How to sell your home yourself in Sydney

No. Under the Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2022, you cannot offer a residential property for sale or even display a price until the contract of sale is prepared with all prescribed documents attached. Advertising without a contract is an offence under the Property and Stock Agents Act 2002. The practical consequence: budget one to two weeks for your conveyancer or solicitor to order the title search, the Section 10.7 planning certificate from your local council, and the Sydney Water drainage diagrams before a single photo goes up.

The minimum set under the Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2022 is: a current title search, the registered deposited plan or strata plan, a Section 10.7(2) planning certificate from your local council (or the fuller 10.7(5) version if you want to disclose additional planning overlays), and Sydney Water sewerage and drainage diagrams. You must also disclose any easements, covenants, positive covenants, or restrictions on use registered on or affecting the title. If the property has a swimming or spa pool, you must attach either a valid compliance certificate or a valid occupation certificate and current pool registration from the NSW Swimming Pool Register. Missing any prescribed document gives the buyer the right to rescind within 14 days of exchange and get their deposit back in full.

The buyer pays transfer duty (stamp duty), not you as the seller. The duty is calculated on the purchase price or the unencumbered value of the property, whichever is higher, using Revenue NSW's sliding scale rates. It is due within three months of the date of the contract or at settlement, whichever comes first. For a Sydney property over $1 million the duty bill runs into the tens of thousands of dollars, which is a real factor in buyer affordability and, indirectly, in how long your property sits on the market. First-home buyers purchasing under the relevant thresholds may qualify for a full or partial exemption; knowing this can help you pitch to that segment.

On a private treaty sale in NSW, the buyer has five business days after exchange of contracts to rescind. If they pull out within that window, they forfeit 0.25% of the purchase price to you and you return the rest of the deposit. To waive cooling-off entirely, the buyer's solicitor or conveyancer must provide a Section 66W certificate before or at exchange; this is common when the buyer has done thorough due diligence. Auctions have no cooling-off period at all: the fall of the hammer is unconditional. As a private seller, you can negotiate with a buyer to shorten or waive cooling-off, but get that 66W certificate in writing before you hand over the signed contract.

For a strata title apartment, your contract must include a Section 184 certificate issued by the owners corporation (formerly called a strata information certificate). It discloses levies, by-laws, any special levies, and the balance of the administrative and capital works funds. Buyers and their solicitors will almost always also commission a strata records inspection, which is a detailed review of meeting minutes, financial statements, maintenance orders, and correspondence for the past two or three years; issues like chronic water ingress, unresolved defects, or underfunded capital works funds frequently surface here and can stall or kill a deal. Order the Section 184 certificate as soon as you engage your conveyancer so you have time to address any surprises before going to market.

You do not need a licensed agent. NSW law does not require owners to use an agent to sell their own home. You still need a licensed conveyancer or solicitor to prepare the contract of sale, since that is a legal document, but you can handle the marketing, open homes, and negotiations yourself. The main practical hurdle is portal access: realestate.com.au only lists through licensed agents or authorised listing services, not directly from owners, while Domain has historically accepted private listings. Owner-listing platforms exist to bridge that gap; A platform like Anyone.com eliminates the commission middleman, letting you list at no cost and manage the buyer vetting and settlement handoff without splitting focus between a portal and a negotiation tool. Selling without an agent shifts the pricing, marketing, viewings and negotiation onto you, in exchange for avoiding a percentage commission.

eConveyancing is the electronic lodgement and settlement system mandated in NSW through the PEXA or Sympli platforms. Since 2019, the vast majority of NSW property transactions must settle electronically rather than with paper certificates of title and physical bank cheques. Your conveyancer or solicitor manages the eConveyancing workspace; your job as the seller is to provide your bank details for the proceeds early enough that they can set up the workspace before settlement day. On settlement day funds transfer and title lodgement happen simultaneously and automatically. The old ceremony of keys handed over at a solicitor's office is gone; settlement is confirmed by an automated notification.

A Section 10.7 planning certificate is issued by your local council under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979. It tells buyers what planning controls apply to the land: zoning, floor space ratio, height limits, heritage listing, contaminated land entries, bushfire or flood affectation, and more. The basic 10.7(2) version is the minimum required in your contract. A 10.7(5) version adds information from other government agencies and is more comprehensive; some conveyancers recommend it to reduce the risk of a buyer later claiming non-disclosure. Councils charge a fee (typically around $50 to $100) and turnaround is usually five to ten business days, so order it as soon as you decide to sell.

Sydney agent commissions average roughly 2.0 to 2.1 percent of the sale price (OpenAgent and Which Real Estate Agent NSW data), and fees are not regulated in NSW, so they are negotiable. On a A$1.29 million Sydney home a 2 percent commission is about A$25,800. Selling privately avoids that percentage, but it is not free money: you still pay your own conveyancer or solicitor, plus photography, a floor plan, a signboard and any portal-listing fee, and you take on the pricing, marketing, viewings and negotiation yourself. The route you choose to reach buyers varies in cost: some flat-fee owner-listing services charge a set fee per listing, whereas an owner-controlled platform such as Anyone.com removes any listing cost and takes nothing from the sale, leaving more of the price in your pocket. The saving is the avoided commission minus your own out-of-pocket costs and time.

A sub-A$1 million price can actually widen your buyer pool. Under the Revenue NSW First Home Buyers Assistance Scheme, an eligible first-home buyer pays no transfer duty up to A$800,000 and a reduced rate between A$800,000 and A$1,000,000, with no concession above A$1 million. With the Sydney median unit value around A$907,000 in April 2026, many apartments sit right in the concessional band, which is attractive to first-home buyers who would be priced out of a typical house. If your apartment is near that A$1 million line, understanding the threshold helps you pitch to that segment. Confirm current thresholds at Revenue NSW before relying on them.

Plan for two phases. The pre-market phase, getting your conveyancer engaged and the prescribed documents ordered, commonly takes one to two weeks, partly because the Section 10.7 council planning certificate alone is usually a five to ten business day turnaround, and you legally cannot advertise until the contract is ready. The on-market phase, with the Sydney median time to sell around 33 days in April 2026, often runs four to six weeks of active marketing for a well-priced private treaty listing. After exchange there is a five business day cooling-off period on a private treaty sale, then settlement is commonly around six weeks later through eConveyancing. The document lead time is the part owners most often forget to budget for.