Australia's competition regulator today published the terms of a court-enforceable undertaking from REA Group and realestate.com.au that removes contract clauses requiring real estate agencies to put every property they handle on the country's largest residential listing portal. The commitment runs for three years and adds a separate obligation, effective 1 January 2027, to let agencies move a quarter of their pre-committed listings down to cheaper tiers.

In Short

Australia's biggest property listing website had contracts that made estate agencies put all of their homes for sale and rent on that website, and in some cases pay for the more expensive, more visible listing formats. The competition regulator said those contracts made it hard for smaller listing websites to win any individual property, so REA has now signed a legally binding promise to stop using and enforcing those clauses. From January 2027 agencies also get the right to downgrade at least a quarter of their upgraded listings to a cheaper format, which means the money an agency spends on portal visibility becomes something it can shift around rather than lock in for a year at a time.

What the regulator accepted

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission set out the resolution in a media release dated today, release number 106/26, filed under the topics of advertising and promotions and of compliance and enforcement. According to the ACCC, the undertaking commits REA to remove restrictive provisions from its contracts with real estate agencies.

The instrument itself was given under section 87B of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 by REA Group Ltd, ABN 54 068 349 066, and realestate.com.au Pty Ltd, ABN 21 080 195 535. Both entities executed it on 10 September 2026, with director Cameron McIntyre and company secretary Tamara Kayser signing under section 127(1) of the Corporations Act 2001. ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb signed the acceptance on behalf of the Commission on 11 September 2026. The public register lists the undertaking date as 11 September 2026 and the end date as 11 September 2029, classifies it under section 45 of the Competition and Consumer Act, and files it in the Digital Platforms and Services industry category.

Section 45 prohibits contracts, arrangements or understandings that have the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in a market. It is the same provision the ACCC used against Google Asia Pacific over exclusive search pre-installation deals with Telstra and Optus, a matter that produced a A$55 million penalty in the Federal Court in December 2025 after the proposed figure was put to the court in August 2025.

Three years is the operative term, running from the Commencement Date defined as the moment of the Commission's acceptance. The ACCC reserves the right under clause 6.4 to revoke acceptance at any time if it becomes aware that information provided to it was incorrect, inaccurate or misleading.

The contracts at issue

The undertaking describes a business built on two revenue layers. Agencies pay subscription fees for access to Listing Services, then pay a separate charge for each property listed. That per-listing charge varies by tier. According to the undertaking, the tiers differ in features such as a larger listing tile or photograph and more prominent placement in search results, and the higher the tier, the higher the fee.

Three contract families carried the provisions the regulator objected to.

Subscription Agreements, in place since at least 2013, gave an agency the ability to list at all. Some versions, marketed under the names Flexi, Basic, Essentials and Pro, required every property the agency had for sale and for rent to appear on the portal, on a non-exclusive basis.

Depth Contracts, also dating to at least 2013, worked as pre-commitments to upgrade. An All Depth Contract covered every property for sale and rent at a higher tier, subject to a right to downgrade a portion. An Elect Depth Contract covered a designated number of properties instead.

Sponsorship Agreements, in place since at least 2019, supplied funding to agencies for training, education, events and marketing under the Advantage+ Program. One eligibility condition was that the agency held the highest tier Depth Contract, which in turn required all properties for sale and rent at an elevated tier.

The undertaking groups these obligations under the defined term Listing Requirements. Both the ACCC and REA record that agencies and vendors were free at all times to list on other portals as well.

What the ACCC says the clauses did

The competition theory set out in part 4 of the undertaking is granular rather than sweeping. The ACCC's concern is that the Listing Requirements may have hindered or prevented some agencies from declining to buy Listing Services, or particular listing features, in respect of an individual property. The same clauses, on the regulator's account, may have hindered agencies from buying listing services for an individual property exclusively from a competitor.

That framing matters because it locates the harm at the level of a single property rather than at the level of the agency relationship. According to the ACCC, the provisions hindered alternative providers from competing meaningfully for listings on a listing-by-listing basis and increased barriers to entry and expansion for other providers of online residential real estate listing services.

The conduct described is not self-preferencing, the ranking-and-routing problem that dominates platform competition cases in search and ad tech. It is closer to a volume commitment operating as a partial exclusive: a rival portal could sign an agency, but could not realistically win the marginal listing while that listing was already contractually promised elsewhere at a paid tier.

Cass-Gottlieb put the commercial consequence plainly. "Because of the ACCC's intervention, REA will give greater flexibility to agents in how their vendor and landlord clients list their properties for sale and rent," she said. Elsewhere in the release she described the outcome as "a win for competition in the real estate listing market".

The 25% downgrade right

Two obligations sit in clause 7, and they start on different dates.

From the Commencement Date, REA will not enter any new contract with real estate agencies containing a provision, and will not enforce any such provision in an existing contract, that requires an agency to list or commit to listing all or the majority of its available properties on the portal as a condition of a Listing Services subscription. The same prohibition covers sponsorship funding: no commitment to list or upgrade all or the majority of listed properties at a particular tier in any future period can be attached as a condition of receiving sponsorship money for training, education, events or marketing.

From 1 January 2027, a second obligation applies to what the document defines as a Listing Tier Contract. REA will not enter or enforce any such contract that fails to offer the agency a choice to downgrade at least 25% of its Eligible Sale Listings to a lower tier, and at least 25% of its Eligible Rental Listings to a lower tier. The 25% is calculated against the agency's eligible listings on the portal in the previous calendar half-year period.

A discrepancy between the two ACCC documents is worth recording. The summary on the undertakings register describes the third limb as a requirement that contracts offer a choice to downgrade at least 25% of the agency's eligible sale listings, with no mention of the rental limb and no mention of the 1 January 2027 start date. The signed undertaking covers both sale and rental listings and dates the obligation to the new year. The signed instrument governs.

Scope definitions narrow the reach further. Listing Type covers Buy, Land, Rural and Rent. Residential means property used primarily for human habitation, excluding property used for business, trade or profit-generating activity, and excluding developments involving the sale of four or more lots in the same development.

Acknowledgement without agreement

The documents are careful about what REA has and has not conceded. Clause 5.1 states that REA does not share the ACCC's concerns, while acknowledging them and offering the undertaking to address and resolve them. The register repeats that formulation.

The media release phrases it differently, saying REA has acknowledged the ACCC's concerns that its conduct may have been in breach of competition law and has committed to make changes for three years. Neither document records an admission of contravention. The distinction separates this matter from the Google telco case, where the company admitted liability and cooperated on penalty.

REA has also agreed, under clause 5.1(b), to re-engage with the ACCC from a date no earlier than 24 months after commencement to jointly consider the progress of the amendments made to its business practices.

A compliance program with hard deadlines

Annexure A sets out a competition law compliance program with a schedule the regulator can audit.

Within three months of commencement, REA nominates a director or senior manager as Compliance Officer and appoints an external compliance professional with competition law expertise as Compliance Advisor. The Advisor conducts a competition law risk assessment covering realestate.com.au listing services in Australia within three months of appointment, and delivers a written report within three months of conducting it. That report identifies where REA is at risk of breaching the competition provisions, assesses likelihood, identifies gaps in existing procedures and recommends action.

A Compliance Policy, issued or updated within the same three-month window, must state a commitment to compliance, require staff to report concerns to the Compliance Officer, and state that REA will take internal action against anyone involved in a contravention. The policy must draw attention to section 77A of the Competition and Consumer Act, which prohibits a company from indemnifying its officers for pecuniary penalties or associated legal costs in certain contraventions.

Training runs at least annually for officers, employees, representatives, agents and both executive and non-executive directors whose duties could involve them in conduct that might contravene the competition provisions. Awareness of those obligations forms part of induction for new staff and directors. A qualified compliance professional or legal practitioner delivers both.

The Compliance Officer reports to the board every six months on the program's effectiveness. An independent review is completed within one year of commencement and again on the second anniversary. The Reviewer must not have designed the program, must not be a present or past staff member or director, must not have acted or consulted for REA on competition law matters beyond reviews and risk assessments, and must hold no significant shareholding.

The reporting chain has teeth on timing. The Reviewer delivers a Compliance Report within 45 days of completing a review. The Compliance Officer passes it to the directors within 45 days of receipt. Where the Reviewer identifies a Material Failure, meaning a material deficiency in the program or an instance of material non-compliance with it, REA provides the report to the ACCC within 21 days of the directors receiving it and informs the regulator within 14 days of implementing remedial steps. Program documents are retained for at least five years and produced to the ACCC on request within that period.

Where this sits in ACCC enforcement

The undertaking lands inside a year of sustained Australian activity against digital platform contract terms. The commission's 2026-27 compliance and enforcement priorities, published on 19 February 2026, named dark patterns, misleading pricing and the misuse of market power, and confirmed cartel conduct and exclusionary behaviour as enduring priorities.

Enforcement has followed on both the consumer and competition tracks. The regulator filed Federal Court proceedings against Amazon on 29 June 2026 over five allegedly unfair contract terms used to bring advertising into Prime Video. Days earlier, on 24 June 2026, it accepted a three-year undertaking from eDreams alongside a $59,400 penalty over free trial and instalment pricing claims. The structural groundwork came from the five-year Digital Platform Services Inquiry, which closed on 31 March 2025 with 35 recommendations.

Cass-Gottlieb signalled continuity. "The ACCC will continue to prioritise investigating companies entering agreements with restrictive provisions which hinder competition, and will always take a strong stance on these issues," she said.

Why it matters for media buyers and publishers

Listing fees on a property portal are advertising spend. An agency buying a premium tile at the top of a search results page is buying prominence against competing inventory, which is the same transaction a retailer makes when it pays for a sponsored placement. The undertaking therefore touches a category of media budget that rarely appears in programmatic coverage but behaves like it.

The mechanism the ACCC targeted is the portfolio commitment: an agreement priced and structured so that the buyer commits its whole inventory, or a fixed majority of it, in advance. That structure appears across digital advertising in spend commitments, volume rebates and tier eligibility rules. What the ACCC has done here is treat a contractual floor under total volume as a competition problem when the platform is the largest venue in its category, even though nothing prevented the agency from also advertising elsewhere. According to the undertaking, agencies and vendors were free throughout to use other portals, and the regulator still considered the arrangements capable of substantially lessening competition.

The remedy is also instructive for anyone negotiating platform contracts. Rather than banning tier upgrades or minimum spend outright, the ACCC extracted a quantified release valve: a guaranteed right to move a quarter of committed listings down a tier, measured against the prior half-year. That converts a fixed annual commitment into a partially variable one, and it does so through a percentage rather than a principle, which makes compliance measurable.

Australia's approach remains case-by-case, in contrast with the European Union's Digital Markets Act and its list of ex ante obligations on designated gatekeepers. A dedicated digital competition regime has been under consultation since December 2024. Until it arrives, section 87B undertakings of this kind are the faster instrument, and they carry an enforcement consequence that a negotiated settlement does not: a breach becomes a matter for the Federal Court rather than a further round of negotiation. The undertaking expressly preserves the ACCC's right to pursue penalties or other remedies if REA fails to implement its obligations, and preserves the rights and remedies of any other person arising from the alleged conduct.

Timeline

Summary

Who: REA Group Ltd and its subsidiary realestate.com.au Pty Ltd gave the undertaking, signed by director Cameron McIntyre and company secretary Tamara Kayser. ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb accepted it for the Commission. Australian real estate agencies, their vendor and landlord clients, and rival listing portals are the affected parties.

What: A court-enforceable undertaking under section 87B of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, resolving ACCC concerns under section 45 that subscription, depth and sponsorship contracts requiring all or most of an agency's properties to be listed, or listed at higher paid tiers, may have substantially lessened competition. REA will not enter or enforce those provisions, must offer a choice to downgrade at least 25% of eligible sale and rental listings from 1 January 2027, and must run a competition law compliance program.

When: Executed on 10 September 2026, accepted on 11 September 2026, published in a media release today. The term runs three years to 11 September 2029, with the downgrade obligation starting 1 January 2027 and re-engagement with the ACCC no earlier than 24 months after commencement.

Where: Australia, covering residential listings on realestate.com.au, described in both documents as the country's largest online residential real estate listing portal.

Why: The ACCC considered that the contract provisions hindered agencies from declining listing services for individual properties, hindered rival portals from competing listing by listing, and raised barriers to entry and expansion. REA does not share those concerns but offered the undertaking to resolve them.