← Back Sellers · 8 min read

Handling Subject to Sale Offers as a Brisbane Seller

A subject to sale offer ties your settlement to a buyer who has not yet sold their own home. Here is how to evaluate them honestly, protect your position with the right special conditions, and decide when to say no.

If you are selling a family home in Brisbane's inner east, expect at least one offer at some stage of the campaign that comes with a subject to sale condition attached. These offers are common because most upgraders need the equity from their existing home to fund the next purchase. The question for you as the seller is not whether the offer is unusual, but whether the terms protect your position well enough to be worth tying up your property in someone else's chain.

Subject to sale offers are not a yes or no decision. They are a negotiation about how much risk you are prepared to absorb in exchange for what the buyer is offering in price, terms and certainty. Approached well, they can produce a clean result with a motivated buyer who has done the work. Approached poorly, they leave your home sitting unsold for months while a buyer struggles to settle their own affairs and your campaign goes stale.

What a subject to sale clause actually does

A subject to sale clause is a special condition in the Queensland REIQ contract that makes settlement conditional on the buyer selling their own property within an agreed timeframe. The condition typically defines the buyer's property by address, sets a deadline for that property to go unconditional (commonly 30, 60 or 90 days), and gives both parties a contractual exit if it does not happen. If the buyer fails to sell within the period, the contract terminates and the deposit is refunded. Your property goes back on the market with weeks of lost campaign momentum.

The clause is not part of the standard pre-printed REIQ terms in the same way as finance or building and pest. It is a negotiated special condition, which means the precise wording matters. A poorly drafted clause can leave you with no clear right to terminate even when the buyer has obviously stopped trying, or with an obligation to grant extensions every time the buyer asks. Your solicitor should draft the clause, not the buyer's agent, and the language should be specific about the buyer's property, the deadline, and what counts as a deemed failure.

The three questions to ask before accepting

Before you entertain a subject to sale offer, get answers to three questions in plain English from the buyer's agent. First, is the buyer's property already listed, and with whom? An offer from a buyer whose home is already on the market with a competent agent and a realistic price is fundamentally different from an offer from a buyer who is still thinking about selling. If they have not yet listed, your subject to sale period effectively starts after they have completed their own preparation, photography, and campaign launch. The 60 days on paper becomes 90 or 100 days in reality.

Second, what is the suburb and price range of the buyer's property, and how is that local market performing? A subject to sale on a well-priced Camp Hill or Bulimba home with strong recent comparables is a different proposition from a subject to sale on a niche property in a thinner market. Ask your own agent to check days on market and clearance rates in the buyer's suburb. If comparable properties are selling in three to four weeks, the chain has a realistic chance of completing. If they are sitting for ten weeks at a discount, the chain is fragile and your campaign is at risk.

Third, what is the buyer's price compared to where the property would land in an unconditional cash sale? Subject to sale offers should pay a premium for the certainty they take away from you. If the buyer is offering the same number an unconditional buyer would offer, you are giving away the risk premium and getting nothing for it. A reasonable expectation is that a subject to sale offer should be at or near the top of your price expectation, not in the middle of the range.

The 48-hour clause is non-negotiable

If you accept a subject to sale offer, the single most important protection is a continuing right to market clause, commonly called a 48-hour clause or 72-hour clause. The clause permits you to keep your property on the market while the buyer works on selling their home. If a second buyer makes an acceptable offer, you give the first buyer written notice and they have 48 hours to either remove the subject to sale condition (and proceed on the strength of their existing financial position or bridging finance) or terminate the contract and walk away.

Without this clause, you are locked out of the market for the entire conditional period. Any later buyer who shows interest will be told you are under contract, and most will move on rather than wait. With a 48-hour clause in place, you keep your campaign visibility, your agent keeps working, and the existence of any second offer gives the first buyer a strong incentive to move quickly on their own sale or find bridging finance. The clause turns a passive waiting period into active competition.

The wording of the 48-hour clause matters. It should be triggered by any written offer that is acceptable to you, not just an unconditional one. It should specify that the buyer must unconditionally proceed within the notice period, not simply state an intention. And it should make clear that if the buyer does not act within 48 hours, the contract terminates automatically and the deposit is refunded without further dispute.

How long should the conditional period be

The right conditional period depends on the buyer's progress and the market they are selling into. If the buyer's property is already listed and the suburb is selling in three to four weeks, 30 to 45 days is reasonable. If the buyer is selling in a slower suburb or has not yet listed, 60 days is closer to realistic, but you should think carefully about whether you want to be tied up for that long.

Avoid 90-day conditional periods unless the price is exceptional and the 48-hour clause is iron clad. Three months is a long time in a Brisbane campaign. Your photography ages, your styling expires, and any market shift in either direction makes the original price look wrong. If the buyer needs 90 days, the more honest path is for them to sell their own property first and come back to you with an unconditional offer, or arrange bridging finance.

Resist any clause that allows the buyer to extend unilaterally or that requires you to grant extensions in good faith. Extensions should be at your discretion and should only be considered if the buyer's property is genuinely close to unconditional, not because they are hoping for one more weekend of inspections.

When to say no

There are circumstances where the right answer is to decline a subject to sale offer politely and stay on the market. If you are early in your campaign with strong inspection numbers and other buyers actively engaged, tying yourself to one buyer's chain is rarely the right move. If the buyer's property is in a soft market or has not yet been listed, the risk that you will lose two to three months and end up back at square one is too high. If the price is at or below your expected unconditional outcome, you are taking the risk without being paid for it.

You can also decline conditionally. A reasonable response is to tell the buyer's agent that you cannot accept the subject to sale condition, but you would welcome an unconditional offer once their own property is unconditional. This keeps the buyer in the conversation, prevents them from buying elsewhere in the interim if they are serious, and removes the risk from your side. Many buyers in this position will work harder on their own sale knowing your property is genuinely available to whoever is ready first.

How to manage the conditional period if you proceed

Once you accept a subject to sale offer, the contract is not the end of your campaign work, it is a change in how you manage it. Keep the listing active. Keep allowing inspections. Keep talking to other interested buyers. The 48-hour clause only works if there are other buyers in the pipeline ready to respond, so the worst thing you can do is stop the campaign and wait passively.

Stay in regular contact with the buyer's agent. Ask for honest weekly updates on how their campaign is progressing: inspection numbers, second inspections, offer activity. If the buyer's campaign goes quiet for two weeks, that is a signal the chain is in trouble and you should be actively cultivating any other interest in your property. A good listing agent will know how to manage both sides of this without putting either buyer off.

Be ready for the buyer to come back with a price reduction request once their own sale is taking longer than expected. This is common and you do not have to agree. You agreed to the original terms based on the buyer's representation of their position. If their position has changed, you can decline to vary the price and let them decide whether to walk away from the deposit risk or find another path forward.

The bottom line

A subject to sale offer is workable in the right circumstances, but it is rarely the best outcome and it is never the only outcome. The right framing is to treat it as one possible path among several, not as something you should jump at because the price looks attractive. The strongest subject to sale arrangements are negotiated on terms that protect your campaign momentum, your price expectation, and your right to keep marketing the property. If those protections cannot be put in place, the cleaner result is almost always to decline and stay on the market for an unconditional buyer.