The home appeared to be a bargain. Melissa knew the listed price was ‘complete BS’

To any fair-minded observer, it represented an absolute bargain. The perfectly polished four-bedroom home in Quakers Hill had an estimated selling price of $1.15 million. It was notably cheaper than similar homes in the booming north-western suburb, which had been selling for more than $1.3 million.

Messages suggest the high-profile agent overseeing the sale, Ray White’s former top principal real estate agent worldwide, Josh Tesolin, knew it too.

Tesolin texted one prospective buyer that the advertised guide was a “start”. He then sent through a link to a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home on a similar-sized block he sold the day before, “to update you on the market”.

The sale price of that comparable property? $1.55 million.

“We knew going into the auction that the $1.15 million price guide was complete BS,” said Melissa Chan, 32, who, along with her husband, bid on the property. “We expected that it would go up to $1.5 million and we were prepared to go up to that point.”

But when the auction started, it became apparent just how badly misled Chan and the other unsuccessful bidders had been. The house on Kerstin Street wasn’t even declared on the market until bidding hit $1.57 million, 36 per cent above the guide. It sold for $1.59 million.

An investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age analysing more than 36,000 property sales in Sydney and Melbourne has identified dozens of branded real estate agencies for which inaccurate price guides are commonplace.

Real estate agents argue that when they list a single estimated selling price, it can be at the bottom end of a 10 per cent margin. But even allowing for this, which most consumers aren’t aware of, they were still 21 percentage points above their estimate.

In the case of the Raine and Horne office in Wetherill Park, none of the agency’s listings sold below the guide, and 22 overshot the advertised guide by 40 per cent or more. The 101 properties listed for sale with the office and analysed as part of this analysis averaged a sale price 31 per cent higher than the advertised guide.

Also routinely missing the mark were high-profile branded agencies in the inner west that had sales results 14 to 16 per cent above their published guides, based on 758 sales across their five local offices.

The Herald’s investigation covered a period of relatively subdued property price growth as Sydney home values rose about 3 per cent in the year to January 2025. That trend continued this year, Domain data shows.

Adrian William Real Estate director William Pereira said “radical change” was needed to stamp out rubbery pricing, calling for agents to publish the realistic estimated selling prices they gave to vendors and adding that harsher penalties needed to be levied against agents who deliberately underquoted.

“We do everything possible to remain transparent, which includes publishing our price guides and sale results – a practice that not a lot of agencies engage in,” said Pereira. His office sold more than 400 properties last year and was investigated four times, receiving one fine for non-compliance on administration but not for underquoting.

“During the [auction] campaign, we regularly revise our estimated selling price, but we are required to advertise the property at the price that an owner wants – provided it is not below our estimate,” Pereira said.

Bait advertising or underquoting is illegal and occurs when a real estate agent does not ensure their price guide is, and remains, a reasonable estimate of the likely selling price during the auction campaign.

A property selling above the guide price is not in and of itself evidence of underquoting if the set price guide was reasonable.

This masthead identified 24 agencies with at least 50 advertised sales that averaged between 12 and 31 per cent above the agent’s lowest estimated price.

Erin Turner, chief executive of the Consumer Policy Research Centre, an independent think tank which researches the property market and its impact on people, said the data uncovered in the investigation was compelling.

“The data for underquoting research is always going to be imperfect … But when you step back and you look at a large set of data and see trends like you’re seeing, that tells you there is a problem here with underquoting.”

It’s a stance shared by industry leaders.

“Underquoting is the most damaging practice in our industry today, and it needs to stop,” said McGrath Estate Agents founder and chief executive John McGrath. “While compliance has improved significantly over recent years, some agents continue to systematically mislead buyers with artificially low price guides, causing both financial loss and genuine emotional distress to families trying to buy their home.”

Sydney’s ‘hottest young gun‘

A years-long investigation by Fair Trading into the city’s high-earning agent, Josh Tesolin, and his team ended on Friday night when his licence was suspended for four months, pending possible disciplinary action.

Among the allegations are more than 100 cases of underquoting, as well as dummy bidding, producing false documents to the regulator and high-pressure sales tactics.

Tesolin was previously part of the Ray White franchise, but the agreement was mutually terminated in July after an investigation by this masthead into Tesolin’s business conduct and incentive schemes.

While Tesolin boasts of making 15 times more than the prime minister in annual commissions, it’s rare for the agency he once owned, Ray White Quakers Hill, to provide auction guides that fall anywhere close to the sales price.

Instead, over the past 18 months, their listings fetched 19 per cent, or $180,000 more, than the low end of the guides provided to buyers, on average, across more than 400 sales tracked by this masthead. On 50 occasions, properties were sold at least 30 per cent above the published auction guides.

Take the red-brick house in Eggleston Street, Blacktown, sold by Tesolin in March for $1,416,500. The result was almost 50 per cent higher than its guide of $950,000.

A year before, Tesolin listed a three-bedroom house with a large pool in Quakers Hill for $1.1 million. It wasn’t declared on the market until bidding reached $1.6 million, $500,000 above the guide, and it sold for $1.61 million, setting a suburb record at the time.

Tesolin responded to questions by saying real estate agents are not property valuers, and the marketing and sale of each of the properties was “conducted in line with the current NSW legislation”.

“An agent’s opinion takes into consideration, amongst other factors, the vendor’s unique circumstances, including any time or financial pressure on them,” Tesolin said in a statement.

“If NSW Fair Trading were to investigate any of these sales, I am confident that there will be no case to answer because the legislation has been followed.

“I personally have never received a penalty notice from NSW Fair Trading. I am keeping up to date on a three-year investigation into Ray White Quakers Hill by reading media articles.”

Buyers’ agent Arian Namdar this year shared a screenshot with his TikTok followers of a four-bedroom house with an $800,000 guide in Oakhurst listed by Ray White Quakers Hill, since rebranded NGU Quakers Hill.

“This is underquoting at its finest,” said Namdar, principal of PropX Buyers Agency.

He estimated the home was worth between $950,000 and $1 million “at a bare minimum” given the house next door sold for $815,000 in 2023 despite having one less bedroom, one less bathroom and not being newly renovated.

“You’re telling me this has a guide of $800,000 when it’s been fully renovated? It’s a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home. Absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

Two weeks later, the home sold for $967,000.

Tesolin said he was “aware of defamatory publications about me on social media” and has engaged lawyers “to deal with this matter”.

“I take comfort in my 2206 positive personal reviews on RateMyAgent, my 992 positive reviews on realestate.com, and the Ray White Quakers Hill 4.7-star Google ranking,” he said.

In response to questions from this masthead, Ray White’s head office said auction prices were “ultimately a result of buyer interest, which is impossible to predict”.

Across NSW last year, Ray White’s offices sold 31,394 properties with more than 1200 sales, or 3.9 per cent, fetching a sale result more than 10 per cent higher than the estimated price. The data, provided by Ray White, includes both auctions and private sales.

Ray White said it sold three times as much property as the next largest group and conducted one in four auctions across Australia.

But the agency also attracted 483 complaints to NSW Fair Trading in the two years to June 2025, 10 times more than any other agency. And for several months this year, the nationwide franchise ranked in the top three most complained about companies of all types. Those complaints relate mostly to repairs and maintenance on rental property (145), conduct (114), rent and charges (73), contracts (41) and general property management (39).

Of the 63 agencies where 40 or more sales were tracked by this masthead, Raine and Horne Wetherill Park had the largest gap between advertised guide and sales price.

The Wetherill Park agency’s selling principal Sam Ruisi said his agency had never been fined for underquoting, but NSW Fair Trading confirmed they were fined $2200 twice, in 2023 for “no evidence of reasonable estimate [price]” and in 2024 for “published price less than estimated”.

The business is subject to an ongoing investigation by the NSW Office of Fair Trading.

“Fair Trading is investigating further complaints [about this company] and will take appropriate enforcement action if breaches are identified,” a spokesman said. “Any consumers with information on this trader should contact 13 32 20.”

The Wetherill Park agency runs bumper auction nights every other month at one of Sydney’s most profitable pokie palaces, Club Marconi. On one night alone, the event attracted a crowd of about 300 and 118 registered bidders competing to buy seven houses.

It is a high-stakes event for many of those in attendance, at which price guides are smashed and indoor fireworks displays accompany each sale.

One of the agency’s recent sales was a 1970s-style house with three bedrooms and a swimming pool on Jane Street, Smithfield, listed with a $900,000 guide – it sold for $1.38 million in March, 53 per cent over the advertised guide.

Ruisi said their pricing process “significantly differs from the assumptions your data appears to be built on”, which is a “surface-level snapshot of outcomes”.

“Our pricing guides are based on live market conditions, buyer feedback, and vendor instructions, not hindsight,” he said.

“We don’t publish price guides in the first week of most of our campaigns. We wait to gather live buyer feedback and sentiment before finalising a guide.

“When pricing a property, we also look closely at comparable active listings, particularly those we’re competing with in the same marketplace. This is a live market, not a closed-book exercise. In the event another agent lists a superior home with a lower guide, to attract attention (which does happen quite often), we’re forced to factor that into our own pricing strategy, subject to our vendors’ instructions, to ensure our vendors stay competitive. Otherwise, we risk shutting out buyer traffic from the outset.”

NSW Minister for Better Regulation and Fair Trading Anoulack Chanthivong recently called for options to strengthen underquoting laws and increase fines, including the adoption of a similar model to Victorian laws to add pricing transparency for buyers.

Opposition spokesman for fair trading Tim James said fines were not adequate and the regulatory enforcement isn’t there.

“It is difficult for consumers,” James said. “There are too many examples of people who have been led down the garden path, invested all the time and effort, money, research and so much more, when they probably never actually had a shot at the property anyway.”

At Pace Property Agents, in Greenacre, properties sold for an average of 26 per cent above the lower end of their published price estimates across 148 auctions tracked in Sydney’s western suburbs.

Pace’s director Mark Saleh, a former security guard who began selling real estate about 12 years ago, was ranked the No.2 salesperson in NSW by realestate.com.au in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The agency sold more than 250 properties last year.

But Pace was also fined $2200 last year for an “estimate not reasonable” offence, and the business is subject to an ongoing investigation by Fair Trading, according to a department spokesman.

Saleh rejected the notion that underquoting occurs “generally within my agency”.

“Simply because a property sells for a higher price than the estimated price guide does not mean or allow a conclusion to be made that there is underquoting by an agent,” Saleh said. “To label a real estate agent as participating in underquoting because there was a lot of interest on the day of the auction and the property sold for more than the guide price is defamatory and untrue.”

When Fair Trading questioned his agency’s price guides, he provided them with documents and records that support his methods, he said.

In June last year, Saleh marketed a two-storey, six-bedroom house on Waterloo Road in Greenacre for $1,200,000. It sold 94 per cent above the price guide, or $1,125,000 over the agent’s estimate. It was on the same street where Saleh sold a townhouse a month prior for $1,210,000 and an older, three-bedroom house two weeks earlier for $1,330,000.

Another Wetherill Park agency, Blaze Real Estate, also holds mass auctions at Club Marconi, which helped make up an estimated $500 million worth of real estate sold by the agency in the past financial year.

Of 95 auctions held by Blaze, the sale prices landed an average of 18 per cent above the published estimated prices – the fourth-largest disparity of the agencies tracked. They also conducted an additional 120 auction sales with no guide price listing. Blaze was fined $2200 for an underquoting offence in 2023 for an unreasonable estimate and is also subject to ongoing investigation by NSW Fair Trading.

Blaze did not respond to questions about why it ran so many auctions without publishing price guides and confirmed they had no commercial arrangement with Club Marconi outside “regular commercial terms of booking room hire”.

In Sydney’s eastern and southern suburbs, auction guides and sale results are often unpublished, so the extent of misleading price guides in those areas is not fully known. However, anecdotally, prospective buyers have complained of underquoting.

While private treaty sales are rarely underquoted given the fixed nature of asking prices, the number of auctions as a preferred sale method has ballooned since 2009, when only about a quarter of Sydney property sales were put up for auction. By March this year, that portion had climbed to almost half.

For Melissa Chan, her brush with the Sydney real estate industry was so demoralising that she and her husband decided to buy in the Blue Mountains, where they could purchase via private treaty rather than an auction.

“We just were like, ‘You know what, we just want to buy a house that has a price tag on’,” she said.

Chan reported Tesolin’s Ray White Quakers Hill to Fair Trading and has backed calls to mandate the disclosure of reserve prices before auctions, so people don’t spend time and money investigating and bidding for properties they cannot afford.

Even though agents have to provide an estimated selling price in the agency agreement with the home’s sellers, there’s no requirement for this figure to be published or aligned with the property’s reserve price.

“If the seller doesn’t want to sell below that price, then why are we all wasting time bidding at numbers below it?” Chan asked.

“Everyone who shows up to an auction [to bid] has put in almost $1000 … $600 for the pest inspection, and $200 for your conveyancer to look over the contract of sale … Then it turns out that thinking you could even afford the place was based on a lie.”