PSRA compliance: a practitioner guide for Irish estate agents & auctioneers

Every property services provider needs a PSRA licence for each category of service it provides:

A

— auction of property other than land; the PSRA gives animals, fine art and vehicles as the examples, and anything else that is not “land” under the Act

B

— purchase or sale of land and buildings, by any means, auction or private treaty

C

— letting

D

— property management services on behalf of the management body of a multi-unit development. Usually that is the owners’ management company, but section 2(1) also catches whoever manages the common areas before the OMC takes over

A firm may hold any combination, and may only provide the services it is licensed for. The business licence must be displayed at the premises; individuals carry a photo licence (psr.ie).

What an applicant must show to qualify for a licence in the first place comes from regulations rather than from the Act. The Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 (Qualifications) Regulations 2026 (S.I. No. 279 of 2026) set the minimum qualification requirements for the grant of a licence — the levels of education, training and experience that section 95(1)(d) leaves to regulation. There are four alternative routes: a recognised award carrying specified credits, an equivalent award from another jurisdiction, three years’ lawful provision of that same property service within the previous ten (five, where the service was provided outside the State), or other qualifications or experience the Authority accepts as making the applicant suitable.

They come into operation on 1 July 2028, revoking the Qualifications Regulations of 2012 and 2015 from that date. So the 2012 Regulations still govern an application made today, and an application received before 1 July 2028 but not yet decided continues to be judged under them.

Providing a property service without a licence is a criminal offence under section 28. The offence also catches holding yourself out as available to provide one — including by advertisement, or by displaying any card or other object purporting to show you are a licensee.

It carries two tiers:

• •on summary conviction, a class A fine or up to 12 months’ imprisonment, or both
• •on conviction on indictment, a fine or up to 5 years’ imprisonment, or both — the indictable fine has no statutory cap

The PSRA prosecutes, and it can also go to the High Court: section 89(7) lets it seek an injunction requiring a person who is nota licensee to cease the activities an investigation found to contravene section 28(1). It has used that power once: on 9 December 2019 the President of the High Court, Mr Justice Peter Kelly, granted what the Authority’s own Annual Report 2019 calls its “first High Court injunction”, restraining an unlicensed operator from providing, advertising or holding itself out as available to provide property services.

Against a licensee the route is different: section 64 is an application to the High Court to suspend a licence immediately. A reported suspension is not the injunction power above, and the two are easy to conflate because both end up in the same court.

Licences run for one year. Most expire on 5 November, and the PSRA’s renewal page puts the corresponding application deadline at 24 September — the Act requires renewal applications at least six weeks before expiry (s.35). File on time and the licence stays in force while the application is decided.

Miss it, absent exceptional circumstances, and the consequences are severe:

• •the licence expires
• •you are treated as never having held one
• •you reapply as a new applicant
• •you cannot trade until the new licence issues

“The renewal notice didn’t arrive” and “our accountant’s report wasn’t ready” are expressly not accepted excuses.

Business renewals must include:

• •an accountant’s report on the client account
• •evidence of professional indemnity insurance
• •the licence fee — €1,380 for a property services employer or an independent contractor, €200 for each principal officer or employee — set by the Licensing (Amendment) Regulations 2026, in operation since 1 June 2026
• •the Compensation Fund contribution — €200 for a business, €50 for each principal officer or employee — a separate charge under the Compensation Fund Regulations 2012, which have stood unamended since 2012, so these two figures carry no 2026 date

Fees are revised periodically — Licensing (Amendment) Regulations were made in 2024, 2025 and 2026, the 2026 set revoking the 2025 one — so confirm the current figure with the PSRA before you budget or invoice against it.

Holding a licence isn’t a one-off event.

Every licensee must complete a minimum of 5 verifiable hours of formal PSRA CPD education each year, delivered by IPAV, PAI or SCSI — all 5 hours may be completed online. You don’t submit the certificate to the PSRA, but you must keep it: at audit, the PSRA requests Certificates of Completion for the previous four CPD cycles (psr.ie).

That’s a third retention clock to run alongside the others on this page:

• •6 years for service records under section 44
• •5 years for AML records
• •4 years (four CPD cycles) for CPD certificates

Two seven-day clocks run back to back.

1. 1.Under section 43, a letter of engagement in the specified form, signed by the licensee, must reach the client no later than 7 working days after you start providing the service or agree to provide it — whichever comes first.
2. 2.If the client doesn’t return the signed copy within the following 7 working days, you must stop (or not start) the service.

Operating without a PSA is “improper conduct” under the Act.

The same clock runs again whenever the terms change.

Section 43(3)-(4) extends the identical machinery to an amendment, a renewal, or a re-engagement after the agreement expires or is terminated: an amendment must be given to the client, in the specified form and signed by the licensee, no later than 7 working days after it was agreed.

A fee variation or an extended sole-agency period is a fresh agreement for this purpose — and an unsigned amendment fails the same way an unsigned original does.

Underquoting sits on the same enforcement track as every other breach in this guide.

• •Where a vendor asks a licensee to value land for sale, section 55 requires a written statement of the advised market value (AMV) in the specified form within 7 working days of the request, or within such longer period as the licensee and the vendor agree — section 55(2) does the same for an advised letting value, with the lessor in the vendor’s place.
• •Section 56 bans stating an estimated selling price below the AMV — or below the lower limit of a stated range — in advertisements, particulars, to prospective purchasers, or at auction. The consent in s.56(2) is narrower than it is usually described: it adjusts the AMV itself, in writing and to take account of prevailing market conditions. It is not permission to quote below the figure that stands.
• •Section 57 lets the PSRA demand evidence of how any AMV was calculated and whether it was reasonable.

Giving a clearly unreasonable AMV — or advised letting value — is itself defined as improper conduct, which puts underquoting on the same enforcement track as every other breach on this page, up to and including a major sanction.

It is also the most publicised PSRA issue in the Irish market — worth getting the valuation file in order before the Authority asks for it.

Section 44 requires a record, in the specified form, of every property service provided, retained for at least 6 years after completion of the transactions it relates to.

The retention duty sits with the licensee who is the property services employer or independent contractor — where an employee or a principal officer actually delivers the service, the obligation stays with the employer, not the individual who did the work.

Section 61 adds the one agents most often miss: where land is offered for sale, other than by auction, a record of every offer received — including conditional acceptances — must be kept for the same 6 years.

The Minimum Standards Regulations 2020 attach two duties to that same offer.

• •You must give written confirmation to every offeror — whether they’re offering to purchase or to rent — on receipt of their offer (reg 15(2)).
• •You may not state or imply to anyone, including your own client, that an offer has been received unless it actually has (reg 15(3)) — the rule the PSRA’s own guidance calls the ban on fake bids.

When an offer is disclosed to the client, the licensee must also notify the client in writing where it knows, or has reasonable grounds to believe, that the offeror is the licensee, a principal officer of the licensee, an employee of the licensee, the licensee’s employer, an employee of that employer, or a connected relative of any of those five (reg 15(4)).

Section 45 makes professional indemnity insurance a precondition of providing any property service — but sets no cover level itself. The level comes from the Professional Indemnity Insurance Regulations 2012, amended twice since: by S.I. 161 of 2020 and by S.I. 699 of 2024, which from 3 March 2025 requires minimum cover of €1,000,000 for each and every claim — exclusive of defence costs, with no limit on the number of claims in any one year, and with defence costs covered in addition. That replaced the original €500,000 minimum and dropped two older limbs: cover of at least twice the previous year’s fee income, and unlimited defence costs.

Two things to keep straight. There is a saver: a period of indemnity that commenced before 3 March 2025 continues under the Regulations as if they had not been amended, so a policy year straddling that date runs to its end on the old terms. And the Regulations are made under section 95, the Act’s general regulation-making power, not under section 45 — section 45 creates the duty, section 95 is where the figure lives. Contravening either is improper conduct.

The Client Moneys Regulations 2012:

• •require client moneys to be kept separate from office moneys
• •prohibit withdrawals from a client account except in defined circumstances
• •require balancing statements at defined dates, reported through your accountant to the Authority

The rules are enforced: in 2025 the High Court confirmed a €10,000 penalty on an agent who withdrew money from a €50,000 booking deposit held in his client account before contracts for the sale of land were concluded (psr.ie sanctions register). Regulation 6(6) sets out the only circumstances in which a licensee may withdraw money from a client account, and Regulation 6(7) adds a single alternative — written authorisation from the Authority, on application. A withdrawal outside those two routes is a breach whatever the money was for, which is the whole point of keeping client money and office money apart.

The PSRA audits licensees — on premises or remotely — and its inspectors can:

• •require records
• •question any person
• •enter and search business premises
• •require authorisation to inspect the firm’s bank accounts

Any person may complain in writing, and the Authority can also investigate on its own initiative.

After a finding of improper conduct the sanctions scale from a reprimand to licence revocation, up to €50,000 towards the Compensation Fund, up to €50,000 in investigation costs, and a financial penalty of up to €250,000 — major sanctions require High Court confirmation, and confirmed sanctions are published.

Those are not alternatives. Paragraph (f) of the definition of “major sanction” in section 2(1) permits “any combination of any of the sanctions specified in paragraphs (a) to (e)”, so a single finding of improper conduct can carry €350,000 in money — the €250,000 penalty, the €50,000 Fund contribution and the €50,000 towards the cost of the investigation — alongside revocation or suspension of the licence.

Alongside the Act sit the Minimum Standards Regulations 2020 (19 binding standards, reg 3 to reg 21 — the first two regulations are citation and definitions — from inducements to conflict-of-interest disclosure) and the 2021 Code of Practice, which regulators may consider when assessing improper conduct.

Almost every obligation above is, in practice, a record-keeping obligation with a clock attached: agreements within 7 working days, offers retained for 6 years, client money movements accounted for at balancing dates, an audit trail an inspector can follow.

That is the problem EstatePilot is built around — offers, viewings, correspondence and status changes are logged with timestamps as part of normal work, so the record an inspection asks for already exists. See compliance software for Irish estate agents or the related guide on AML checks for estate agents.