Case Study: A Queensland Agent’s Experience with the New CPD Regime — Year One
The renewal reminder landed in her inbox on a Tuesday morning in mid-August 2025. Sarah — a residential sales agent with nine years’ experience at a mid-sized agency on the Sunshine Coast — had been half-expecting it. She knew the new mandatory CPD had kicked off on 6 June. What she hadn’t sorted out was exactly when her CPD year started, which sessions counted, what she’d need to keep, and whether any of it would actually be useful. She was about to find out.
This composite case study draws on the experiences of Queensland agents who navigated the new regime in its first operational months. The details — sessions chosen, costs incurred, documentation handled, practice changes observed — are representative of what agents across the state have encountered since the framework came into effect. Names and identifying details have been anonymised throughout.
The Starting Point: Understanding What Was Actually Required
From 6 June 2025, the Office of Fair Trading requires all Queensland property professionals holding a real estate licence or certificate to complete approved CPD training each year. Continuing Professional Development became a legal requirement for all real estate professionals in Queensland on that date.
The first thing Sarah had to establish was her personal CPD year — which, as she quickly discovered, has nothing to do with the calendar or financial year. She had to complete two approved CPD sessions during each CPD year to keep her licence or registration, and her CPD year was based on her individual licence issue date, not the calendar year. Her licence had been originally issued in late March, which meant her CPD year ran from March to March — and her first compliant year had technically opened on the anniversary date following 6 June 2025.
The mechanics of this are concrete: if a licence or certificate issue date was 25 September 2020, for example, that agent’s CPD year commences on 25 September 2025 and they must have their CPD completed by 24 September 2026. Sarah used the OFT’s online CPD calculator to confirm her own window — a tool the OFT had made available alongside the new requirements to help agents determine their individual schedule.
The requirement is two approved CPD sessions each CPD year. Fail to complete them, and you may not be eligible to renew your licence or registration. That consequence — a blocked licence renewal — is what gives the obligation its teeth. Unlike an administrative fine, it stops practice entirely.
Choosing the Sessions: Type 1 vs Type 2
Sarah’s next decision was which sessions to complete. The framework the OFT had established distinguishes between two categories of approved training.
Type 1 sessions are condensed versions of units in the national property services training package. They’re designed to help real estate professionals build their knowledge and stay up to date with industry standards. In practical terms, this means a Type 1 session covers the foundational technical content of an existing training unit — things like trust account management, agency practice, contract preparation, or property management processes — but without the formal assessment component of a full qualification.
A Type 2 session focuses on enhancing service outcomes and consumer protection for buyers and sellers. These CPD courses aim to boost the professionalism, customer service, and ethical business practices of people in the profession, whether in sales or property management. Type 2 sessions cover a broader range of themes — communication skills, dispute resolution, domestic violence awareness, cybersecurity, emerging technology, and ethics — and while they’re not derived from the national training package units, they carry the same weight towards the annual requirement when OFT-approved.
To meet the OFT CPD requirements, an agent must complete two approved CPD training sessions per year, choosing from the following options: one Type 1 CPD session and one Type 2 CPD session, or two Type 1 sessions. Two Type 2 sessions alone do not satisfy the requirement.
Sarah weighed her options deliberately. She was primarily a residential sales agent with minimal involvement in her agency’s property management arm, so she wasn’t drawn to tenancy lifecycle content. What she did know, from a recent near-miss in her agency, was that she had a shaky understanding of trust account obligations. A colleague had flagged a reconciliation discrepancy that had gone unnoticed for six weeks — nothing catastrophic, but enough to rattle the principal. She decided to use CPD as an opportunity to close that gap.
For her Type 1 session, she enrolled in a trust account management course delivered by an OFT-approved registered training organisation (RTO). The session provides a working understanding of trust accounting concepts, Queensland real estate trust account legislation requirements, and trust accounting practice. Topics included relevant Queensland real estate trust accounting legislation and requirements, opening trust accounts, operating trust accounts, recording trust account transactions, auditing of trust accounts, and trust account responsibilities within an agency.
For her Type 2 session, she chose a session covering anti-money laundering (AML) obligations — a topic she knew was pressing given that the Commonwealth’s AML/CTF regime was being extended to cover real estate professionals. The REIQ had listed a session titled Navigating Upcoming Changes in Anti Money Laundering Legislation for QLD Real Estate Agents (session code QLDCPD20250054) among its approved offerings. The timing felt right: better to understand the incoming obligations proactively than scramble when the legislation bit.
Checking the Session Codes
One early stumbling block for Sarah — and, based on agency chatter, for many of her colleagues — was understanding what actually counted as an OFT-approved session. Only the approved CPD sessions listed on the OFT website count towards the two mandatory sessions. Any CPD sessions completed from other states or territories, even if approved there, won’t be accepted. To ensure sessions are approved in Queensland, look for session codes beginning with ‘QLDCPD20’.
This point tripped up at least one agent in Sarah’s office. A colleague had completed an interstate online course on contract law — genuinely useful content, delivered by a credentialled RTO — only to discover it carried no QLDCPD session code. It counted for nothing. The investment of time and money produced zero compliance value. The lesson circulated quickly through the agency: check the code before you book.
The Time Investment
Each approved CPD session is approximately two to three hours in duration. In practice, Sarah found both of her sessions ran closer to two and a half hours each. The trust accounts session was delivered as a live online webinar, which meant she could participate from her home office on a weekday evening rather than burning a working day. The AML session was also delivered online — a recorded module she could pause and return to across two sittings.
Total time commitment across the full CPD year: approximately five hours of direct learning, plus another thirty minutes reviewing the OFT’s CPD information pages, confirming session codes, and organising her documentation. For an agent running at full tilt through a strong Sunshine Coast market, five hours of structured training was manageable. The scheduling flexibility offered by online delivery made it genuinely accessible rather than grudgingly tolerated.
The more experienced agents in the office — several of whom had held licences for well over a decade — initially expressed the most scepticism. The sentiment was familiar: I’ve been doing this for twelve years. What am I going to learn? After completing their sessions, the responses were more nuanced. Several acknowledged that the trust accounts content had surfaced procedural details they’d assumed they knew but, on reflection, had been applying loosely. One principal described it as a “professional calibration” — not transformative, but useful.
Cost: What Agents Actually Paid
Course pricing across approved providers varied, but the market settled into a reasonably predictable range for the first year. Some providers were pricing Type 2 sessions at $120 plus GST per session. Type 1 sessions from RTOs were generally in a similar or slightly higher range depending on delivery format and provider. For an individual agent completing the minimum two sessions, total out-of-pocket CPD costs for the year sat between roughly $200 and $350 — a modest outlay relative to the cost of a blocked licence renewal.
Some agencies absorbed the cost centrally, treating CPD fees as a standard professional development expense. Others passed the cost to individual agents or salespersons, which generated some friction in offices where the culture around professional development spend was less established. Principals who had planned ahead — building CPD costs into their agency’s annual budgets from July 2025 — reported smoother outcomes than those who left the question open.
Agencies with larger teams found that some providers offered group discounts for in-office delivery. Several operators around Brisbane and the Gold Coast booked half-day sessions to tick over multiple agents at once, which reduced per-head cost and had the secondary benefit of generating shared team discussion about the content.
The OFT Documentation Trail
Documentation management was where the regime caught some agents off guard — not because the requirements were burdensome, but because many professionals hadn’t yet built the habit of keeping structured training records.
Once a session is completed, the CPD provider must supply proof of completion, such as a certificate or statement of attainment. The agent must keep that proof-of-completion document for five years and produce it to the OFT on request.
Critically, there is no proactive filing obligation for the first compliance year. From 6 June 2026, agents will only need to confirm their CPD status when renewing or restoring their licence or registration. They do not need to send their certificates to the OFT. The self-declaration model places the burden of proof on the agent, not the regulator — which means the five-year retention obligation is not optional paperwork. If the OFT conducts an audit or compliance check, the certificate needs to be retrievable.
The OFT cannot process a renewal application until CPD is complete. To avoid delays, agents should complete their CPD before lodging their renewal application. This is the practical trap that will catch agents who treat CPD as something to sort out at renewal time. If a licence is due for renewal and CPD hasn’t been done, the renewal stalls. In a busy market, a lapsed licence — even temporarily — can be professionally and commercially damaging.
Sarah created a simple digital folder — labelled by CPD year — and dropped her two certificates of completion into it immediately after each session. Her principal, following the same logic, established a shared agency folder structure where each agent’s certificates could be stored centrally. It took fifteen minutes to set up and provided a clean audit trail for the whole team.
One nuance Sarah flagged for her colleagues: any CPD completed before a CPD year officially begins will not count towards mandatory requirements. The temptation to get training done early — especially for agents who spotted an appealing session running just before their anniversary date — can backfire. Timing matters.
What She Actually Learned: Content Impact on Practice
The trust accounts session produced the most direct practice change. Sarah had operated with a functional but incomplete understanding of trust account obligations under the Property Occupations Act 2014. The session clarified a specific area she’d been fuzzy on: the distinction between the timing of trust receipt entry and the obligations around disbursement authorities. In the period after completing the session, she flagged two process gaps to her principal — both minor, neither urgent, but both worth tightening.
The AML content was different in character — less about correcting current practice and more about calibrating for incoming obligations. The session walked through how the forthcoming extension of Australia’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regime to real estate professionals would change identification and reporting obligations for Queensland agents. For an agent with an interstate investment client base — which described Sarah’s situation — the material was directly applicable. She came away with a clearer sense of what due diligence her agency would need to formalise before the new obligations took effect.
The CPD requirements are designed to ensure that real estate practitioners are up to date with relevant legislation, ethical practices, and changing market trends in the property industry. In Sarah’s experience, the framework delivered on that intent — conditionally. The sessions she chose were relevant because she chose deliberately. Agents who picked sessions at random, or purely on the basis of convenience and lowest cost, reported more variable outcomes.
The Broader Agency Picture: Managing CPD Across a Team
For the principal running Sarah’s office — a team of eleven licensed and registered practitioners — the administrative reality of CPD year one was more complex than it appeared from the outside. Each agent held a licence or registration issued on a different date, which meant eleven separate CPD year windows running simultaneously across the team.
Each agent’s CPD year is unique to them. It starts from the anniversary of when their licence or registration was issued, so knowing the specific date is essential. The principal built a simple spreadsheet mapping each team member’s licence anniversary date against their CPD deadline, flagging anyone whose window closed within three months. It was unglamorous administration, but it prevented the scenario the principal most wanted to avoid: a salesperson’s licence renewal blocked by incomplete CPD at the exact moment a major listing was converting.
Where agents hold multiple licences, or both a licence and a registration, the applicable CPD year is tied to the earliest issue date. Two agents in the team held both a real estate agent licence and a separate registration for a prior role — a complication that needed to be checked and confirmed before any CPD planning was locked in.
The principal also confirmed that where a licence was first issued less than twelve months ago, CPD starts twelve months after the issue date — relevant for a salesperson who had registered in January 2025 and would not enter their first CPD year until January 2026.
What the First Year Revealed About the Regime’s Architecture
Several structural features of the CPD framework became clearer through lived experience than they appeared on paper.
The session-based model — two sessions per year, each approximately two to three hours — is deliberately modest in its time demands. There is no requirement to accumulate CPD points in Queensland, unlike in other jurisdictions. Queensland’s approach is count-and-type: two sessions, correct combination, approved codes. That simplicity is a feature, not a limitation. It keeps the compliance floor accessible while building the infrastructure for a more sophisticated continuing education culture over time.
The quality of the approved sessions varied by provider and topic. Agents who attended live webinars with facilitated discussion — particularly sessions run by subject matter experts with current practitioner experience — reported higher engagement and stronger retention than those who completed self-paced recorded modules with minimal interactivity. The OFT’s approval framework assessed content against defined learning outcomes but did not mandate delivery format, which meant significant variation in the learner experience.
The RTA — the Residential Tenancies Authority — emerged as a credible provider of Type 2 sessions for property managers specifically. The RTA is an approved provider of Type 2 CPD training sessions, delivering sessions online and in-person to Queensland property managers and agents. All sessions are delivered by experienced RTA subject matter experts in Queensland tenancy law. For agents with significant property management responsibilities, RTA sessions carry particular weight: the content is directly sourced from the authority that enforces the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008.
One issue that emerged nationally — and that Queensland agents noted — was the absence of reciprocal recognition between states. Any CPD sessions completed in other states or territories, even if approved there, will not be accepted towards Queensland’s mandatory requirements. For agents who operate across state borders, or who attended nationally-marketed training events, this was a source of frustration. The content might be substantively identical; the QLDCPD session code was not.
What This Means for Queensland Agents
Year one of the mandatory CPD regime delivered several clear lessons that agents entering their first compliance window should take seriously.
Know your window before you plan your sessions. The CPD year is anchored to your licence issue date, not any external calendar. Any training completed before your CPD year begins will not count. Confirm your anniversary date, use the OFT’s CPD calculator, and plan sessions to fall comfortably within your window — not at its margins.
Check the session code before you book anything. The QLDCPD20 prefix on an approved session is non-negotiable. Interstate content, however credentialled its provider, carries no compliance value in Queensland. This sounds obvious until you’ve wasted $150 and three hours finding out the hard way.
Treat documentation as a professional discipline, not an afterthought. You must keep a record of completion for five years. Create a simple filing system — a labelled digital folder is sufficient — and store certificates immediately upon receipt. Self-declaration at renewal time is only meaningful if the underlying evidence exists and is retrievable.
Choose sessions that match your actual practice gaps. The framework gives agents genuine choice. Agents who used that choice strategically — selecting topics where their knowledge had gaps, or where legislative change was imminent — came away from year one with something useful. Agents who defaulted to the cheapest, fastest option met their compliance obligation, but little more.
Don’t leave CPD until the renewal window. The OFT cannot process a renewal application until CPD is complete. To avoid delays, CPD should be completed before lodging a renewal application. In a market where licence continuity matters — and in Queensland’s current environment, it does — a stalled renewal is an unnecessary, entirely avoidable risk.
The new mandatory CPD regime is not a revolution in how Queensland real estate professionals are trained. Two sessions per year, correctly chosen and properly documented, is a low bar. What it does represent is a normalisation of structured, ongoing learning as a condition of practice. The agents who treat that normalisation as a floor — and build on it — will find themselves better positioned than those who treat it as a ceiling. The framework is in place. The question now is what individual agents decide to do with it.