Australian College of Professionals Australian College of Professionals

The requirements for gaining proof of identity have not changed in NSW. However, NSW Fair Trading have uploaded a new proforma document onto their website to make it easier for agents to gain the necessary information from their clients. It is requirement that any agent who enters into any type of agency agreement with a customer, must gain Proof of Identity from that customer. There is no requirement to save copies of identification documents, but simply for the agent to sight the documents and then keep a record attesting to the documents that they witnessed. It sia really simple process, it is requirement under the Supervision Guidelines and all agents must adhere to this requirement.

The revised Supervision Guidelines will come into effect for NSW property agents on 1 July 2024. There are a number of minor changes in relation to compliance and the underpinning structure of the document has been divided into three distinct sections – namely People Leadership; Compliance Procedures; and Conduct Monitoring. There is an increased requirement for Licensees-In-Charge of an agency to monitor the compliance of their agency business and ensure that all persons acting as agents under their supervision are implementing the new requirements of the Guidelines. Agencies will need to amend their existing manual for Supervision Guidelines and will also need to make some additions to their Policy and Procedures manuals. Stay tuned for more information about the new documents.

There a couple of major changes to CPD for licensed property agents in NSW. The mandatory training has increased from 4 hours to 5 hours and the CPD year has changed from a March deadline to being aligned with the financial year – so the CPD year commences on 1 July and finishes on 30 June each year. The 5 hour requirement is for those agents who attend face-to-face classes or participate in an interactive webinar. If the agents chooses to undertake CPD via an online portal, then the requirement doubles to 10 hours of CPD. Easy choice really. And those agents who hold more than one licence, still need to complete additional training for that additional licence. There is no change to CPD requirements for Assistant Agents, except for dates for the CPD year.

Rent in advance is when a tenant pays rent on or before the due date and this payment is then allocated for a specific period of time in accordance with the requirements in their residential tenancy agreement. In NSW, a landlord/agent cannot ask the tenant to pay more than 2 weeks rent in advance and cannot ask for the tenant’s next rental payment until all rent has been used up.

When a property is owned by one or more individuals, then those individuals are the person/s who sign an agency agreement with a property agent when listing a property for either sale or lease. However, when a property is owned by an entity rather than by an individual, such as a pty ltd company or a trust, then the agreement must be signed by an authorised person from that entity. Such an authorised entity is most usually a director of the company. In NSW, where property agents need to sight identification documents, the agent needs to verify that the person signing on behalf of the company is a Director of that company, or duly authorized by a Director. This would best be checked from an ASIC search of the company identifying the directors at that point in time.

Small businesses with an aggregated annual turnover of less than $50 million will be allowed an additional 20% tax deduction for external training courses delivered to employees by registered training providers. This tax boost applies to eligible expenditure incurred from 29 March 2022 to 30 June 2024. The Australian College of Professionals is a registered training provider that meets the criteria for the provision of training that will attract this additional tax deduction for its students. Check out the Small Business Commissioner’s website for additional information.