Victoria's reserve price rule from 1 October 2026

For as long as there have been auctions in Victoria, the number that decided the outcome was the one nobody would tell you. The reserve sat in the auctioneer's pocket, the price guide sat in the ad, and the gap between them was where buyers got hurt. From 1 October 2026 that gap is meant to close.

What the reform does

Under the 2026 changes to Victoria's estate agent laws, an agent selling by auction (or by a fixed-date sale) is expected to:

• publish the vendor's reserve price at least seven days before the auction or the fixed date of sale, and
• show it in all marketing for the property, and stop using advertising without it.

If it has not been published in time, the agent is not allowed to take the property to auction.

A separately announced commitment would also require agents to make the sold price public; whether it sits in the 2026 Act was not confirmed when this guide was written. Over time that builds exactly the record a buyer needs and has never had — recorded results, per property, from the people who ran the campaign.

Why it matters more than it sounds

Victoria already had a detailed underquoting regime: a Statement of Information with three comparable sales and a suburb median, an indicative price that could not sit below the agent's own estimate, and a taskforce that, on the government's own figures, has monitored thousands of campaigns and issued hundreds of fines. What it never did was tell you the number the vendor would actually accept.

A published reserve changes three things for a buyer:

1. The guide stops being the anchor. When the reserve is public, the indicative price in the ad is either consistent with it or it is not. If a campaign's guide sits well below a reserve published seven days out, that is now visible to everyone, not just the eventual under-bidder.
2. The walk-away number is easier to set. The reserve tells you the floor the vendor has committed to. Your own fair-value range, built from recorded comparable sales, tells you the ceiling the evidence supports. The auction happens in the space between them, and you now know both edges before the day.
3. Passed-in negotiations change shape. If bidding stalls below a published reserve, the property is passed in at a number the whole room knows. The usual post-auction conversation — "the vendor is looking for a bit more" — becomes a negotiation from a stated figure rather than a guessing game.

What to do with it as a buyer

None of this replaces the work; it just makes the work sharper.

• Read the Property Price Statement, not just the ad. From commencement, the statement carries the reserve, the comparable sales and the median. Check that the comparable sales are genuinely like the property: same type, similar land or internal size, similar condition, sold recently. Three convenient sales and three comparable sales are not the same thing.
• Build your own range before you look at the reserve. A reserve is the vendor's number. Recorded comparable sales are the market's. If your range sits under the reserve, the evidence is telling you something the campaign is not.
• Note the date the reserve was published and whether the guide moved in the days before it. A guide that jumps once the reserve is due is a campaign that was priced to fill the room.
• On the day, listen for the announcements. In Victoria, vendor bids must be announced as such. With a published reserve, a vendor bid above it would be an odd thing to hear.

What this guide does not do

It does not tell you what to bid, or whether to bid at all. It explains a rule that changes what you can know before you bid, and how that knowledge fits with the comparable-sales method every Property Decision Report is built on. The rule is new, its details may be refined before and after commencement, and the sources above are the place to confirm it.