The process of selling a house in Australia, step by step

Decide whether it is the right time to sell

Three things drive this: your personal circumstances, the state of the market and your financial position. Personal reasons usually lead. People sell because they are upsizing, downsizing, relocating, separating, settling an estate or releasing equity, and those reasons rarely wait for perfect conditions.

Market conditions matter less than most sellers assume. If you are selling and buying in the same market, a downturn cuts your sale price and your purchase price together. The gap between them is what affects you, and it is far more stable than headline prices.

The financial question is the sharper one. Work out what you owe, what you are likely to sell for, and what the sale will cost you to run. If the numbers leave you short of where you need to be, that is worth knowing now rather than three months in. Should I sell my home and is now a good time to sell both go deeper on this.

Find out what your property is worth

Everything downstream depends on this number. Which sale method suits your property, how much you spend on presentation, where you set the asking price, whether an offer is any good: all of it is anchored to your estimate of value.

Value is established by comparable sales. Not what the neighbours are asking, not what the property was worth at the peak, and not what you need to make the next purchase work. What matters is what genuinely similar homes nearby have actually sold for in the last three to six months, adjusted for the differences between them and yours.

Get more than one read. An automated valuation gives a fast, unemotional range from sales data. A local appraisal adds what data misses, like a north facing rear yard or a main road at the end of the street. Where they agree, be confident. Where they disagree, work out why. How much is my house worth explains how the estimates are built and where they break down.

Decide how you will sell

Four common routes, and they are genuinely different products rather than labels for the same thing. Private treaty is the default: you advertise a price and negotiate with buyers individually. Auction sets a public deadline and lets buyers bid against each other, which suits homes where demand is strong or value is hard to pin down. An online auction runs the same competition without the crowd on the nature strip. A fixed price campaign names one number and holds it.

The second decision sits alongside the first, and it is the one with a five figure consequence: who runs the campaign. A traditional agency charges commission, usually around 2.1 per cent, so a $700,000 sale costs somewhere around $20,700 once marketing is counted. A flat fee platform charges the same amount whatever the property sells for. Unreserved’s fee is $900.

The work happens either way. Photography, portal listings, buyer enquiry, inspections, negotiation and paperwork are all required regardless of who handles them. The question is what that work should cost you, and whether a percentage of your sale price is a sensible way to buy it. Compare the ways to sell sets the options side by side, and auction versus private treaty covers the method choice in detail.

Prepare the property

Work in this order: repair, declutter, clean, garden, then style. Repairs first because they are the only category a buyer can price against you. A dripping tap or a cracked tile invites a mental deduction far larger than the cost of fixing it, and it plants the idea that other things have been neglected too.

Decluttering does more per dollar than anything else on the list, and costs nothing but time and a storage unit. Rooms read as larger when they are emptier. Buyers need to imagine their own life in the space, which is difficult when yours is still all over it.

Then the exterior. The front of the house is the first thing every buyer sees, in the photographs and again when they pull up. Mown grass, edged beds, a pressure washed path and a clean front door do more for a first impression than anything inside. The four week preparation plan sequences all of it, and the real cost of preparing a home for sale covers what each job returns.

Gather your legal documents

Every Australian sale needs a contract of sale, and most states also require a vendor disclosure document that has to exist before the property can be advertised. Your conveyancer or solicitor prepares both. Engage them in phase one.

Doing this early is not tidiness, it is money. A buyer who wants to sign on the Saturday of the first open cannot sign if the contract does not exist. Momentum in the first fortnight is the most valuable thing you have, and paperwork delays are the most common way sellers waste it.

What the disclosure document is called depends on where you are. The obligations differ meaningfully between states, and getting them wrong can give a buyer grounds to terminate well after you thought the sale was safe. Contracts of sale and vendor statements explains what goes into them, and the most common legal mistakes sellers make covers what happens when they are wrong.

Set your asking price

Pricing is a marketing decision, not a valuation one. The valuation tells you what the property is worth. The asking price decides which buyers see it, because buyers search in brackets. Price at $815,000 and everyone with an $800,000 ceiling filters you out, including several who would have paid $820,000 after falling for the house.

Overpricing is the expensive error, and expensive in a way that is easy to miss. The listing launches, the best buyers look and pass, enquiry thins, and after three weeks you reduce. By then the property carries a days-on-market number telling every remaining buyer something is wrong with it. Sellers who start high and correct almost always finish below where an accurate price would have landed them.

Price slightly under your true expectation and the mechanics work for you instead. More buyers qualify, more of them inspect, and competition does the work of pushing the number up. How to price your home without an agent walks through building the range from comparable sales, and our pricing strategy guide covers how to position it once you have it.

Photograph and market the property

Nearly every buyer meets your home as a thumbnail. Photography is not a nice addition to the campaign, it is the campaign, and the gap between professional images and phone images is the difference between a listing people click and one they scroll past. Add a floorplan: listings with one hold attention markedly longer, because buyers self qualify on layout before they commit a Saturday.

Your listing needs to be on realestate.com.au and Domain. Between them they are where Australian buyers look, and a home that is not on both is invisible to part of the market. Portals also sell upgrade tiers that lift your position in search results, which are worth considering in competitive suburbs and easy to overspend on elsewhere.

The written listing matters more than sellers expect. Lead with what is genuinely distinctive rather than a list of rooms, and do not oversell: a description that promises more than the inspection delivers produces disappointed buyers. Real estate advertising costs breaks down what a campaign runs to, and the realestate.com.au upgrade tiers covers what the paid placements actually do.

Hold inspections

Open homes and private inspections do different jobs. Opens are efficient and create visible competition, since buyers who see other buyers in the hallway behave differently to buyers who see an empty house. Private inspections suit serious prospects who want time to look properly, and second inspections are one of the strongest buying signals there is.

Presentation on the day is a repeatable checklist rather than an art. Every light on, including in daylight. Blinds and curtains open. Air moving through the house. Benches, vanities and floors clear. Pets and their equipment elsewhere. Temperature comfortable before anyone arrives.

Expect questions about the age of the roof and hot water system, rates and any owners corporation fees, which way the yard faces, why you are selling and what settlement terms you want. Answer them directly. Sellers who are straight about a flaw are far more likely to be believed about everything else. Preparing your home for inspections has the full run through.

Receive and negotiate offers

An offer is a proposal, not a verdict. It carries a price, a deposit, a settlement date and any conditions the buyer wants attached, most commonly finance approval and a building and pest inspection. Every one of those is negotiable, and the ones that are not about price are frequently where the value is.

Respond to every offer, including the low ones. A buyer who opens at $60,000 below your asking price is often testing rather than telling you their limit, and a considered counter keeps them in the conversation. Silence ends negotiations that were still live.

Counter with reasons, not numbers alone: the comparable sales, the interest the campaign is generating, and what you will move on. If two buyers are competing, tell both the property is contested and invite their best offer by a set time. How to negotiate as a private seller covers the tactics, how to respond to a low offer handles the awkward ones, and best and final offers explains running a deadline properly.

Accept the best offer, which is not always the highest

Price is one term among several. An offer is worth what it is likely to complete at, and a high number attached to a shaky buyer is worth less than a slightly lower one from a buyer who is ready.

Weigh four things alongside the price. Conditions: unconditional beats subject to finance, which beats subject to the sale of another property. Deposit: a full ten per cent signals commitment and gives you real recourse. Settlement date: one that matches your next move can be worth thousands in avoided rent or bridging finance. Buyer readiness: formal pre-approval and a completed building inspection mean the deal is far more likely to survive.

A fall-through costs more than the gap between two offers. You lose weeks, you relist with days-on-market against you, and every buyer who circles back knows the last deal collapsed. Should you accept the first offer deals with the version of this that arrives in week one.

Exchange contracts

Both parties sign, contracts are exchanged, and the buyer pays the deposit, usually five to ten per cent, held in a trust account until settlement. From this point the sale is legally on foot, subject to any cooling-off period and any conditions written into the contract.

Cooling-off gives the buyer a short window to withdraw, generally with a penalty. It runs from two to five business days depending on the state, and it does not apply to property bought at auction anywhere in Australia. Sellers do not get a cooling-off period. Once you have signed, you are committed.

Conditions are the other live risk. Subject to finance means the sale depends on the buyer’s lender formally approving, which is not the same as pre-approval. Subject to building and pest gives them an inspection window and, depending on the wording, room to renegotiate. Have your conveyancer explain exactly what each condition allows the buyer to do before you sign.

Prepare for settlement

The gap between exchange and settlement is where the practical work sits. Your conveyancer coordinates with the buyer’s, arranges discharge of your mortgage, and calculates the adjustments for rates, water and any owners corporation fees, so each side pays only for the days they owned the property.

Your list is shorter. Book the removalist early, because settlement dates cluster at month end and Fridays go first. Arrange final readings and disconnection for electricity, gas, water and internet, and redirect your mail. Keep your building insurance running until settlement completes: risk does not always pass on the day you expect.

The buyer is entitled to a final inspection shortly before settlement, usually in the last week. They are checking that the property is in the condition it was in when they signed, that anything included in the sale is still there, and that everything which worked then still works. Leave the place clean and remove everything you are not leaving behind.

Settlement day

Settlement is now electronic in most of Australia, handled through PEXA by the two conveyancers. The buyer’s funds are transferred, your outstanding mortgage is paid out from the proceeds, the balance goes to you, and the title transfers into the buyer’s name.

Keys are released once settlement confirms. Most sellers do not attend anything and simply get a call or an email telling them it has gone through. Funds usually land in your account the same day, though the timing depends on when in the day settlement completes and on your bank.

Delays happen and are usually mechanical rather than serious: a bank not ready, a document not lodged, a figure needing recalculation. Most resolve within a day or two, and contracts generally allow penalty interest where one side causes the delay. Settlement day explained covers the sequence in detail.

After settlement

A short list, worth doing in the first week. Redirect your mail, and update your address with your bank, insurer, employer, superannuation fund, the electoral roll and your state driver licensing authority. Notify the council and the water authority that the property has changed hands, so the next rates notice goes to the buyer. Cancel the building insurance, and confirm every utility account is closed rather than merely transferred.

Keep your records. The contract, the settlement statement, agent or platform invoices, conveyancing fees and receipts for capital improvements all matter if capital gains tax applies to the sale. If the property was ever an investment, or was not your main residence for the whole period you owned it, talk to your accountant before you file.