7 figure Attraction Agent

New QLD Law, New Risks! How to Stay Protected | Jared Zak, Solicitor

• Tom Panos - Real Estate Coach & Trainer

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00:00 – What do you do at auction when a buyer refuses to sign the contract and does a runner?

06:04 – She forged a $4M deposit — and got away with it (almost)

12:30 – Discussion on mental capacity and contract validity

13:12 – 1 August 2025: Massive changes to QLD contract law

• What the new law actually says
• The hidden risks for agents and Principals
• How to stay compliant 
• How to protect yourself — and your sales

16:55 – A go-to-market vendor pack with no liability for the agent; Before You Buy

Jared Zak is the Principal Solicitor & Founder of Dott & Crossitt. He has around 20 years of experience in law and finance. Connect with Jared Zak


*DISCLAIMER:  The information provided in this video is for educational purposes only and does not constitute personal legal advice. No financial compensation or sponsorship has been received by Tom Panos Pty Ltd in connection with any individual, business, or service mentioned. Tom Panos Pty Ltd does not accept any liability for decisions made based on the information provided and strongly encourages viewers to seek independent professional legal advice tailored to their specific circumstances. 

Tom Panos:

And those of you that are in Queensland, it's really, really important that you do stay on, because this date that you know, we kept thinking, oh, that's ages away. We'll face it. We'll face it then. I know what life's like. You're a real estate agent. All you care about is that buyer, that seller, putting that deal together. And you've been very mindful of the fact that they have changing the law in Queensland and it's essentially made that process both a little bit more time consuming for a real estate agent and also a little bit more expensive as well. So we're going to touch on that. But, Jared, firstly let me introduce you to our audience. We've got real estate gym members here from around Australia and New Zealand, but I think most of them now are just in Australia that are on there. Jarrod is one of the key real estate conveyancing specialists in the country. He would probably do more conveyancing than any other firm, Jarrod, that's not an exaggeration, is it?

Jared Zak:

No, there might be a couple of the large Queensland-only conveyancing firms that do more, but I think across all the states and territories we probably do the most. I think we're up around 7,000 a year, right.

Tom Panos:

So, jared, to kick it all off? I might kick it off on a light note. So Jared knows anything to do with a real estate law man. He's your guy, right? I want to ask, by the way, what's the name of the firm? Again, don and Crossit? Don and Crossit, yeah, okay. So, jared, I want to share with you what would you do in this situation. Right, it didn't happen recently, but it has happened to me when I was really young and it nearly happened. I'm in London as we speak, so I didn't actually work. Last Saturday Was last Saturday? A long weekend of some description, no, no, no, it's just your long weekend.

Tom Panos:

It was just my long weekend, okay, sorry, just your long weekend. It was just my long weekend, okay, sorry. So what I was going to say, gerard, I saw it the week before I went away. A buyer tried to do the runner after an option, like didn't want to sign a contract and pay a 10% deposit. Right Now I'm putting you on the spot here, but I want you to picture. This happened to me. I was a real estate agent in the Canterbury-Bankstown area and it was my first auction and property gets sold and the buyer chooses not to sign the contract and says they want to think about it.

Tom Panos:

My boss's name was Peter Hall. He turns around and he says nah, mate, he goes, he's got to buy it. That's the law. Get on to him. I go out, I follow him. He leaves, goes towards his car and says to me I'm going to go get the deposit, right. I turned around and asked my boss and he goes get in the car and follow his car. I follow his car and I park outside his house. I mean this is you've got to remember, I'm a 19-year-old kid, right, let's just start a group.

Tom Panos:

I get to the house that you know it was in Yagoon and the house was in Yagoon, and so I've actually had to drive, follow this car like a detective all the way from Bankstown to Yigun. It's only a five, 10 minute drive. I get there and he won't come outside of the house. So eventually he went and knocked on the door and he invited me in and I told him he's got to buy it and this and that and the long and short of it. Jared is, I think. What happened is he never paid the deposit. It's so long ago. He never paid the deposit, he never signed the contract and then on Monday he was contacted. There was no lawyer. There was a lawyer's letter written, put under his door. He then has taken it to a lawyer. Then the lawyers have spoken to each other and by the end of the week he ended up buying the property.

Jared Zak:

That did not sound like that was going to happen Right.

Tom Panos:

So, jared, what do you do in a situation where, like, a buyer gets carried away and I want to like. What do you say to them?

Jared Zak:

Well, how long ago was that story Like? 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 30 years ago? I mean? Those stories still happen today. One happened just the other week almost the exact same thing, and it wasn't a happy ending. It still happens, I think. Just a couple of comments on that.

Jared Zak:

Well done, chasing the buyer. But I think you're probably chasing the wrong person. I would have chased the auctioneer. We've had that before, right, where the buyer's pissed off and we can't find him and the auctioneer's gone to the next auction. Right, you've got to keep him back Because he's got to sign the contract if the buyer doesn't.

Jared Zak:

So it's one of those sort of sacred, like centuries-old rule that an auctioneer can sign for both the buyer and the seller at auction. That's how we get around the statute of frauds, which requires all dealings in land to be in writing. So the auctioneer can absolutely do that, but it's got to be the auctioneer and it's got to be the day of the auction. So don't let the auctioneer leave, would be my first advice. Yeah, you can definitely put the pressure on the buyer and explain to them the sort of damage that's going to come down on him if he doesn't.

Jared Zak:

You know, pay the deposit is what we're looking for that day, because it would be an instant breach of the contract unless something's been negotiated otherwise. You should definitely do that, but a lot of the times, you know, as I said, I keep saying like all your guys on the real estate gym will know this I mean the preparation for the auction that starts on a Friday, talking to the buyers and saying you know, are you coming, do you have your deposit check or do you have monies cleared so we can use death pay? Like just managing them around. Payment of the deposits one of the most important things.

Tom Panos:

So, Jared, I'm sure you told me about it. I think you actually even sent me the note. I think it was only not long ago it's maybe a couple of years ago. There was a lady that was buying properties and not going in. Can you share that story? That was odd.

Jared Zak:

Let me tell you the story. We'll go back right. Very, very was odd. Let me tell you the story. We'll go back right. Very, very successful agent I won't name him in the inner west of Sydney, but one of the best agents there is. You know who he is, tom. He called me on the day before we broke up for Christmas.

Jared Zak:

I was out fishing with my son and he said, mate, I need a favour, I need you to come back to the office and I need you to review this contract and give a 66W for this lady who's rocked up because we have not been able to move this stock. But this is going to be a street record. You've got to do this for me. I said, mate, okay, so turned back the boat, went back to the office, but I actually called her. I said look, I'm going to help you out today and do this contract, but you have got to do one thing for me. You know I don't always insist on it, but today I am. I need my upfront fee, I need $300 to review the content. It's not much, but this is my fishing trip, right? So I insisted on that Straight away. She went a bit funny she was trying to buy a $4 million house. She said oh yeah, look, I'm on the road a little bit. I'll get that to my kin. I'm going to come back to the office to do it. I need that before I start. I was a bit pushy with her and anyway, I get to my office, sit down, still haven't got the payment. So I'm going, what's going on here? But the agent's on my back saying come on, man, where's the 66W, where's the contract? So I go, I'll just bloody do it. So I do the contract. Whatever I do it up, I'll get it to you. But can you do me another thing? I said what's that? Can you arrange a deposit bond? I said deposit bond.

Jared Zak:

The day before Christmas. I mean, you're buying a $4 million property. What's going on here? And I just had some red flags. I was going, nah, there's something up here. I just sort of said.

Jared Zak:

I said to the agent do we know who this is? Is she legit? And she said plenty of cash. I know, how do you know? She told me okay, look, she wants us to make a deposit bond. I've referred her to the deposit bond provider. The deposit bond providers called me up and said mate, none of her pay slips stack up there's we can't do. I've never had anyone decline a deposit bond. They declined her. I was about to call the agent and say, nah, deal's over. Um, she's not going to do it, she's a dud. And he calls me up and says, oh, mate, all mate, all done, all exchanged and the money's in our trust account. Have a Merry Christmas. I was like really, yeah, got the remittance advice, have a Merry Christmas. Thank you very much, amazing.

Jared Zak:

So I go off to Christmas with a three-week break and then his assistant, his lovely assistant, calls me up on the first week. Back in tears, she says Jared, we've made a big mistake. I said, what's that? Well, that deposit remittance advice that we got. We looked at it. It's just a PDF that she's edited. We don't have the money.

Jared Zak:

We've exchanged on a 5% deposit, we've put a sold sign up, we've told the world, we've got a street record and we have. We're sitting with no deposit for three weeks and she won't pick up our phone. So, anyway, so I I call her up because if she hasn't signed my engagement letter or paid my deposit or anything that's why I mentioned the name, by the way, if anyone's interested and I said look what's going on here, um, and she goes oh no, no, look, it's all good. In fact, I've got another contract for you to review. I was like what do you mean? You haven't even paid the deposit on this one and she'd already gone and done the same thing that day with an agent another one, you know, tom, on the northern beaches. Wow, and I'm going. What is going on?

Tom Panos:

here anyway.

Jared Zak:

So I said, look, I want you to go and speak to a broker because I want to be, the broker is a good way of trying to work out, as you guys would know, whether this is legit or not, whether I'm just imagining, being paranoid. So I spoke to this broker and he initially said, yeah, no, she's all good, she'll be able to buy the property. She won't be able to buy two, but she'll be able to do it, I think. And I said, oh wow. And you've got to go through three or four pages back in Google and you'll find that she's been to jail for fraud, this exact fraud Going around 10 years ago. She was buying properties, dumbing up sort of pay slips and whatnot. What's the motive? Illness, and the judge actually said it was actually some interesting stuff that she's just unwell like. She's got this sort delusion that she's can buy properties and that kind of thing, and I think in some cases she actually managed to through a fraud on the bank, which is why she went to jail for a period.

Jared Zak:

So I guess the whole point of all that is like you know, just if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is like just be careful.

Tom Panos:

So so, jared, we're going to move on in a moment because it is, I know people would have jumped on. I just got to like this thing about you know, having the mental capacity to do the deal. This was in the inner west of Sydney quite a few years ago. A lady was bidding on a house and she had her hand up and she just and then at the end of it, jared, she actually just said really loudly I'm letting you know, whatever you do, my hand's staying up While my hand is up, just add another 5,000 every bid. Right, so we're doing it.

Tom Panos:

Doing it Ends up buying the property, right, like, way over, because there was another buyer that really wanted it as well. Right, it was a classic case of two people that just went for it. Right, long and short of it was this woman, and you wouldn't believe it. It was just a coincidence. I noticed it because I had just gone through treatment myself. She was going through, she had brain cancer, right, and what she you know. You could tell she had, you know, but I recognised her from there. Anyway, by the end of the day, the real estate agent goes, mate, he goes, mate. We got a problem man. He goes. She's like like not saying Anyway, the long and short of it was, the owners turned around and they just actually said listen, you know, now that we know this situation, release. It ended up doing a deal with the other buyer, deal with another buyer at a little bit lower figure, but the lower figure ended up still being a lot more than what the owner wanted. Right, so there. But, jared, obviously you've got to have the mental capacity.

Jared Zak:

Yeah, it's one of the principles of contract law. You have to have the mental capacity to actually reach an agreement, and some people don't. And some people may give you the impression they do, but they don't. Can I ask you this?

Tom Panos:

thing about people drinking like signing contracts while they're drunk, like you know what I mean. Is that an issue?

Jared Zak:

We've seen it. We've seen a vendor do it before. Yeah, we've seen a vendor say get vendor's remorse and say, oh look, I was having champagne beforehand and just after the auction I had another glass before I signed. Obviously that's too late because the auction binds the vendor as well, but yeah, we've seen that before definitely. So you're best not to do it, best not to do it.

Tom Panos:

Yeah, I'd say so.

Jared Zak:

I'd say not to do it, gary.

Tom Panos:

Now we've got about 10 minutes. We've got 10 minutes to do this. So on 1st of August, what's happening in Queensland? Firstly, explain it all.

Jared Zak:

I'm sure you guys, the Queensland agents here, will be shoved down their throat by now, but it is actually it's hard to overestimate a massive change in contract law in Queensland. So it's now going to be mandatory if you are selling a residential property. It doesn't apply to commercial properties or properties over $10 million. Actually it doesn't necessarily apply to, but you do have to include this Form 2. So the Form 2 looks something similar to the Disclosure Pact that we have in New South Wales and that in Victoria, maybe not as onerous just yet, but I suspect it's probably going to increase over the years with new regulations. But yeah, it's a mandatory form that sets out a number of prescribed things about the property information that you have to put in. But, most importantly and most costly, it's going to require a few certificates for whoever prepares that form to go and purchase an ad.

Jared Zak:

Now here's the really, really important thing, and this is where I think my observations, because I practise in New South Wales, queensland and Victoria and I would say, in terms of litigiousness, you've got New South Wales up here, you've got Victoria here and you've got Queensland down below. They're not a litigious state really, relatively speaking, which which is nice for a practitioner. Nice for agents, I guess. Um, but uh, this is all going to change, I think, because, um, buyers are going to be able to automatically pull out, right automatically, if one of those certificates has not been correctly attached and if some of the information in the Form 2 is incorrect. They can also pull out if it's material and query what that means. But clearly you don't want to be in that position where you're trying to think whether it's material or not. So it now looks very similar to any of those New South Wales agents who have heard of New South Wales contracts. Yeah, but, gerard, so I'm a New South Wales agents who have heard of New South Wales or contracted with them, gerard.

Tom Panos:

So I'm a New South Wales agent and that's where my licence is and that's where I practise, apart from you know, the block and stuff like that but generally speaking it's New South Wales. Mate, we don't do that Like lawyers do all of that, right? Are you telling me so? The agent in Queensland? Now there's a higher expectation of them? Yeah, it is, it is.

Jared Zak:

Look, and I won't lie to you. Obviously, I would like to do that work myself, and I would also say, however, I would say that the contracts departments that the average Queensland office has are incredible. They're very, very good, and I think a lot of them are going to be able to do this. I think They'll be able to skill up, because my experience is they're pretty good. My only question is, firstly, do you want them to skill up? Is that the best use of their, of your resources that you're paying a contracts department? And secondly, do you want to take on that risk? Okay, because at the right now, they're preparing contracts with almost little to no risk. I mean correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't.

Jared Zak:

I can't recall any contracts department being sued for negligent preparation of a contract. I'm sure it's happened, but it doesn't spring to mind. Right, you are absolutely going to get this. It's absolutely in Queensland for whoever prepares the form too. You absolutely are. Now, do you want that risk as a real estate agent principal, and are you insured for it is my next question.

Tom Panos:

So, Jarrod, do some real estate agents in Queensland use and you expect that they'll be using? I mean, are you guys set up to? Actually, in light of this change, what have you done differently?

Jared Zak:

Yep, Okay, no, we definitely see an opportunity here to assist real estate agents. So we have thanks for the question, Tom. We've actually teamed with. Before you Buy.

Tom Panos:

You might have heard of these guys. We've had them on before.

Jared Zak:

We're offering vendors effectively just an upfront package for $300 where they can get both their form to their contract and their pest and building inspection. So you've got a complete vendor pack when you go to market, no liability for the agent preparing it, it all sits with me and the provider of the pest and building report and buyers can bid with absolute confidence. That's going to be one of the good things about this new regime. There shouldn't be any sort of army and army of buyers now. They've got everything they've got, particularly if you've got a customer.

Tom Panos:

I reckon that's a smart thing to do because I can tell you, vendors that have got inspections done on properties beforehand are basically arming their real estate agent with knowledge and power at being able to have the conversation with buyers on it, because a lot of the times Jared. What actually happens is, you know, agents sometimes have to put deals together two and three or four times. They keep falling over because what's happened is building inspections. You know, and don't get me wrong, there are times when it's a bad building inspection might have structural issues, but often what it is is real estate agents haven't been able to sit there because they don't have the information to actually say hey, I want to let you know this is a 13-year-old property. This is actually normal. What we're trying to make sure is to look for that there was no structural issues.

Jared Zak:

You know, getting out there, the other thing is I sold a property recently in New South Wales and I got a pest and build inspection done prior to and it was great because the agent saw it before we went to the market and he goes no, no, no, he's identified this, this, and that this is, this is going to cost you 500, 600 dollars to fix. Let's go get that fixed now so I don't even have to have that conversation with buyers and and the reporter can take that out of the report. That's great rather than having than having to do it blindly and going to market letting the buyer go and take five, six days to get a report, and then that comes back with all this stuff that you know. Oh shit, I wish I'd known how to fix that. So it's sort of a no-brainer.

Jared Zak:

That's sort of why we've sort of Rhys and I have sort of managed there, and then you've also got your pest and building strata. So it's all. I don't know if any of you guys are set up on the before you bid system yet, but it's all orderable. You buy Sorry, sorry. Thank you, tom, it's all orderable on their system. So when you order the pest and building, you can just say drag across a free contract prep in form two.

Tom Panos:

So I'm hoping that helps you guys.

Jared Zak:

We've thought about it pretty long and hard. It's been a product we've been working on for a while.

Tom Panos:

Well, I've got to tell you, jared I mean my business Real Estate Gym spends most of its time more on sales and inspiration and motivation and strategies to do with listings and sales. However, I just know that as the years have gone by, as the years have gone by, I've got to say to you I'm seeing compliance as being such an important. I mean there are real estate agents whose businesses have been impacted permanently because they underestimated the importance of compliance in the state that they're operating. You know, and what Jared Zak does is help real estate agents keep out of jail and make sure that they're getting paid for the money 100% success so far.

Jared Zak:

None of my agent clients are in jail yet.

Tom Panos:

All righty Jared, thank you so much.