Put Your Reserve Where Your Mouth Is (or no Auction for you!)
From 16 October 2026, Victorian properties being sold by auction or fixed-date sale will have to have the vendor's reserve price publicly published for at least seven days before the auction. If the reserve changes, the seven-day clock starts again. No published reserve = no auction. On the surface, it sounds great.
Transparency! Clarity! No more underquoting! Everyone wins! Right?
Well, it sounds simple, until you factor in the complexity of property, human emotion and, you know, transacting huge amounts of money. Because here's the funny thing about selling property: the market doesn't always tell you what it thinks until you actually show it the house and let it see what everyone else thinks, too.
You launch. Buyers inspect. The 10.00am first Saturday crowd tells you one thing. The second weekend crowd tells you something else.
Someone who was “definitely not interested” suddenly wants to make an offer. A buyer who looked like a $2m buyer turns out to be a $1.7m buyer. Another property down the road sells for $150k more than everyone expected. And suddenly the conversation around price changes.
That's called market feedback.
And it's kind of the whole point. The new rules effectively ask vendors to plant their flag in the ground a week before the most important piece of market feedback, auction day. And if they change their mind? Seven-day reset.
6 Lascelles Avenue, Toorak
5 bed, 4 bath, 6 car, 958sqm
Here's the bit we think could really bite.
If you're a vendor sitting on the fence about whether to auction, why would you choose the method of sale that requires you to publicly declare your bottom dollar before you've seen the market's final response? You might not. In fact, we’re already seeing a big swing away from auction as a preferred method of sale over to private treaty where buyers have less, not more, visibility of competition. The delicious irony of that that should be ringing some alarm bells.
REIV research found 94% (that bares repeating. 94% - that’s Liberian election result numbers!) of Victorian property owners surveyed said they would fundamentally change their selling strategy if forced to disclose their reserve seven days before auction.
A law designed to create more transparency could actually create less.
When done properly, an auction is one of the most transparent ways of establishing market value: multiple buyers, one property, one deadline and everyone gets to see what everyone else is prepared to pay.
Our take?
Let’s be very clear: underquoting is not a cheeky little sales tactic, it’s illegal, it’s shoddy, and it turns buyers into weekend warriors, trudging through four Saturdays of emotional attachment to a house they could never afford.
But there is a difference between stopping underquoting and removing a vendor's ability to respond to genuine market feedback.
A better system would make sure the reserve is consistent with the advertised range, without forcing a vendor to lock themselves into an exact dollar figure seven days before the hammer falls. In fact, that's broadly what the REIV proposed: a 10% reserve range confirmed three clear business days before auction, rather than a hard seven-day public number.
Because property campaigns aren't spreadsheets.
The market moves. Buyers move. Vendors move.
And sometimes the smartest thing you can do on auction day is change the number.
The unintended consequence here?
More regulation doesn't necessarily mean more transparency. Sometimes it just means more paperwork, more rules and fewer people willing to play the game. And from where we're sitting, that's a pretty spectacular own goal.
The auction, one of the few places where you can actually watch the market value of a property being established in public, could become the sale method vendors are least inclined to use.
Good intentions. Questionable mechanics.
Classic property legislation.
Younger Hill are Property Advocates located in Melbourne’s Inner North. Led by Fahey Younger, our team are fully licensed real estate agents and property specialists. We offer a collaborative and emotionally intelligent approach to transform old ways of buying property. With more than 20 years of combind buying and selling experiences, you’re in rock solid hands.
We service Melbourne Metro, Mornington and Bellarine Peninsulas, Rural Victoria (Gippsland, Daylesford, Hepburn Shire, Ballarat & surrounds), selected Sydney northern beaches, and more because property smarts don’t stop at the border.
