Regulatory priorities
In 2023–24, we published new regulatory priorities across four key areas, including fairness and safety in competitive consumer markets, robust professional standards and a fair and safe rental market. Priorities included product safety, in particular products that are unsafe for children, estate agent underquoting, illegal trust account action, and renting minimum standards, all of which are discussed further below.
CAV also undertook a range of actions under our other regulatory priorities in 2023–24. For example, we continued to deliver our Rooming House Minimum Standards compliance project, aimed at making rooming houses – often the last housing resort for some of the most vulnerable Victorians – safer and more comfortable. We conducted 296 inspections in 2023–24 to ensure rooming houses comply with mandatory safety and amenity standards for residents and issued 178 official warnings and 2 infringements to secure rectification and compliance. 989 gas and electrical safety certificates were also lodged using our online myCAV licensing portal this year, making it easier and faster for rooming house operators to meet this core safety requirement.
During the year we also established and led a national motor car trading working group with our Commonwealth, state and territory Australian Consumer Law counterpart regulators. The first actions of the working group involved collecting data from jurisdictions to inform a broader market study, explore common issues and identify opportunities to collaborate on regulatory interventions.
Product safety regulation
Victorians have a right to expect that household products they buy meet required safety standards. CAV works closely with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and other jurisdictions to administer the national product safety provisions of the Australian Consumer Law in Victoria. This includes enforcing product bans, safety and information standards and facilitating recalls where necessary.
The CAV website provides up to date information on safety standards and includes a dedicated section on safety in the home. CAV helps the public to report unsafe products via its website and submit urgent complaints about products that have or could cause serious injury via our phone hotline.
In 2023–24, CAV inspectors played a critical role in keeping the community safe, inspecting 425 stores across Victoria, issuing 8 infringements and 131 official warnings, and receiving 65 voluntary undertakings to remove dangerous products from sale.
Many of the unsafe products uncovered by CAV inspectors during the year involved button batteries. Button batteries can be found in a variety of household products and pose serious risks to young children because they can cause terrible injuries and even death if swallowed. Mandatory Australian safety and information standards have applied to products containing button batteries since mid-2022 and should now be well understood by suppliers and retailers. We will continue to focus on the risks posed by non-compliant products in the coming year.
In 2023–24, CAV also sent 2,264 free curtain and blind cord safety kits to Victorian residents. The kits help make looped curtain and blind cords safer for children.
Underquoting Taskforce
Underquoting is an unfair practice where a property is advertised for less than its realistic sale price. It causes potential buyers to waste time and money and distorts the market. In September 2022, the government announced $3.8 million in funding over two years for a dedicated taskforce to target underquoting. The taskforce is embedded within CAV and builds on CAV’s work ensuring estate agents provide accurate pricing information to Victorians.
CAV takes a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to underquoting, which means all instances of suspected non-compliance result in a regulatory response. In 2023–24, the Underquoting Taskforce monitored 1,547 sales campaigns, and issued 89 infringements and 128 official warnings, totalling $1,001,720 in fines. These activities help to dissuade underquoting and other unfair practices in Victoria’s property market, so Victorians have fairer and easier access to purchasing property.
CAV ran a two-pronged communications campaign to ensure the industry and public are aware of their rights and obligations and support the activities of the taskforce. In addition to organic social media through our own channels, CAV ran a paid advertising campaign from August to November 2023. The campaign aimed to spread awareness within the Victorian community of the illegality of underquoting and CAV’s commitment to combat the practice. Victorians were also advised that they could report instance of underquoting through CAV’s online portal. The ads were seen over 7 million times, with 4,908 clicks through to the campaign page.
In March 2024, CAV launched new criminal court proceedings against a Melbourne estate agency for alleged underquoting breaches of failing to provide a reasonable estimated selling price. The charges include that the agency claimed it could not find comparable properties for an Ivanhoe townhouse. The court proceedings will continue into the 2024–25 year and other investigations remain ongoing.
In August 2024, the government announced the taskforce would be made permanent to allow CAV’s work to stamp out underquoting to continue.
Find the Underquoting taskforce activity table on page 21 of the CAV annual report 2023-24 (PDF, 628KB).
Trust account auditing
Trust accounts serve to safeguard consumers who make payments (such as rent, deposits, or fees) to real estate agents and conveyancers. By law, estate agents and conveyancers must deposit any client funds they receive in advance into a trust account for safekeeping. Failure to comply with this requirement results in significant penalties.
Annual audits of estate agent and conveyancer trust accounts are essential to guarantee that trust funds are not misused or stolen. Estate agents and conveyancers must submit an annual trust account audit if they held trust funds during the financial year. Our commitment to zero tolerance for non-compliance underscores the seriousness of these obligations.
As at 30June 2024 in Victoria, 4,041 out of 6,266 estate agency businesses operate 6,106 statutory trust accounts. Additionally, 346 out of 733 conveyancing businesses maintain 348 statutory trust accounts recorded with CAV. While most agents and conveyancers do the right thing, since 2021, we’ve implemented a compliance program to address any failures in trust account reporting. We issued 65 infringements to estate agents and 18 to conveyancers for failing to meet their 2023–24 trust account audit requirements.
We also launched four new disciplinary proceedings against estate agents for trust account auditing failures in 2023–24. We take disciplinary proceedings at VCAT where there has been a concerning pattern of repeated or deliberate non-compliance. Agents risk suspension or cancellation of their licence as a result of disciplinary proceedings.
Renting Taskforce
While the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 largely regulates the private rights and obligations of renters and rental providers, rental law reforms have increasingly introduced conduct obligations for rental providers and estate agents. As the state regulator, CAV can enforce any breaches of these laws, which can attract criminal penalties.
In March 2024, the government announced it was establishing a new renting taskforce, backed by a $4 million investment, to detect and deter non-compliance and send a clear message that rental offences will not be tolerated.
The dedicated taskforce is embedded within CAV and includes additional contact handlers, intelligence analysts, regional inspectors, investigators and lawyers. Based on the successful underquoting taskforce approach, the renting taskforce will use a risk-based, intelligence-led compliance program to monitor the hundreds of thousands of rental properties in Victoria and thousands of individual rental providers.
The taskforce analyses and identifies the most significant risks in the rental market and undertakes targeted monitoring of rental advertisements. The taskforce will be present at open-for-inspections and provide a zero-tolerance approach to key offences affecting the safety, security and tenure for renters. These include renting out a property that doesn’t meet the minimum standards, false advertising, illegal notices to vacate, failure to provide a condition report, non-lodgement of the bond and rental bidding.
The taskforce is also engaging with the community to promote compliance through public education and communications about rental rights and regulatory actions. In June 2024, CAV launched a new online complaint form that makes it quick and easy for the public to report issues with properties being put up for rent and upload evidence such as images and documents. The taskforce will continue to scale up operations throughout 2024–25.
Professional Engineers Registration Scheme
The Professional Engineers Registration Act 2019 requires engineers in five nominated areas to be registered to deliver professional engineering services. This is an important part of the government’s commitment to give Victorians confidence that only suitably qualified and experienced engineers who meet Australian and international standards can provide these services.
Under the Act, registration is now mandatory for fire safety, civil, structural, electrical and, since 1 December 2023, mechanical engineers. Professional engineers must meet qualifications and experience or competency requirements to be registered, and also meet continuing professional development requirements every three years.
The scheme is a co-regulatory model involving engineering associations operating approved assessment schemes, with the VBA advising on applicants’ suitability to work in the building industry the Business Licensing Authority conducting probity checks and granting registrations; and CAV and the VBA monitoring compliance and enforcement.
In 2023–24, a further 3,636 professional engineers were registered, bringing the total to 13,293 across the five areas of engineering as of 30 June 2024.
A statutory review of the Professional Engineers Registration Act 2019 will commence in 2024–25, based on advice from the co-regulatory bodies administering the scheme, as well as input from industry stakeholders.
Enforcement actions
Enforcement actions play an important role in CAV’s objective to ensure businesses comply with consumer laws. In 2023–24, we finalised seven criminal prosecutions and disciplinary proceedings. Several examples are detailed below.
Kamn Real Estate Pty Ltd was found guilty of three charges related to unlicensed trading between December 2020 and April 2021, trust account breaches, and failing to meet an inspector’s investigation requirements. The agency was convicted in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court after CAV took legal action. The court imposed a $197,740 fine ordering the company to forfeit the commission or profit they made while trading unlicensed.
Jean-Noel Alain Philippe Gillet, formerly of Agent 96 Real Estate, misappropriated nearly $75,000 of clients’ funds from his agency’s trust account between 2019 and 2020. The former estate agent was convicted and sentenced in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court to a 12-month community corrections order, which includes a requirement to perform 200 hours of community service. He was also ordered to pay $74,613 in compensation to the Victorian Property Fund. The Fund had been used to compensate the clients financially impacted by Gillet’s actions.
Lawrence Paul Vella was the Officer in Effective Control of Prestige Property Agents when he misappropriated $105,915 of clients’ money from his company’s trust account, between April and June 2019. In June 2023, he was convicted at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to two charges under the Estate Agents Act. All money stolen from his clients was repaid. The misappropriated funds were uncovered through the annual independent audit which is required under the Estate Agents Act.
Monica Smit and her organisation, Reignite Democracy Australia (RDA) were convicted in May 2024 on charges related to running an unregistered fundraiser to pay her legal bills. Monica Smit and RDA were found guilty of failing to register the fundraiser and of failing to provide documents and information required under the fundraising laws regulated by CAV. We took legal action against Smit and RDA after they appealed for public donations to fund legal fees to fight separate police charges.
CAV also initiated 14 new (civil and criminal) court or disciplinary proceedings in 2023–24 for alleged breaches of consumer laws. These included criminal charges filed against an unregistered builder for alleged breaches of the Australian Consumer Law and Domestic Building Contracts Act and against a business for alleged unlawful debt collection methods, as well as several new estate agency matters including the underquoting criminal case and disciplinary proceedings for poor conduct.
Find the tables of Enforcement actions, Compliance, licensing and registration activity undertaken and Registers administered by CAV on pages 24-28 of the CAV annual report 2023-24 (PDF, 628KB).