Queensland CPD Requirements 2025–2026: Official OFT Rules Every Agent Must Follow

Your licence renewal is coming up and you haven’t touched CPD yet. Or you’re a principal trying to work out whether every agent on your team is covered. Either way, the rules are now in force — and the consequences of getting them wrong are straightforward: your renewal won’t be processed.

As of 6 June 2025, Continuing Professional Development (CPD) became a legal requirement for all real estate professionals in Queensland. This isn’t an industry association recommendation or a best-practice suggestion. The obligations sit inside the Property Occupations Act 2014 (the PO Act), which was amended by the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 to insert mandatory CPD requirements for licensees and salespersons. For licensees, the core CPD obligations are found at sections 92B through 92E of the PO Act; for registered salespersons, the equivalent provisions sit at sections 151A through 151E.

What follows is the definitive practical guide to those obligations — who they apply to, exactly what must be completed, how your CPD year is calculated, and what you need to keep in a drawer for the next five years.

Who Is Bound by Queensland CPD Requirements

The scope is broad. As of 6 June 2025, CPD became mandatory for all real estate professionals in Queensland, including real estate agents, salespeople (including property managers), auctioneers, and resident letting agents. The obligation applies regardless of your role within an agency, your seniority, or how long you have held your licence.

Whether you’re a residential salesperson, property manager, assistant agent, business broker, auctioneer, assistant real estate agent, resident letting agent or commercial agent, you’ll need to complete CPD real estate training. Principals running large multi-agent offices are not exempt simply by virtue of their seniority — the law applies equally to the licensee-in-charge and the salesperson who started last month.

There are, however, several categories of people who are not subject to the requirement. Exemptions apply automatically where: your current licence or registration was first issued less than 12 months ago (you only need to start CPD 12 months after your current licence or registration was first issued); your licence was deactivated for most of your CPD year; you hold a limited real estate agent licence for affordable housing or for business letting; or you represent public sector agencies or you’re an official with a licence under the Property Occupations Act 2014, provided you don’t hold an individual licence or registration.

That last point matters for agents working within government or statutory bodies. If you separately hold an individual licence or registration, you must complete CPD training. Holding both an official licence and a personal one does not provide a double exemption.

The New Licensee Rule

New entrants receive a genuine grace period. New licensees who receive their first licence after June 2025 are exempt from CPD requirements for the first year. Since they have just completed their initial training, their first CPD year will start one year after their licence is granted. This gives new entrants ample time to settle into their roles without the immediate pressure of additional training.

One practical point to note: any CPD you complete before your first CPD year starts won’t count towards your mandatory requirements. This catches agents out. Don’t complete training early in the expectation that it will bank credit — it won’t.

How the CPD Year Works: Dates, Anniversaries, and Multiple Licences

This is the part that confuses most agents. The CPD year in Queensland is not a calendar year. It is not a financial year. Your CPD year is based on the date your licence or registration was issued, which means your CPD year is specific to you.

A few concrete examples: if your licence or certificate issue date was 6 June 2024, your CPD year commences on 6 June 2025 and you must have your CPD completed by 5 June 2026; if your licence or certificate issue date was 25 September 2020, your CPD year commences on 25 September 2025 and you must have your CPD completed by 24 September 2026; if your licence or certificate issue date was 30 January 2025, your CPD year commences on 30 January 2026 and you must have your CPD completed by 29 January 2027.

The issue date is printed on your current licence or registration certificate. Dig it out and confirm it. The OFT also maintains a CPD calculator on its website that will confirm your exact start and end dates. Use it.

Multiple Licences or Upgrading

For agents who hold more than one licence or registration, the rules are straightforward but require attention. If you hold multiple licences or if you hold both a licence and a registration, use the one with the earliest issue date. That earliest date anchors your CPD year across all your credentials.

If you upgrade or change your licence or registration, your CPD year will align with the new issue date. This means upgrading from a salesperson registration to a full agent’s licence mid-year will reset your CPD year clock. Factor this into your planning, particularly if you are close to completing CPD obligations under an old issue date.

The Two CPD Sessions: What You Must Complete Each Year

You must complete two approved CPD sessions every CPD year to keep your property industry licence or registration. Each session is approximately two to three hours. That is the minimum — two sessions, one CPD year, no carryover from previous years.

You must complete either one Type 1 and one Type 2 session, or two Type 1 sessions. You cannot satisfy the requirement with two Type 2 sessions alone. Understanding the distinction between the two types is therefore essential.

Type 1 Sessions: Core Competency Training

Type 1 sessions are the higher-order requirement. 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.

Specifically, you can enrol with a registered training organisation to complete a fully accredited unit from one of the following qualifications under the national property services training package, including CPP40521 Certificate IV in Strata Community Management and CPP51122 Diploma of Property (Agency Management). While these accredited units don’t begin with the session code ‘QLDCPD20’ like other CPD-approved sessions, they’re fully compliant and meet the Type 1 CPD requirements in Queensland.

In practice, most agents will complete a condensed, approved CPD version of a qualifying unit — typically delivered by an approved provider in a face-to-face or online format, running two to three hours, and involving an assessment component. A completed Type 1 session will be evidenced by a Statement of Attainment.

Type 2 Sessions: Service Delivery and Professional Conduct

Type 2 sessions have a different focus. Type 2 CPD focuses on service delivery, consumer satisfaction, and professional ethics, improving your communication and negotiation skills across sales, property management, and leasing.

Type 2 CPD sessions are designed to strengthen consumer protection and improve service delivery for property buyers and sellers. These sessions focus on elevating standards in professionalism, customer care, and ethical conduct, whether in property sales or management. Approved Type 2 topics in the first CPD year have included privacy obligations in property practice, anti-money laundering legislation updates, domestic violence responsibilities for agents, and WHS for salespersons and property managers.

The Residential Tenancies Authority (RTA) is an approved provider of Type 2 CPD training sessions, delivering sessions online and in-person to Queensland property managers and agents. This is particularly relevant for property managers, whose day-to-day work under the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 is directly addressed by RTA-delivered Type 2 content.

How to Identify Approved Sessions

Only the approved CPD sessions listed on the OFT’s website will count towards your two mandatory sessions. Any CPD sessions completed from other states or territories, even if approved there, won’t be accepted. This is a critical point for agents who may have completed CPD in NSW, Victoria, or elsewhere — that training does not transfer.

To ensure sessions are approved in Queensland, look for session codes beginning with ‘QLDCPD20’. The full list of approved sessions is published on the OFT’s CPD pages at qld.gov.au and is updated as new sessions are approved. Providers submit session proposals to the OFT, which evaluates them with a CPD Advisory Panel. The CPD Advisory Panel, made up of experts from both industry and community organisations, reviews all proposals and recommends sessions for approval.

Exemptions and Exceptional Circumstances

The automatic structural exemptions are covered above. Beyond those, the OFT provides a pathway for agents who face genuine crises during their CPD year. You can apply for an exemption for any given CPD year if you can’t complete your CPD due to exceptional circumstances.

To apply, you must provide evidence of the exceptional circumstances with your application to renew or restore your licence or registration. The exemption is applied at renewal — you cannot apply mid-year for advance relief. The OFT has been clear that the bar for exceptional circumstances is a genuine one: a medical emergency or serious personal crisis may qualify. Forgetting to book, being busy with listings, or leaving it too late does not.

The practical implication is that if you hit a wall — serious illness, a significant family emergency — you should be documenting it in real time. Don’t attempt to reconstruct supporting evidence retrospectively when you arrive at your renewal application. Contemporaneous records from a treating professional or equivalent carry significantly more weight than a statutory declaration written months after the fact.

Record-Keeping Requirements: The Five-Year Rule

This is where many agents will be caught out by an OFT compliance audit. The legislation is explicit. Once you complete a session, the CPD provider must supply you with proof of completion, such as a certificate or statement of attainment. You must keep the proof-of-completion document for five years and produce it to the OFT on request.

Five years. Not until your next renewal. Not until the end of the CPD year. Five years from the date of completion.

Proof of completion takes the form of a Statement of Attainment for a Type 1 session or a CPD Certificate of Completion for all other sessions. Agents are required to keep the proof-of-completion document for five years and produce it to Office of Fair Trading inspectors upon request.

The practical recommendation is to maintain a dedicated CPD folder — physical or digital — that holds the certificate, the session code, the provider’s name, the date of delivery, and the session duration. Some providers issue certificates digitally; download them immediately and store them in a location you will still be able to access in five years. Cloud storage with a clearly labelled folder is the minimum standard. Agents who rely on inbox searches or provider portals alone are taking a risk that the OFT does not require them to take.

For principals managing teams, consider establishing an agency-wide system for tracking CPD records across your salespeople. You are not legally required to hold your team’s certificates on their behalf — the obligation sits with the individual licence holder — but a team tracking system reduces the risk that a compliance audit exposes a gap in one of your salesperson’s records.

How CPD Completion Is Reported to the OFT

There is a common misconception that certificates need to be submitted to the OFT each year. They don’t. You do not need to notify the Office of Fair Trading when you’ve completed your CPD. From 6 June 2026, you’ll only need to confirm your CPD status when renewing or restoring your licence or registration. You don’t need to send your certificates to the OFT.

The declaration process is built into the renewal form. When renewing or restoring your licence or registration, you’ll need to either state on the form that you’ve complied with your CPD requirements for the relevant years, or provide evidence that exceptional circumstances prevented you from completing your CPD requirements.

The declaration is taken seriously. The OFT will record your declaration and may verify compliance during subsequent visits. False declarations can lead to compliance actions, including possible loss of licence. Ticking the box and then being unable to produce certificates when audited is not a minor administrative oversight — it is a false declaration, which is treated as a conduct matter under the PO Act.

Don’t Leave It Until the Last Minute

The OFT cannot process your renewal application until your CPD is complete. To avoid delays, complete your CPD well before lodging your renewal application. If you complete your second session the week before renewal, you should still be fine — but the sensible approach is to complete both sessions in the first half of your CPD year. This gives you a buffer if a provider cancels, if a session fills up, or if your own schedule blows out.

Consequences of Non-Compliance with Queensland CPD Requirements

The consequences of failing to meet Queensland CPD requirements are not subtle. You must complete two approved CPD sessions each CPD year. If you don’t, you may not be eligible to renew your licence or registration.

An agent or salesperson who cannot renew is, in practical terms, unlicensed. Continuing to operate as an agent or salesperson without a valid licence or registration is an offence under the PO Act. For principals, that also raises the question of whether employing or supervising an unlicensed person in a real estate business creates separate exposure under section 98 of the Act.

Beyond the licence renewal block, OFT compliance officers have the power to inspect records, and false declarations on renewal forms are treated as conduct matters that can be referred to disciplinary proceedings. The range of outcomes includes formal warnings, licence conditions, suspension, and cancellation. These are not theoretical outcomes — the OFT has enforcement tools and the 2024 amendments were introduced with explicit consumer protection objectives in mind.

For agents who have invested years in building a client base, a management rent roll, or a sales reputation, losing a licence over two three-hour training sessions is an entirely avoidable outcome.

What This Means for Queensland Agents

The Queensland CPD requirement under the Property Occupations Act 2014 is, in practice, a manageable obligation. Two sessions per year, each approximately two to three hours, with a five-year record-keeping obligation and a declaration at renewal. The structural requirements are not onerous. The traps are administrative.

The four actions every Queensland property professional should take now:

• Confirm your CPD year dates. Pull out your licence or registration certificate, check your issue date, and use the OFT’s CPD calculator at qld.gov.au to confirm exactly when your first CPD year started and when it ends.
• Confirm you need one Type 1 and one Type 2, or two Type 1 sessions. Do not complete two Type 2 sessions and assume you’re done — that does not satisfy the requirement.
• Book OFT-approved sessions only. Look for the ‘QLDCPD20’ prefix, or confirm with the provider that the session appears on the approved list published on the OFT website. Interstate CPD does not count.
• Store your certificates immediately on receipt. Create a dedicated folder with all session details and hold it for five years. Don’t rely on a provider’s portal still being accessible in 2028.

Principals running multi-agent offices should consider building CPD tracking into their compliance calendar alongside trust account audits and Form 6 reviews. An individual salesperson’s CPD failure may not directly expose the principal, but it creates operational disruption when that agent’s renewal stalls.

These requirements bring Queensland in line with other jurisdictions like New South Wales, where CPD requirements have long been enforced. Queensland was one of the last states without mandatory ongoing training for licensed agents. That era has ended. Treat compliance as the floor, not the ceiling — and use the approved sessions to actually develop knowledge that improves your practice.

For official CPD session lists, approved provider details, and the OFT CPD calculator, refer to the Queensland Government’s CPD pages at qld.gov.au and the current text of the Property Occupations Act 2014 at legislation.qld.gov.au.