← Back Sellers · 7 min read

Buyer-Requested Cooling-Off Period Extensions in Brisbane

A buyer asking to extend the standard 5-business-day cooling-off period is one of the more common contract requests Brisbane sellers receive. Here is what it usually means, when to agree, and how to keep your position protected.

You have signed a contract on your Brisbane home, or you are about to. The buyer's solicitor or buyer's agent has come back with a request that surprises some first-time vendors: they want to extend the standard 5-business-day cooling-off period to 10 business days, or 14, or in some cases beyond that. Your agent calls and asks how you want to respond. The instinct for most sellers is either to refuse outright, or to agree quickly to avoid losing the deal. Both reactions miss the more useful question: what is the buyer actually trying to achieve, and what does the request say about how committed they are to the purchase?

The standard Queensland residential contract gives a buyer 5 business days from the day they receive the signed contract to terminate for any reason, with a penalty of 0.25% of the purchase price. That is the default. The cooling-off period can be shortened or extended by written agreement, and an extension is one of the more common buyer-side amendments to a standard REIQ contract. It is not a trap, but it is a meaningful change to the risk profile of your sale, and it should be treated as a negotiation point rather than a tick-box concession.

Why buyers ask for an extension

There are three common reasons a Brisbane buyer requests a longer cooling-off period, and each one carries a very different implication for the seller. The first is finance. The buyer is not yet pre-approved, or their pre-approval is conditional in a way that makes them nervous about the 5-day window. They want extra time to confirm with the bank before the cooling-off period closes. The second is investigations. They want to commission a building and pest inspection, a strata search if it is a unit or townhouse, and possibly a pool safety or rates and search review, and they are worried 5 business days is too tight to organise and review all of that. The third is commitment. They are not fully sure they want the property and they want extra time to keep looking, attend other open homes, and confirm in their own mind that they have made the right choice.

The first two reasons are reasonable and can usually be addressed. The third is the one to watch for, because it tells you the buyer is not yet sold on your home, and a longer cooling-off period gives them a free option to walk away for a small penalty while your property is effectively off the market. A 0.25% penalty on a $1.2 million Camp Hill home is $3,000, which is not enough to keep a wavering buyer committed if they find something they like better in the next two weeks.

What a good agent will do before responding

The right first step is not to say yes or no. It is to ask the buyer's agent or solicitor, through your selling agent, exactly why the extension is being requested. A specific answer ("we want until Friday week to have the building and pest report reviewed by our solicitor") gives you something to work with. A vague answer ("our buyer is more comfortable with a longer window") tells you the request is probably about commitment rather than process.

If the answer is finance, the cleaner solution is often a subject-to-finance condition with a defined finance date, rather than an extended cooling-off period. Subject-to-finance is a structured condition with a clear test (the buyer either has formal finance approval by date X or they do not), and it does not give the buyer an unrestricted right to walk away for any reason. An extended cooling-off period gives them that unrestricted right, which is a more dangerous condition for a seller to live with.

If the answer is investigations, the cleaner solution is often to provide a recent pre-listing building and pest report and, where relevant, a strata records search. If you have done a pre-listing inspection (a habit I recommend for almost every Brisbane home owner over fifty years old), the buyer can review your report and make their own additional checks within the standard 5 business days. The need for an extension shrinks. If you have not done a pre-listing inspection, agreeing to a short extension of 2 to 4 business days specifically to allow building and pest to be completed is usually a reasonable compromise, and is much more contained than an open-ended 14-day cooling-off window.

If the answer is commitment, you have a different problem. A buyer who needs two weeks to decide is not the strongest buyer at your price point, and accepting a long cooling-off period from them is taking on the risk of a deal that may not hold together. In a multi-offer scenario, you can usually decline this request and accept a stronger offer on standard terms. In a quieter market, you need to weigh the genuine probability of the buyer walking against the genuine probability of finding a replacement buyer in the same timeframe and at the same or better price. That is a judgement call your agent should make with you, not for you.

When agreeing to an extension is the right call

There are several situations where agreeing to a cooling-off extension is the right answer, even after the analysis above. The offer is materially above your reserve or above competing offers, and the extension is the only meaningful change requested. The buyer's reason is specific, contained and provable (a building and pest inspector cannot attend until day six, for example). The market for your property type in your suburb is quiet enough that the next buyer is genuinely uncertain. You are selling a unit with body corporate records that take longer than 5 business days to obtain through the body corporate manager, which is a genuine logistical constraint in some Brisbane buildings.

In each of these cases, the right structure is usually a short extension (5 to 7 additional business days at most), tied to a specific reason, with the cooling-off period clearly defined and dated in the contract. Open-ended extensions ("until our buyer is satisfied with their due diligence") should never be agreed to. The whole point of the cooling-off period is that it is a defined, time-boxed window. Removing that definition removes the protection you have as a seller.

When pushing back is the right call

In a competitive Brisbane inner-east campaign with multiple genuine offers, a request for a 10 or 14 business day cooling-off period is usually a signal that the buyer is not the strongest in the field. The strongest buyers in a multi-offer scenario know that price and clean terms win, and they will rarely ask for an extended cooling-off window because they understand it weakens their offer in the seller's eyes. If you have one offer asking for 14 days cooling-off and another offer at the same price on standard 5-day terms, the second offer is almost always the better one, even if the buyer is a little less polished on paper.

The other situation where pushing back is right is when the request comes alongside multiple other amendments. Extended cooling-off, plus a subject-to-finance condition, plus a subject-to-sale-of-existing-property condition, plus a long settlement, is not one negotiation point. It is a buyer trying to keep every option open at your expense. The right response is to consolidate, picking the one or two conditions that matter most to them and declining the rest. Often the buyer will accept the consolidation because they did not expect to win every condition anyway.

How to document an extension properly

If you do agree to an extension, the change needs to be in writing, signed by both parties, and clearly dated. In a standard REIQ contract, the cooling-off date is recorded in the cooling-off section, and an extension is typically inserted as a special condition that states the new end date and time (most cooling-off periods end at 5pm on the final business day). The change must be signed before the original cooling-off period would have ended, otherwise the cooling-off right has already lapsed and reinstating it requires a more formal contract variation.

Your solicitor or conveyancer should handle the drafting. Do not let an extension be agreed verbally through agents and "documented later". The risk of a misunderstanding about exactly when the period ends, or whether it ended at all, is too high for an agreement of this kind to live outside the contract document.

A note on auction sales

Property sold under the hammer at auction in Queensland does not have a cooling-off period at all. The contract is unconditional from the buyer's side from the moment the hammer falls. This is one of the structural reasons sellers use auction in a strong Brisbane market: it removes the cooling-off question entirely, along with most other buyer-side conditions. If you are taking your property to auction and a pre-auction offer comes in with a request for an extended cooling-off period, that request is a useful indicator that the buyer is not yet committed to bidding at auction, and the offer should be assessed on that basis.