Almost every enquiry starts here, and it is a fair question. Tree risk reporting is one of those services where quotes vary by a factor of five for what sounds like the same thing, and the reason is rarely explained. This page sets out what the market charges, what drives the number up or down, and what you should actually be comparing when two quotes look far apart.
The short answer
For a single residential property on the Sunshine Coast, a written QTRA assessment starts at $350. Commercial and multi-site work starts at $750. Expert witness and legal work is charged hourly at $150–$200.
That sits inside the national range. A 2026 survey of Australian pricing puts a comprehensive arborist report at $450–$700 (averaging around $575), a single-tree report at $450–$750, and a multiple-tree report at $750–$1,600, averaging about $1,175. A basic checklist with recommendations — not a full report — runs $130–$330.
| What you are buying | Typical Australian range | Tree Risk QTRA |
|---|---|---|
| Verbal walk-through, no written report | Free – $150 | Low-cost yard walk-through available |
| Basic checklist with recommendations | $130 – $330 | — |
| Residential QTRA report, written | $450 – $750 | From $350 |
| Commercial / multi-tree register | $750 – $1,600 | From $750 |
| Expert witness / legal | Hourly, varies widely | $150 – $200/hr |
What actually drives the price
Four things, in roughly this order of impact.
1. Number of trees, not size of property
A five-acre block with four trees near the house costs less to assess than a suburban block with thirty. Each tree needs an individual record: species, dimensions, health, structure, defects, target occupancy, and a calculated risk of harm. The per-tree marginal cost falls as numbers rise, which is why a 30-tree register is not ten times a three-tree report.
2. What the report has to survive
A report that sits in a homeowner’s drawer and a report that will be read by an insurer, a council assessment officer, or opposing counsel are different documents. The inspection is similar; the documentation burden is not. Legal-grade reporting means defensible methodology, photographic evidence keyed to each record, and an author prepared to stand behind it under cross-examination.
3. Target occupancy complexity
QTRA quantifies risk by combining three inputs: the target (what is underneath and how often it is occupied), the size of the part that could fail, and the probability of that failure within a year. Working out target occupancy for a private back yard takes minutes. Working it out for a caravan park with seasonal variation, or a road reserve with traffic counts, takes real work — and it is the input that most often drives the final number.
4. Access and site conditions
Steep ground, dense understorey, locked gates, and trees that need to be viewed from several positions all add time. Sites needing traffic management add more.
“Does your fee depend in any way on what the report recommends?” If the same business also quotes for removal and pruning, the answer is structurally yes, whatever the intent. That is the single largest hidden variable in tree reporting pricing, and it does not appear on any quote.
Why a cheap report can be the expensive option
The failure mode is not usually a bad inspection. It is a report that does not do the job it was bought for. Three common versions:
- It arrives as an opinion, not a measurement. “This tree appears to be in fair condition” is not something a court, an insurer or a regulator can act on. A quantified risk of harm is.
- It does not address the duty you are actually under. A workplace needs the assessment framed against the duty in section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld). A body corporate needs it framed against its common property obligations. A generic condition report addresses neither.
- It recommends works from the party who will do the works. This is the one that costs the most. Not because the advice is dishonest, but because a removal recommended by a removalist is very hard to defend as independent if it is ever challenged — and equally hard to rely on if you are trying to argue a tree should be retained.
The cost of not having one
In November 2024 a Victorian holiday park operator was fined $475,000 in the Melbourne County Court after a falling branch killed a camper. The prosecution did not turn on a bad assessment. It turned on the absence of one: the operator had not engaged an arborist for a general assessment since 2015 and had no documented system for inspecting trees or policy on how often they should be inspected. A post-incident inspection found that of 277 trees on the site, 137 required risk mitigation work and 85 needed attention within a year.
That case was prosecuted under Victorian occupational health and safety law rather than the Queensland Act, so the statute differs. The reasoning does not. The question a Queensland regulator or court asks under section 19 is whether it was reasonably practicable to identify and control the risk — and an annual documented assessment is a low-cost control against a fatality.
What a fixed fee means here
Quoted fees are fixed before the inspection, not estimated. The number does not move because of what is found on site, and there is no works quote attached to the back of the report, because Tree Risk QTRA performs no tree works of any kind. If the finding is that every tree on your property is broadly acceptable and nothing needs doing, that is the report you get, at the fee you were quoted.