The $110,000 Fine vs. The Reality: A North Shore and Northern Beaches Buyers Agent Explains Underquoting

24 November 2025 | North Shore Property Buyers, Northern Beaches Property Buyers, Why Use a Buyers Agent

Image of property buyers who have been impacted by the practice of under quoting

Underquoting on the North Shore and Northern Beaches remains a pervasive problem in housing markets defined by severe scarcity and insatiable lifestyle demand.

Whether you are looking in Mosman, Manly, or the Upper North Shore, the market is fiercely competitive.  As established buyer’s agents, we routinely see frustrated buyers wasting significant time, money, and emotional energy attending inspections and commissioning expensive reports, only to discover the advertised price guide was never realistic.

Underquoting: A Calculated Tactic

Underquoting is often more than just an error in judgment; it can be a calculated tactic. While our experience on the ground suggests most agents are doing the right thing, some do use a misleadingly low price guide to attract maximum interest, inflate the perceived sense of competition, and ultimately drive the final sale price higher for the vendor.

It is illegal behaviour that causes genuine stress for prospective homeowners across Sydney.

The Legislation: Why Fines Won’t Fix the Market

In response, the NSW government is cracking down on underquoting across the North Shore and Northern Beaches. Tough new rules are proposed to increase penalties for underquoting fivefold, with maximum fines potentially reaching $110,000 or three times the agent’s commission. Simultaneously, Victoria is tackling the issue by mandating that agents reveal the reserve price at least seven days before an auction.

These reforms, designed to enforce greater transparency, are a welcome step toward consumer protection. However, as strategic property advisors, we must deliver the unvarnished truth: Legislating honesty only mandates compliance; it doesn’t guarantee accuracy or confidence.

Image of property buyers who have been impacted by the practice of under-quoting standing outside a Manly apartment block

The Problem: Punishment Doesn’t Guarantee Prevention

These new laws attempt to fix a systemic problem by focusing heavily on punishment. The reforms aim to ensure agents maintain a realistic price guide, protecting buyers from wasting time on properties they cannot afford.

This is vital given that almost half of Sydney sales recently tracked sold for more than 10 per cent over the initial price guide. In premium markets like the Lower North Shore and Northern Beaches, where emotional attachment drives prices, this gap can be even wider.

The Core Conflict of Interest

The core conflict remains: the selling agent’s primary and non-negotiable loyalty is to the vendor, whose goal is to maximise the sale price.

The agent’s legally required “estimated selling price” must be a reasonable estimate. In a market where values are constantly rising, what constitutes “reasonable” is subjective and prone to exploitation within the legal framework—especially if the agent can argue the market shifted rapidly during the campaign.

Furthermore, the proposed NSW legislation isn’t expected to be implemented until sometime next year. This means the behaviour continues under the current, albeit less punitive, laws.

Your Defence: An Independent North Shore and Northern Beaches Buyers Agent

The fact is, even under the threat of severe penalties, you cannot rely on the seller’s representative to provide a figure solely calibrated to your best interest. Their incentives are simply misaligned with yours.

To navigate this, you need a strategy that relies on independent data, not the selling agent’s word.

At Sarah Kaye & Co., we confront the hard truths in real estate.

As your dedicated North Shore and Northern Beaches buyers agent, we promise to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. We provide independent, unconflicted valuations based on real-time market data, stripping away the marketing spin to reveal the property’s true value.

This commitment to radical honesty is the foundation of your protection. It ensures you stop chasing “underquoted” unicorns and start focusing on properties you can actually secure.

Conclusion: Confidence is Earned, Not Promised

While increasing fines to $110,000 for underquoting is a significant regulatory development, it is a reactive measure that focuses on punishment after the fact. For serious buyers, compliance is not confidence.

Confidence is the result of applying strategic rigour to every property decision. It is knowing that you have an independent advisor with the expertise to verify the true value, the discipline to adhere to a strategic limit, and the independence to tell you when the smartest decision is to exit the competition. We believe that trusted buying is reimagined when you base your decisions on transparent expertise, not the fleeting promise of a price guide.

Don’t let underquoting derail your property search. If you need an experienced advocate on your side, you can contact Sarah Kaye & Co. today.

The $10 million club: what a decade of Lower North Shore prestige sales actually shows

Two pieces of analysis, one honest picture — the macro view across the Lower North Shore, and the micro view inside Mosman.

 

Ask most people what has happened to prices at the top of the Lower North Shore and you tend to get the same answer: everything has doubled, the trophy homes are flying, and you would have been mad not to buy a decade ago. The first part is broadly true on paper. The rest deserves a closer look.

We have recently approached that question from two directions. We ran a deep dive into every Mosman house sale since 2015, and a wide sweep of every sale of $10 million or more right across the Lower North Shore — from Mosman in the east through to Hunters Hill in the west. Read together, the macro and the micro tell a more useful story than the headline number, and a more honest one. For anyone weighing up a purchase at the top of this market, the difference matters.

The $10 million club has grown up

Start with the breadth of the market. Across the Lower North Shore we identified more than 470 genuine individual purchases of $10 million or more since 2015 (we removed development-site amalgamations, bulk strata settlements and corporate acquisitions from the raw data, so what remains is people buying homes). The pattern is unmistakable. In 2015 there were just four house sales at $10 million-plus across the entire region. By 2025 there were 86 — a rise of more than twentyfold. The number of homes trading above $10 million has gone from a rarity to a near-weekly event.

That broadening is the single biggest shift in the prestige market, and it is the one most commentary misses by fixating on a median. But it needs one honest qualification. A $10 million line is a fixed nominal threshold, and inflation quietly pushes more homes across it every year. Some of the club’s growth is genuine new prestige activity; some is simply the dollar buying less than it used to. Hold that thought, because it is the key to reading the rest.

Most of the headline growth is inflation

This is where the Mosman deep dive earns its keep, because Mosman has the depth of sales to measure properly. In plain, as-sold terms, the Mosman house median rose from $3.10 million in 2015 to $5.82 million in 2025 — up 88 per cent, which is where the “prices have doubled” story comes from. But once you convert every sale into today’s dollars using the Consumer Price Index, the broad market grew about 42 per cent over the decade, or 3.6 per cent a year in real terms. Solid, dependable growth — and a long way short of doubling.

The gap between those two numbers is the most important thing a prestige buyer can understand. Nearly half of the headline gain is not the house becoming more valuable; it is the currency becoming less so. A home that looks like it almost doubled has, in real purchasing power, grown by a bit over forty per cent. That is still a good result for an asset you also get to live in. It is just not the runaway number the dinner-party version implies.