Australian residential street

What It Actually Costs to List a Property in Australia

Neither major portal publishes a price list. Here is what sellers really pay, and why.

Last updated · August 2, 2026

When you list a house for sale in Australia, you are almost always asked to fund the advertising yourself. Upfront. Separately from the agent's commission.

That arrangement has a name. Vendor Paid Advertising, or VPA. In most other countries the agent carries advertising as a cost of doing business, and it comes out of their commission if the sale goes through. Here, the cost sits with you whether the house sells or not.

Neither realestate.com.au nor Domain publishes a rate card. There is no page you can visit to find out what your listing will cost before you commit to it. Pricing is negotiated privately with agencies and set by your property's postcode.

This page collects what is publicly documented, with the date attached to every figure, so you can see what you would be signing up for.

The number that tells you everything

In its third quarter results for the 2026 financial year, REA Group, which owns realestate.com.au, reported Australian revenue up 12 per cent year on year, driven by what it called double-digit yield growth in its core residential business, around 13 per cent.

In the same guidance, it expected national buy listing volumes to fall by 1 to 3 per cent for the year.

Which means: fewer houses were listed, and the company still earned considerably more. Not because more people were selling. Because each listing costs more than it used to. That is not an estimate from a forum or an industry rumour. It is the company's own reporting to its investors.

What a listing costs on realestate.com.au

Listings sit in tiers. A standard listing is included in the agency's subscription. Everything above it is an upgrade the seller pays for, and the upgrade is what determines whether buyers actually see your property.

Tier What you get Typical 30-day cost
Standard Below every upgraded listing. No refresh. Included in the agent's subscription
Feature Above standard listings. No refresh. About $200 to $800
Highlight Above Feature. Refreshes every 30 days. About $500 to $2,000
Premiere Above Highlight. Refreshes every 14 days. $695 to $6,000+
Premiere+ Top position, plus a social media campaign. Higher again. Price on application.

The spread inside that Premiere row is the whole story. Same listing, same photographs, same amount of server space. The only variable is your postcode.

Documented examples

These are the specific figures that have made it into the public record, each with its date. Portal pricing rises most years, so treat every one of them as a floor rather than a ceiling.

Location Premiere listing Source and date
Newstead, Brisbane (high-value suburb) Up to $4,700 Which Real Estate Agent, Queensland guide, 2026
Standard listing, no upgrade About $400 Which Real Estate Agent, Queensland guide, 2026
Inner-city Sydney or Melbourne $4,000 to $5,000+ Guardian Australia and ABC News, 2025
Doncaster area, Melbourne About $4,500 ABC News, June 2025
North-east Melbourne (unit) $3,289 ABC News, June 2025

If you are selling privately rather than through an agency, you cannot list directly. You have to go through a licensed reseller, and those firms do publish their prices. A standard "until sold" listing on realestate.com.au currently runs $699 to $969, most commonly advertised at $799 including GST. Rentals are $149 to $199. Upgrades are still quoted suburb by suburb.

What it costs on the Gold Coast

Most published pricing is Sydney and Melbourne. Here is what the local numbers look like between Broadbeach and the Tweed, from Queensland sources published this year.

Item Gold Coast cost Source
Portal listings (REA and Domain combined) $800 to $2,500 depending on tier KRS Properties, May 2026
Premium listing upgrades $400 to $2,500+ Craig Douglas, Gold Coast, 2026
Total marketing, standard sale $1,500 to $5,000 KRS Properties and Craig Douglas, 2026
Premium or auction campaign $8,000+ KRS Properties, May 2026
Photography $300 to $650 Both, 2026
Drone photography $200 to $600 Both, 2026
Floorplan $150 to $300 Both, 2026
Signboard $150 to $400 Both, 2026
Video or walkthrough $500 to $1,200 Craig Douglas, 2026
Social and digital advertising $300 to $1,500 Both, 2026

A worked example: $800,000 at Ormeau

A Queensland agency published a full breakdown in May 2026 for an $800,000 Gold Coast sale. Marketing on a mid-range campaign came to $3,500, paid by the seller before settlement.

Add commission, conveyancing of $1,000 to $2,500 and disbursements, and total selling costs on that $800,000 home land between $25,000 and $35,000. Gold Coast agent commission generally sits between 1.8 and 2.75 per cent, and it is negotiable, as is the marketing schedule.

Which means: on a typical Gold Coast house you are asked for somewhere between $1,500 and $5,000 upfront, before anyone has made an offer, and roughly $800 to $2,500 of that goes to the two portals. If it does not sell, you do not get it back.

The neighbouring suburb problem

Jo Mooney, director of an independent agency in Melbourne's south-east, gave the ABC a comparison that is hard to argue with. Cranbourne and Clyde sit next to each other. Homes in them sell for similar money. Advertising in Cranbourne costs 111.66 per cent more than advertising in Clyde.

Which means: two owners with near-identical houses, a few streets apart, pay double the price for the same digital service. Nothing about delivering that listing costs the portal any more in one suburb than the other.

What your agent pays before you pay anything

Agencies also pay a monthly subscription per office just to be on the platform, before a single property is listed. This is worth understanding, because it shapes what your agent recommends to you.

Jo Mooney's subscription rose from $599 to $799 a month on 1 July 2025, a 34 per cent increase. She noted that was moderate compared with agents on lower tiers, some of whom faced increases of up to 80 per cent on the same date.

Add Domain, where agency subscriptions have been reported in the range of $400 to $800 a month, and a typical independent agency is carrying somewhere near $1,300 a month in fixed portal costs before it sells anything.

Which means: an agency writing five listings a month is carrying roughly $260 per listing in fixed costs before a single upgrade is sold. That cost has to come from somewhere. It comes from the advertising package your agent recommends to you.

As Lisa Pennell, chief executive of the Barry Plant network, put it: "Because of the ongoing advertising fee increases, many agents were being forced to eat into their own commissions in order to secure listings."

What Domain costs

Domain works the same way, with tiers named Silver, Gold, Platinum and Top Spot, and the same absence of a public rate card. Prices are generally lower than realestate.com.au, reflecting its smaller audience of roughly 7 million Australians a month against REA's much larger reach.

A Platinum listing has been reported at up to $3,800 to $4,000 in inner-city Sydney or Melbourne, around $2,000 to $3,000 for a premium Sydney package, and $200 to $500 for Silver or Gold in regional and lower-value suburbs.

One change worth knowing about: CoStar Group completed its acquisition of Domain on 28 August 2025. CoStar has been publicly critical of what it called legacy models that prioritise extracting value over delivering it, which is a direct shot at how listing fees have been run in this market. Whether that turns into lower prices for sellers is not yet clear, but it is the first real competitive pressure the duopoly has faced in years.

The regulator is now involved

In May 2025 the ACCC issued REA Group with a compulsory notice, under section 155 of the Competition and Consumer Act, relating to certain subscription offerings. The investigation followed complaints about price increases and the use of market dominance.

Industry representatives told the inquiry that prices had risen by more than 5,000 per cent over fifteen years, from roughly $75 a listing in 2009 to over $5,000 for premium listings today.

Tim McKibbin, chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of NSW, summarised it for consumers: "In some cases, you can be paying $3,000 or $4,000 or more for your classified ad."

REA Group said it was cooperating fully. As at August 2026 the investigation has not published a final outcome.

What the whole campaign costs

Portal fees are one line on a longer invoice. Photography, floorplans, copywriting, signboards and social advertising all sit alongside them.

Property type Total marketing Of which portal fees
Apartment or unit $1,500 to $4,000 $600 to $3,000
Standard metropolitan house $3,000 to $8,000 $1,000 to $5,000
Prestige or luxury home $10,000 to $25,000+ $3,000 to $8,000+
Regional or rural home $1,500 to $5,000 $400 to $1,500

The usual rule of thumb is to budget 0.5 to 1 per cent of the sale price for marketing. On a $1 million home that is $5,000 to $10,000, before commission, and you pay it whether the house sells or not.

Reporting published in June 2026 put a standard campaign at $2,000 to $10,000, with premium metropolitan campaigns reaching $15,000 to $20,000. Within that, photography runs $700 to $1,000 for campaign-grade work, floorplans $200 to $400, video $225 to $600, and an oversized photo signboard up to $900.

Why so many owners quietly do nothing

This is the part that rarely gets written down.

Plenty of people would sell at the right price. They are not in a hurry and they are not desperate. What they will not do is hand over several thousand dollars upfront, on a campaign that puts their address, their photographs and their price expectations in front of the entire internet, with no guarantee of a sale at the end of it.

So they do the only thing left. They mention to an agent, in passing, that they would sell if something good came along. And that is where it stops.

Which means: there is a real layer of sellable property that never reaches a portal, and never shows up in any listing count. The buyers who reach those owners are not the ones refreshing realestate.com.au. They are the ones with someone asking around on their behalf.

What an off-market sale costs to advertise

Nothing.

A property sold off-market never appears on either portal. There is no Premiere upgrade, no Platinum upgrade, no advertising levy passed to the seller, and no days-on-market counter running in public while you wait.

Against $1,000 to $8,000 or more for a standard on-market campaign, the portal cost of an off-market sale is zero.

That is not the right answer for everyone. A full public campaign genuinely does reach the largest possible audience, and for some properties that is worth paying for. But it should be a decision you make with the numbers in front of you, rather than a cost you discover after you have already signed.

Buying rather than selling?

Every one of these fees is a reason a property never gets listed.

Between Broadbeach and Cabarita, the houses that never reach a portal are the ones with the least competition on them. We keep a register of buyers and match them to those properties before they go public.

Register as a buyer

Sources

Portal listing fees change regularly and are not publicly disclosed by REA Group or Domain. Every figure here is sourced from published reporting, company disclosures or industry forums, with the date shown. Confirm the cost for your specific property with the relevant agent. All prices in Australian dollars.

Thinking of selling, without the advertising bill?

No portal fees. No public listing history. No days-on-market counter running while you wait. We introduce your property to a register of active, finance-approved buyers between Broadbeach and Cabarita.

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