for the agent’s own appraisal-to-result record, demand the comparable sales that produced your estimate, and refuse to sign anything on the day of the pitch. The highest appraisal in the room is a marketing tactic far more often than it is a market assessment.**

- **Overquoting a vendor is not the same offence as underquoting a buyer.** Underquoting is specifically illegal and now carries six-figure penalties in NSW; an optimistic appraisal to a vendor mostly is not — which is exactly why it is so common.
- **The comparable sales are the appraisal.** If an agent cannot produce five genuinely comparable recent sales that support their number, the number is an opinion dressed as analysis.
- **Never sign an agency agreement at the listing presentation.** NSW gives you a one-business-day cooling-off on the agreement itself, but the simpler protection is to take it away and read it.
- **A 60 to 90 day term protects you.** A six-month exclusive agency removes your only leverage at precisely the point you would want to use it.

## Why the New Underquoting Laws Matter to Sellers Too

**The 2026 reforms were written to stop agents advertising misleadingly low prices to buyers, but the mechanism — forcing agents to document how an estimate was reached — is the best tool a vendor has ever had for testing an inflated appraisal. An agent who must justify a price range with named comparable sales has much less room to tell you a number they do not believe.**

NSW underquoting penalties · before and after 29 June 2026

$22,000

Previous maximum
court penalty

→

$110,000

New maximum — **or three times
the agent’s commission**, whichever is higher

$110,000

Dummy bidding
(was $55,000)

Stage 1 of the NSW changes commenced 29 June 2026, covering increased court penalties, expanded NSW Fair Trading disciplinary powers and a new impersonation offence. Statement of Information and advertised-price disclosure obligations were slated for a second stage in late 2026 — confirm the current commencement position with NSW Fair Trading before relying on them.

In Victoria the approach is different. Rather than raising penalties, Victoria has focused on transparency: agents must publish the auction reserve price ahead of the auction and update marketing materials accordingly, with the requirement extending to fixed-date-of-sale campaigns. Victoria’s underquoting taskforce, running since 2022, had issued more than 200 infringements worth roughly $2.3 million in fines as at August 2026, with per-breach penalties around $11,000.

What none of this regulates is the number an agent says to you in your lounge room. That remains, legally, an estimate.

## The Eight Red Flags

**Most bad listing outcomes trace back to one of eight warning signs, and all eight are visible in the first meeting if you know to look. The pattern to watch for is confidence without evidence: a high number, a thin justification, and pressure to commit before you can check anything.**

 Red flag What to ask What a good answer looks like **Highest appraisal of the three**“Which five sales produced that range?”Named addresses, sold within three to six months, same suburb, similar land and condition **Comparables that aren’t comparable**“Why is that one comparable to mine?”Explains the adjustments made for land size, aspect, condition and street — rather than waving at a suburb median **No appraisal-to-result record**“Your last ten sales: appraisal range, launch price, final price, days on market.”Produces it without hesitation, including the ones that underperformed **Identical marketing package**“Why this package for this property?”Ties each line item to where enquiry actually came from on comparable listings **Sign-today pressure**“I’ll read it and come back tomorrow.”Complete indifference — a confident agent expects you to read the agreement **Six-month exclusive term**“Can we make it 60 days?”Agrees, or explains a genuine property-specific reason for longer **Refuses any tiered commission**“Base rate, plus a bonus above an agreed threshold?”Engages with the structure and negotiates the threshold **Vague marketing costs**“At cost, with invoices at settlement?”Yes, in writing, itemised, with optional items marked optional

### Red Flag 1: The Highest Number in the Room

Three agents appraise your home. One says $880,000–$920,000, one says $900,000–$950,000, one says $920,000–$960,000. The third agent has told you your house is worth $40,000 more than the first, and has done so without seeing anything the others did not see.

There is a reason this works. Vendors interview agents sequentially and remember the best news. An agent who wins the listing on an inflated number has four weeks of campaign to walk you back down to the real one, and by then you have signed, paid the marketing, and have a house on the market. The industry term for the walk-back is conditioning.

The test is simple: ask each agent to show you the sales that produced their range, and compare the three lists. If the outlier’s list contains properties on better streets, with more land, or sold six months ago in a stronger market, you have your answer.

### Red Flag 2: Comparables That Aren’t Comparable

A comparable sale is only comparable if a buyer would genuinely consider the two properties substitutes. Common ways a list gets padded: sales from the better half of the suburb; sales with meaningfully more land; renovated homes compared to unrenovated ones; sales from before the market turned. Given national dwelling values fell 0.9% in August 2026 alone and sit 3.6% below the March peak, a comparable from February is not a comparable — it is a different market.

Ask for the adjustments in words: “This one sold for $940,000 but it has 120 square metres more land and a renovated kitchen, so I have adjusted down to $895,000 for yours.” That is analysis. A list of five addresses with no adjustments is decoration.

### Red Flag 3: No Appraisal-to-Result Record

This is the single most useful question in the entire process, and the one most rarely asked: *for your last ten sales in this suburb, what was the original appraisal range, the launch price, the final sale price, and the days on market?*

An agent who consistently sells inside their appraisal range is pricing honestly. An agent whose results land well below their appraisals is winning listings on optimism. An agent who cannot or will not produce the data is asking you to take a five-figure decision on faith, and the refusal is itself the answer.

 ![Two people reviewing a contract and notepad across a table before signing](https://agentfind.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/photo-1758519288905-38b7b00c1023-1024x576.jpg) Take the agency agreement away and read it. Nothing good happens because you signed it forty minutes sooner.

### Red Flags 4 to 8: The Agreement Itself

**The cookie-cutter campaign.** If the marketing schedule for your 1960s three-bedroom in an outer suburb is identical to the one for a waterfront apartment, nobody has thought about your property. Ask where enquiry came from on the agent’s last five comparable listings. If 90% arrived through portal search, printed brochures and letterbox drops are your money funding their brand.

**The sign-today push.** Any variation of “this price is what I can get you if we launch Saturday” is pressure, not advice. NSW provides a cooling-off period on the agency agreement itself, but you do not need it if you simply take the document home. An agent who resists that is telling you something.

**The long exclusive term.** Sixty to ninety days is standard. Six months means that if the campaign stalls in week three you spend five more months watching your listing go stale while your options sit locked in a contract.

**Commission-structure resistance.** A flat percentage pays the same whether your home sells for $820,000 or $890,000 — a difference of roughly $1,330 to the agent. Propose a base rate with a bonus tier above an agreed threshold. An agent unwilling to be paid more for a better result is telling you what they expect to deliver.

**Vague vendor paid advertising.** Ask three things in writing: is the portal spend at cost or marked up, will invoices be provided at settlement, and is the VPA still payable if the property does not sell. In most agreements the answer to the last is yes.

**Insider Insight:** Before any of the three agents arrives, verify each licence on your state regulator’s public register — NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria, the Queensland Office of Fair Trading, WA’s Consumer Protection division or SA’s Consumer and Business Services all publish searchable registers, and most show disciplinary history. It takes four minutes and occasionally saves the entire campaign.

FEATURED CASE STUDY

## The Appraisal That Was $60,000 of Wishful Thinking

**A vendor in a middle-ring Melbourne suburb interviewed three agents and received appraisals of $860,000–$890,000, $870,000–$900,000 and $920,000–$950,000.** The third agent also quoted the lowest commission. The vendor asked all three for the comparable sales behind their range — the one question that separated them.

Two agents produced four and five sales respectively, all within 700 metres and the previous three months, with written adjustments for land size and condition. The third produced three sales: one from the adjacent, more expensive suburb, one with an extra bedroom and a renovated bathroom, and one that had settled seven months earlier — before the market turned.

On that evidence the vendor listed with the second agent at $879,000. The property sold in twenty-three days at $884,000 — inside the appraisal range, above the launch price. The third agent’s range began $36,000 above the eventual result and topped out $66,000 above it.

Had the vendor listed on the highest number, the likely path was four weeks of no offers, a price reduction to the high $800,000s, a second reduction, and a sale in the low $870,000s to a buyer who had watched the price fall twice. *This is an illustrative scenario built from the typical figures above, not a specific client file.*

 [Search Agents in Your Suburb](https://agentfind.com.au/listings/?_listing_type=real-estate-agent)

## The Interview Script That Does the Work

**Six questions, asked of every agent, in the same order, with the answers written down. The comparison between three sets of answers tells you more than any single presentation, and asking them signals that you will be an informed client — which changes how you are treated for the whole campaign.**

Ask: which five sales produced your range, and what adjustments did you make? What were your last ten results in this suburb — appraisal, launch, final, days on market? What is your recommended method and what would you do if the commission were identical either way? What exactly is in the marketing package, what is optional, is it at cost, and is it payable if the property does not sell? What term are you proposing and will you do sixty days? And finally: what would have to go wrong for this campaign to fail, and what would you do about it?

The last question is the most revealing. An agent who has never thought about failure has not run many difficult campaigns, and in a market where national clearance rates sit near 52% and values are falling in most suburbs, difficult campaigns are the normal kind.

## Frequently Asked Questions

 ➕ Is it illegal for an agent to overquote a vendor in Australia?

Generally no, and that asymmetry is the heart of the problem. Underquoting — advertising a misleadingly low price to buyers — is specifically prohibited and now carries a maximum penalty in NSW of $110,000 or three times the agent’s commission. An optimistic appraisal given to a vendor is treated as an estimate, so your protection is evidence rather than regulation. ➕ What are the new NSW underquoting penalties?

From 29 June 2026 the maximum court-imposed penalty for underquoting rose from $22,000 to $110,000, or three times the agent’s commission, whichever is higher. Dummy bidding rose from $55,000 to $110,000, and a new impersonation offence carries up to $110,000. Further disclosure obligations, including a Statement of Information and mandatory advertised price ranges, were slated for a second stage — check the current commencement position with NSW Fair Trading. ➕ What is “buying the listing”?

Quoting a vendor a higher price than the agent genuinely expects, in order to win the listing ahead of competitors. The agent then uses the campaign period to condition the vendor down to a realistic figure. It costs the vendor time, marketing spend and negotiating position, and it is the most common cause of a stale listing. ➕ How many comparable sales should an agent show me?

At least five, all within roughly a kilometre, sold in the last three to six months, and genuinely similar in land size, condition and configuration. Each should come with a stated adjustment explaining why it supports your number. In a falling market, recency matters more than usual — a sale from six months ago reflects a different market. ➕ Can I get out of an agency agreement after signing?

NSW provides a cooling-off period on the agency agreement itself, which can be waived. Elsewhere your options depend on the agreement’s own terms, so the practical protection is to never sign at the listing presentation. Read the term length, the commission, the marketing clause and the termination provisions before you commit. ➕ How do I check whether an agent is licensed?

Each state regulator maintains a searchable public register — NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria, the Queensland Office of Fair Trading, Consumer Protection in WA and Consumer and Business Services in SA. Most registers also show disciplinary action taken against a licence holder. ➕ What is vendor conditioning?

The process of gradually adjusting a seller’s price expectations downward during a campaign, usually with buyer feedback and market commentary. It is legitimate when the original appraisal was honest and the market has genuinely spoken. It is a problem when the appraisal was inflated to win the listing and conditioning was always the plan. ➕ Should I choose the agent with the lowest commission?

Not on that basis alone. A 0.3% commission difference on an $850,000 sale is about $2,550, while a pricing error of 2% is about $17,000. Commission matters, but it is a smaller variable than pricing accuracy and negotiating skill — and the cheapest quote paired with the highest appraisal is a recognised warning combination.

## Check the Reviews Before You Pick Up the Phone

Every red flag above is easier to spot when you already know something about the agent. Each professional listed on AgentFind shows their verified Google rating and review count on their profile, pulled from their own Google Business Profile rather than written for them.

Verified ratings across the AgentFind directory

4.6/ 5

Average Google rating
across rated listings

54,000+

Google reviews behind
the listed professionals

262

Listings rated
4.5 stars or higher

433

Property professionals
listed nationally

Ratings and review counts are sourced from each firm’s public Google Business Profile and refreshed periodically; 341 of 433 listings currently carry a Google rating. AgentFind does not write, edit or solicit these reviews.

**Interviewed agents recently?** If one of these red flags showed up — or if an agent answered the appraisal-to-result question well and it changed your decision — leave a comment below. Vendors choosing this week will learn more from that than from any checklist.

**About AgentFind**
AgentFind is an Australian directory of property professionals — selling agents, buyer’s agents, mortgage brokers, conveyancers and strata managers — searchable by location and speciality. Listings are not exclusive by area, so more than one professional can appear in the same suburb and you see the full field rather than a single paid name. Enquiries go directly to the professional you contact, and AgentFind takes no commission on any resulting sale.

Interview Three. Ask All Six Questions. Sign Nothing on the Day.

Search verified selling agents by suburb, compare their ratings and specialities side by side, and build a shortlist before the first listing presentation.

 [Search Agents in Your Suburb](https://agentfind.com.au/listings/?_listing_type=real-estate-agent) [Save Your Favourite Agents](https://agentfind.com.au/bookmarks/)

Open any professional’s profile and choose Bookmark to add them to your shortlist — you’ll be asked to sign in first, then your saved professionals appear on your Bookmarks page.

Buying as well as selling? Compare [buyer’s agents](https://agentfind.com.au/listings/?_listing_type=buyers-agent), [conveyancers](https://agentfind.com.au/listings/?_listing_type=conveyancer) and [mortgage brokers](https://agentfind.com.au/listings/?_listing_type=mortgage-broker), or [request a free quote](https://agentfind.com.au/contact/).

*This article is general information only and does not take your personal circumstances into account. It is not financial, legal or taxation advice. Penalties, disclosure obligations and cooling-off rules cited are current as at September 2026, and parts of the NSW reforms were staged for later commencement — confirm the current position with your state regulator before relying on it.*

*Sources: [NSW Fair Trading — Changes to property and stock agents laws](https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/fair-trading/news/changes-to-property-and-stock-agents-laws); [The underquoting crackdown: what the 2026 laws change](https://propertygo.com.au/blog/underquoting-laws-2026-nsw-victoria-what-buyers-need-to-know); [Cotality Home Value Index, August 2026](https://propertyupdate.com.au/housing-downturn-spreads-as-93-of-capital-city-suburbs-record-winter-value-falls-latest-cotality-home-value-index/).*

Important — currency and verification notice

**This article is general information only and was current at the date of publication shown above. It is not legal, financial, taxation or credit advice, and it does not take your circumstances into account.**

Legislation, regulations, interest rates, regulatory settings, lender policies, cooling-off rules, penalties, thresholds, scheme rules and tribunal procedures change frequently, and several of the provisions referred to here commence or change on staged dates. Before acting on anything in this article you must independently verify the current position that applies to your property and your state or territory — including the relevant property, strata, building, credit and consumer legislation; the jurisdiction, procedures and time limits of the applicable tribunal (for example NCAT in New South Wales or VCAT in Victoria); the content and currency of any certificate you intend to rely on, such as a section 184 or section 108 certificate; and the current status of any building defect, combustible cladding or remediation scheme affecting the building.

AgentFind is a directory service. We do not provide legal, financial, credit or strata advice and we accept no responsibility for decisions made in reliance on this article. Obtain advice from a qualified professional — a solicitor, licensed conveyancer, accountant, licensed mortgage broker or licensed strata manager as appropriate — and confirm current requirements with the relevant government authority or regulator before committing to a transaction or a course of action.

## Classification

- **Category:** Selling Agents, Tips

## Images

![Agent and vendor shaking hands over a signed agency agreement](https://agentfind.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/photo-1681505531034-8d67054e07f6.jpg)