By Rob Nicholls -
OPINION: When Australia moved property conveyancing online, it promised a cheaper, simpler process for buying a home. That promise has been broken. For everyday Australians buying or selling a home, the promised benefits have failed to materialise. Instead, we have swapped a paper-based process for a digital monopoly, with one dominant company, PEXA, controlling around 99 per cent of the market.
This market concentration has stifled competition and innovation, leaving consumers with high prices that are permitted to rise annually with inflation, despite already exceeding efficient costs. The NSW Productivity and Equality Commission found these benefits have not flowed through to consumers. With EBITDA* margins recently reported at 55 per cent, and fees permitted to rise with CPI regardless of underlying costs, homebuyers and sellers are effectively funding monopoly profits at one of the most financially significant moments of their lives. This EBITDA margin is comparable to REA Group (57 per cent), but significantly higher than comparable businesses WiseTech (48 per cent), Domain (34 per cent), Xero (31 per cent), and TechnologyOne (30 per cent).
The problem lies with powerful “network effects”. Because every lawyer, conveyancer, and bank uses the one platform, it’s almost impossible for a competitor to gain a foothold. Everyone is locked in.
The agreed solution is direct interoperability, which would allow different platforms to speak to each other seamlessly. However, this has been put on indefinite hold by the national regulator, the Australian Registrars’ National Electronic Conveyancing Council (ARNECC). There have been years of industry effort, and millions invested by new entrants like Sympli. This business achieved full regulatory compliance and payment connections with Australia’s major banks. However, the regulatory pause has frozen this progress and the investments made in good faith now sit idle.
This delay is not just theoretical. It has real-world consequences. We’ve already seen one competitor, LexTech, give up and leave the market. Without action, Sympli could be next, cementing the monopoly forever.
Unlocking competition
But we don’t have to wait for a perfect, all-encompassing solution. A pragmatic, phased approach can unlock the benefits of competition now.
The first step is to open the “practitioner” segment of the market to competition. This is the work done by conveyancers and solicitors. Under this model, new players like Sympli could compete for the business of legal professionals by offering better service, superior technology, or lower fees. For the final, complex steps of lodging documents and settling funds, they would use the incumbent’s infrastructure on regulated terms. Think of it like choosing your courier. A new company can compete to pick up your parcel, provide better tracking, and offer a lower price, while still using the same major airport (the incumbent’s settlement system) for the final leg of the journey. The technology for this ‘hand-off’ already exists.
Preparation vs lodgement and settlement
This doesn’t require complex technical integration overnight. It simply means practitioners can choose their preferred platform for document preparation and workspace management, while lodgement and settlement continue through existing infrastructure. The technology already exists; what’s missing is regulatory permission.
This “ladder of investment” model is a well-established principle in competition regulation and has a proven track record of success. Australia used this exact approach to break open the telecommunications monopoly in the 1990s and 2000s. By allowing new entrants to access parts of the incumbent’s network, regulators unleashed a wave of competition and investment. The results were spectacular: over a decade, fixed-line call prices fell by over 32 per cent, and mobile service costs dropped by around 45 per cent. Consumers benefited from lower prices, more choice, and better services.
The same dynamic can be replicated in eConveyancing.
A phased approach would give new entrants the chance to build a customer base, establish their brand, and earn revenue, supporting their longer-term viability. It would also reduce regulatory risk by allowing policymakers to observe actual market behaviour rather than relying on assumptions. Subsequent phases would expand competition to financial institutions and eventually achieve full, direct interoperability.
The current regulatory pause rewards the incumbent and punishes innovators who have invested millions on the promise of an open market. Every month of delay means higher costs for homebuyers and diminished prospects for competition. ARNECC and government policymakers need to act decisively. A phased approach could deliver Phase 1 within months, not years. It’s time to stop pursuing the perfect solution and start delivering tangible benefits. By adopting this pragmatic, proven approach, we can finally unlock the competition Australia’s property market desperately needs.
Dr Rob Nicholls is a senior researcher at the University of Sydney and a former ACCC regulator. He gave evidence to a Senate Committee on competition reform in September.
*EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation and is a common measure of a business’s profitability.
