A practical, transaction-by-transaction checklist for sales and property management compliance. These are the tasks that actually get missed, not just the ones written into legislation.
A real compliance checklist for an Australian agency has two halves: property management (entry notices, condition reports, bond handling, lease disclosures, insurance certificates) and sales (agency agreements, vendor statements, cooling-off disclosures, contract conditions). The useful version of this checklist isn't the list of legal requirements, it's the list of moments those requirements are most often missed.
Generic compliance checklists get written once, from the legislation, and then never updated against what actually goes wrong in practice. The result is a document that's legally correct but operationally useless. It tells you what's required, not where your agency is actually exposed. The gap between the two is where the real risk lives.
An incomplete or generic checklist gives false confidence. Teams believe they're covered because they have a checklist, without anyone checking whether the checklist maps to what's actually happening file by file. That's often worse than having no checklist at all, because it removes the healthy paranoia that catches problems before an audit does.
Most agencies download a template, adapt it lightly for their state, and distribute it as a PDF or a page in an operations manual. It gets referenced during onboarding and largely ignored after that, because a static document doesn't follow the transaction. The property manager or agent has to remember to go and check it.
Treat the checklist as a set of trigger points inside your actual workflow, not a document. Every item below should map to a specific stage of a transaction where, if nothing happens, the task doesn't get done. The fix isn't a better-written checklist. It's a checklist that's attached to the transaction itself, so each item surfaces at the point it's due rather than relying on someone opening the document.
Hutly turns each of the items below into a workflow trigger rather than a line on a page. When a tenancy or sale reaches the relevant stage, Sammy generates the document, flags the task to the right person, and tracks it to completion. The checklist isn't something your team has to remember to check, it's something the system already knows to run.
Property Management: entry notice generated and served before every routine inspection, repair, or access visit.
Property Management: condition report completed and signed at the start and end of every tenancy.
Property Management: bond lodged with the relevant authority within the legislated timeframe.
Property Management: insurance certificates and safety compliance documents (smoke alarms, pool fencing where relevant) current and on file.
Property Management: lease renewal or notice to vacate issued within the required notice period.
Sales: agency agreement signed and compliant before any marketing activity begins.
Sales: vendor statement (Section 32 equivalent) prepared and disclosed before contract signing.
Sales: cooling-off disclosure provided where applicable, matched to the transaction type.
Sales: contract conditions and special conditions checked against current legislation before exchange.
Sales: trust account handling for deposits reconciled and compliant at every stage.
No. This is an operational checklist for building a process, not a legal reference. Requirements vary by state and change over time. Always confirm current obligations with your professional body or legal adviser.
At minimum, every time legislation changes, and ideally quarterly against real transactions, not just when onboarding new staff.
A checklist is a static list someone has to remember to check. A workflow attaches each task to the point in a transaction where it's actually due, so it surfaces automatically instead of depending on memory.