$132 million, 125 sales, and now the awards are gone

Previous wins now under review as the institute's tribunal considers a case that goes to the credibility of every agent ranking published in Western Australia.

The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia has disqualified one of its highest ranked agents from this year's awards after finding inaccuracies in the sales figures behind his ranking, and has confirmed that previously awarded titles could be withdrawn depending on the outcome of its Professional Standards Tribunal.

Roy Li, whose legal name is Liang Li, sells through Ideal Realty WA in Willetton. He was recorded as having sold 125 properties worth $132 million over the past year, placing him in the top one per cent of REIWA members and 13th out of 40 agents in the institute's highest sales value category. The disqualification was reported by the ABC on 26 August, which said REIWA had been examining his data for around six months before the broadcaster made contact.

"We were already taking action and he has since been disqualified from obtaining an award this year," REIWA president Suzanne Brown told the ABC.

Brown said the question of earlier awards remained open. "Depending on the recommendations and outcomes of this Tribunal will be whether the previous year's awards are removed from Roy Li," she said.

The ABC reported that its own analysis of land title records found recorded sale prices for at least a third of the properties attributed to Li did not match the official figures. It also reported that six of the properties counted towards his total were owned by Li or his co-licensee, adding close to $10 million to the tally, and that some properties appeared as sold on other real estate websites in 2021 and 2024.

Li has acknowledged errors in the data. "Ideal Realty recently identified errors in some historical sales-price entries, where advertised prices had been entered instead of the final prices recorded in accepted contracts," he said in a statement to the ABC. He said the records had been reviewed and corrected information provided to REIWA, and that the agency had followed up because the changes were not yet reflected in the institute's system. "My priority is to ensure that the underlying sales information is accurate," he said.

Brown framed the issue as one of consumer reliance rather than internal housekeeping. "The consumer should be able to rely on the data," she said. "We really believe in the integrity of the awards and we do take them really seriously when we do find those inaccuracies."

Separately, the ABC reported a day earlier that Consumer Protection had issued a formal warning to Ideal Realty WA over an alleged conflict of interest, after Li and co-licensee Lynn Ding, legal name Lin Ding, purchased a Kenwick property through a company while engaged to sell it for the owner in 2024. No fine was imposed. Li denies failing to disclose his interest, saying the seller knew he was the buyer before the transaction proceeded, and attributed a delay in the signed disclosure form to an administrative oversight.

Why this matters beyond one agency

Awards and percentile rankings are among the most heavily used marketing assets in Australian real estate. They appear in listing presentations, appraisal packs, email signatures, office windows, recruitment pitches and franchise marketing. Vendors choosing between agents are routinely asked to treat a top one per cent badge as objective evidence of performance.

That currency only holds if the numbers behind it are correct. REIWA's published material describes its annual individual awards as recognising top performing agents based on their reiwa.com achievements, but it does not set out publicly how the underlying sale prices are checked against settled figures. In a case where discrepancies were identified, they were identified after the awards had already been handed out.

The commercial risk sits with the whole industry, not just the agent involved. Every institute, portal, awards program and rankings platform in Australia and New Zealand operates on data that originates with agencies themselves. Where verification against title records is not routine and automated, the integrity of the result depends on the accuracy of the entry, and on someone eventually looking.

For principals, there is a more immediate operational point. Data entry sits with administrators, sales support and agents under pressure to record results quickly, and the difference between an advertised price and a contract price is exactly the kind of error that survives unnoticed until it is aggregated into a public ranking. Agencies that market their people on institute or portal awards should be able to reconcile every recorded sale against settlement data before the entry period closes, not after a regulator or a journalist asks.

The matter is now before REIWA's Professional Standards Tribunal, which will determine whether earlier awards stand. Whatever it decides about one agent, the more useful question for the industry is how many rankings currently in circulation have ever been checked at all.

This article draws on reporting by the ABC. Real Estate Today has not independently verified the land title analysis referred to above.