From 1 October 2026, the mechanics of selling property in Victoria change in three specific and consequential ways. Because these reforms touch every campaign we run and every buyer we deal with, I wanted to set out plainly what is changing, what it actually does to a sale, and how we’ve positioned ourselves at Nicole Gervasi Property Group as a result.
What’s changing
Three new requirements come into effect for real estate agents in Victoria.
First, agents must publish the vendor’s reserve price at least seven days before auction. Second, once a sale becomes unconditional, the final sold price must also be published, so a public record of what a property actually transacted for now exists. Third, the Statement of Information, the price guide document agents and buyers have relied on for years, is being replaced by a new Property Price Statement, which anchors the advertised guide directly to the reserve rather than leaving room between the two.
Taken together, the reforms are built around a single objective, closing the distance between what a property is advertised as worth and the figure a vendor will actually accept.
What it means in practice
Publishing the reserve changes the physics of an auction. Bidding has always run on uncertainty, a buyer pushes past their limit because they don’t know what the vendor will accept. Remove that uncertainty and every bidder in the room has the same reason to stop pushing, why bid in ten thousand dollar lots for a number you already know? The rational move becomes bidding to the published figure in the smallest increments allowed, then stopping. That’s not a flaw in how buyers behave. It’s the predictable result of publishing the one number an auction used to keep hidden.
The publication of sold prices for eighteen months adds a second layer of transparency, and a more durable one. Vendors, buyers and competitors alike will be able to look at any given campaign after the fact and see, in black and white, how the result sat against the reserve that was published, not the version of events told in a listing presentation. Agents’ results become genuinely comparable, campaign to campaign, for the first time.
The move to a Property Price Statement closes what has, until now, been a workable grey area. Where an advertised price guide and the true reserve were permitted some daylight between them, the two documents a buyer sees will now be tied to the same number. For agencies that have built campaigns on a meaningful gap between the quoted range and the figure a vendor would actually accept, that grey area disappears in the space of a week, not gradually.
Where we stand
We’ve never priced campaigns around a gap between what we quote and what we know, so bringing the two into alignment costs us nothing to adjust to. An eighteen month public record of our results doesn’t concern us either, it will simply stand as evidence for a standard we were already selling to before the legislation required it.
The change to bidding is real, and we won’t pretend otherwise. What actually changes is how far above the reserve an agent can get for a vendor and that’s always come from the weeks before auction, from how well the agent running the campaign has engaged the buyers who are actually prepared to pay for the property. That’s always been true. From 1 October, our value is about to be even more public too.
What continues to matter
As price information becomes standardised and public, the advantage that separates one campaign’s result from another moves further upstream, into the relationships an agent has actually built rather than the size of the list they can broadcast to. A database of ten thousand names produces volume and lookers who already know the number they need to meet; it has never, on its own, produced the conviction to go beyond it. That comes from buyers who trust the person asking them to stretch because that person showed them the property honestly, has made them money before, or simply has a track record they’re prepared to bet on. It’s a slower thing to build than a mailing list, and it can’t be manufactured in the seven days between a reserve being published and an auction taking place.
That’s the environment these reforms create, and it’s the one we already built for. Where the ceiling above a published reserve has to come from somewhere, it comes from buyers who trust the agent asking them to reach it. Building that trust, one buyer at a time, is the work we’ve always put in ahead of auction day, ahead of this announcement and not something we’re taking up in response to the law.
If you’re planning to buy or sell in the coming months and want to understand what these changes mean for your situation specifically, we’re glad to talk it through.
Nikki Gervasi DIRECTOR Nicole Gervasi Property Group
