The brochure talks about off-market stock and a calm voice at auction. The document that actually governs the relationship is duller and more important. It is the buyer's agency authority: the written appointment that says who is acting for you, on what, for how long, and for how much. If you remember nothing else from this page, remember that the fee is not created by a handshake or a promising first meeting. It is created by the paper.
NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria and WA Consumer Protection come back to the same two themes when they talk to buyers. Get it in writing. Ask about rebates. Those warnings are not decoration. They are the difference between a campaign you can end and a campaign that keeps invoicing you after you have already bought a house with someone else.
This sits in our fees and contracts hub because the authority is the contract. Read it beside how much a buyer's agent costs. If you want the human job rather than the clauses, what a buyer's agent does is the companion guide.
The document that creates the fee
An authority is an agency appointment. You are hiring a licensed real estate professional to act for you as buyer. They agree to a scope. You agree to a fee. The state in which the property sits is the state whose licensing rules apply, which is why a slick Sydney brand still needs the right licence, or a sponsored certificate, before it works a campaign in Fremantle.
The authority is not the contract of sale. It is not a cooling-off notice. It is not a building report. People blur these because they arrive in the same fortnight and they all have signatures. Keep them in separate folders. Advice on the purchase contract belongs with your solicitor or conveyancer. Advice on whether the agent is even allowed to do the work belongs with the public licence register — start at how to check a buyer's agent is licensed — and with the authority in front of you.
If a firm is reluctant to send the authority before the second meeting, that is not mystique. It is a delay. You should see the document while you still have the energy to mark it up.
Written authorities are not optional courtesy
Consumer agencies do not treat written appointments as a nice-to-have. In a trade where the fee can run to tens of thousands of dollars, an unwritten understanding is how disputes are born. The written authority is how the agent proves they were appointed. It is also how you prove what you did not appoint them to do.
Ask for the whole thing, not a summary slide. Summaries omit the success trigger, the suburb list, the term, the rebate paragraph and the early-exit clause — which is to say they omit the job. If the firm uses a standard industry template, that does not make the blanks unimportant. Templates become dangerous when they are treated as liturgy. They are still a commercial form you can amend.
Australian Consumer Law still applies to the way the price is presented. The authority should carry a single price that includes GST, or at least a pair of figures that make the inclusive amount obvious without a calculator. "Plus GST" in a signed appointment is how people meet a second invoice at settlement and feel, correctly, that the first number was incomplete.
Exclusive, non-exclusive and the suburb list
Exclusivity is the clause most buyers skip because it sounds like legal furniture. It is not. An exclusive authority can mean that, for a listed term and a listed area, this firm is the only buyer's agent you may appoint — and, in some drafts, that any purchase in that area during that term is their success. A non-exclusive authority leaves the door open to another firm, or to you acting alone, with a tighter link between their work and their fee.
Neither form is automatically the adult choice. Exclusive appointments can be fair when the firm is doing a genuine full search and you want them fully in. They become unfair when the area is "Greater Melbourne" and the term is a year. Non-exclusive appointments can be fair when you are already looking hard yourself. They become messy when two firms later argue about who introduced the house.
The suburb list is the map of the argument you have not had yet. Too tight and a good house two streets over is either excluded or the subject of a rushed variation. Too loose and you have handed someone a fee-shaped net. Name the suburbs you will actually buy in. If the brief might grow, write down how a variation is agreed, and whether a variation restarts the term or the engagement fee.
Property type belongs on the same page. "Residential" is not the same as "a three-bedroom house on a full block." Investors who later buy a small block of units are sometimes surprised to discover the authority did not care about the distinction.
What "success" means in the fine print
The success fee is the large number. The success clause is the sentence that turns an ordinary Tuesday into an invoice. Read that sentence twice.
A clean clause ties the fee to a property the agent introduced, or to a purchase they negotiated or bid on, during the term. A broader clause ties the fee to any purchase you make in the territory while they are appointed. A hangover clause keeps the fee alive for a period after the authority ends if you later buy something they showed you. Hangover periods are not exotic. They are also easy to miss when they sit under a heading called "protection."
REBAA's industry commentary still describes full-service work as sitting around 2 to 3 per cent of the purchase price plus GST and an engagement fee, or a flat fee plus an engagement fee. That is a reported band for the amount, not a legal definition of success. The authority can adopt either model and then define success in a way that is wider than the work. Do not let the familiarity of the band distract you from the trigger.
If you already have an address, say so in writing and buy a negotiation-only scope. A full-service success clause sitting on top of a house you found on Domain is how people pay for a search that never happened.
Buying without them, not buying, and walking away
Three ordinary endings produce most of the unhappiness in this file. Ask about all three before you sign, and do not accept an answer that begins with "that almost never happens."
If you do not buy, what do you still owe? The engagement fee is often kept. Time-based charges sometimes start. Disbursements — extra travel, extra reports the firm ordered — may be on you. A professional shop can explain this in a paragraph. A brochure talks about commitment.
If you buy without them, is the success fee still payable? This is the exclusive-authority problem in real life. Your friend mentions a listing. You inspect on Saturday. You offer on Sunday. If the suburb was on the list and the term was live, you may have just bought their invoice as well as the house. That can be the deal you signed. It should not be a surprise.
If you terminate, what dies and what survives? Some authorities let you end the appointment on notice. Some treat early termination as a breach that keeps the success fee on life support. Some keep a hangover period even after a no-fault exit. NSW Fair Trading, Consumer Affairs Victoria and WA Consumer Protection emphasise written authorities in part so that this ending is not an argument about memories.
Those three questions belong in the interview as well as in the document. They are the spine of our red flags piece and of the wider checks section.
Rebates, referrals and the money beside the fee
The authority should say how the firm is paid by you. It should also say how the firm might be paid by anyone else because of you. Brokers, inspectors, conveyancers, developers and referral networks can send money back to an agent. Consumer-protection pages in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia tell you to ask, and to get the answer in writing.
A disclosed rebate you have agreed to is a commercial fact. An undisclosed rebate is a conflict. "We don't take them" is a sentence that can go in the authority. If it cannot go in the authority, it was not a sentence you should have trusted in the meeting.
The same written-authority habit applies to price limits at auction. In New South Wales an agent is not allowed to exceed the agreed purchase price without your express written authority. That is a useful rule to have in your head when a mid-auction phone call starts to feel like theatre. Put the limit in writing the day before. Do not raise it in a shout from the footpath unless you are prepared to put the new number on paper too.
Price limits, auctions and express written authority
Auction day is where authorities get tested because adrenaline is a terrible clerk. The document should already have named the bidding arrangement: who bids, to what number, and how a variation is recorded. A text message that says "go another twenty" may or may not be the written authority the legislation and the firm are relying on. Do not find out afterwards.
Private treaty has a quieter version of the same problem. Offer, counter-offer, a vendor who wants a shorter settlement, a selling agent who wants a decision before lunch. The buyer's agent can move faster when the authority already describes their room to manoeuvre — price, conditions, inclusions — and when everything outside that room comes back to you.
None of this replaces how to choose a buyer's agent. A readable authority from a person you do not trust is still a bad hire. An unreadable authority from a person you like is a future complaint.
How to read an authority with a cold head
Print it. Or at least get it out of the email thread and onto a screen you can annotate. Work through it in this order: parties and licence details; scope of work; territory and property type; term and any hangover; fee, GST-inclusive; engagement fee and whether it is credited; success trigger; termination; rebates and other benefits; auction or offer limits; what happens to the file if you walk away.
Take the draft to the same solicitor or conveyancer who will later read the contract of sale. It is a different document, but it is not a different skill. If the firm objects to you marking up their template, ask why a licensed professional is afraid of a precise appointment.
Watch for the clauses that try to do two jobs at once. A confidentiality paragraph that also stops you complaining to a regulator. A "whole agreement" paragraph that wipes the promises made in the pitch deck. A marketing-consent paragraph that lets them use your purchase on Instagram before you have unpacked. None of these is automatically poison. All of them are easier to delete before you sign than to litigate after.
If the fee model is a percentage, write a sample house into the margin and do the arithmetic, including GST. If it is a fixed fee, write the same sample and then write the no-purchase ending. Fixed fee versus commission and engagement fees and retainers exist so you can do that work without treating either number as an official schedule.
Then sleep on it. The search can wait a night. The authority will still be there in the morning, and you will still be the person who has to live with it.
The short version
The buyer's agency authority is the job, written down. Consumer agencies in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia tell you to use written authorities and to ask about rebates. Fees are still negotiable and still not set by law; the paper is what makes a negotiated number payable. Demand a GST-inclusive price, a success trigger you can read aloud, and clear answers if you do not buy, buy without them, or terminate. Sign it only when those sentences are dull. Dull is the point.
