Key Highlights

  • Ray White says national open-home attendance is less than half the previous year's level.
  • Some buyers' price expectations shifted by as much as 10–15% over three months.
  • They are agency observations and should be distinguished from official statistical measures.
  • Capital-city auction volumes are 43.5% below the previous year's level.

Fewer people are turning up to open homes, and those who do are recalibrating what they expect to pay. Ray White says national open-home attendance is less than half last year's level, while some buyers' price expectations have moved by as much as 10–15% in three months. With auction volumes down more than 40% on a year ago, the slowdown is now as much about activity as about prices.

Ray White's Thomas McGlynn said national open-home attendance is running at less than half last year's level.

His colleague Callum Hogan said some buyers' price expectations had shifted by as much as 10–15% over three months. He described a "real two-speed market", where conditions differ sharply by location and property type.

Those are agency observations rather than official statistics, but they line up with the auction data. Lower foot traffic matters because it reduces competition between bidders, which is what typically pushes auction prices above a vendor's reserve.

Auction volumes are the real story

In the week ending 8 November, there were 1,734 Capital city auctions. That was up 1.2% on the previous week but down 43.5% on the same week a year earlier.

Volumes were more than 40% below last year's in three of the past four weeks. Weekly volumes can swing with public holidays and school terms, so a run of weeks is more telling than any single result.

Clearance rates were less dramatic. The combined capitals preliminary clearance rate was 51.5%, up 4.3 percentage points on the week. Ray White's national preliminary clearance rate was lower, at 42.6%.

Adelaide held 149 auctions at a 43.5% clearance rate, its busiest week in more than seven months.

Auctions still tend to move faster than private sales. According to the same report, 65% of auction campaigns sell within 45 days, compared with 46% of private treaty campaigns. Cotality expected about 2,010 capital city auctions the following week.

Prices are falling at a historic pace

Cotality's October home value index fell 1.2% nationally, the seventh straight monthly decline. National values are 6.7% below the March peak, about $63,400 off the median dwelling.

Combined capital city values are down 8.1% over seven months, which Cotality describes as the fastest decline in its 40-year comparison.

Brisbane fell 2.0% in October, Perth 1.7% and Sydney 1.6%. Cotality's Tim Lawless said: "Virtually every suburb across Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide has recorded a drop in values over the past three months."

Vendors are discounting more. Cotality's measure of vendor discounting reached 4.7%, the largest since May 2019. Three-month sales volumes were 23% below a year ago, including falls of 30% in Sydney and 29% in Brisbane. Fresh listings were almost 18% below average, Cotality said, suggesting many owners are choosing not to sell into a falling market.

Hypothetical example: what a 10–15% shift means

Hypothetical example: a buyer was prepared to pay $900,000 for a home three months ago. If their price expectation has shifted by 10%, that is $90,000 lower, or $810,000. At 15%, it is $135,000 lower, or $765,000.

A vendor applying the 4.7% median discount to a $900,000 asking price would accept about $42,300 less, or about $857,700.

In this example, the gap between what the buyer now expects and what the discounting vendor accepts is between $47,700 and $92,700. That gap helps explain why fewer properties are being taken to auction, as vendors wait for buyers to move closer to their price. Many sales may settle somewhere in between.

The figures are invented for illustration and do not represent any specific market.

Tax and rates in the background

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said in its November Statement on Monetary Policy that prices had fallen since the March peak mainly because of monetary policy and tax changes in the federal budget.

The RBA lifted the cash rate to 4.85% on 3 November. Higher rates reduce how much buyers can borrow, which can feed directly into lower price expectations.

The tax changes are enacted law. Under the Tax Reform No. 1 Act 2026, negative gearing will be limited to new builds for residential properties bought after 7:30pm AEST on 12 May 2026, from 1 July 2027, with existing holdings grandfathered. The same law replaces the 50% CGT discount with cost-base indexation and a 30% minimum tax for gains accruing from 1 July 2027.

For investors looking at established homes, those changes alter the after-tax maths, which may partly explain thinner competition at open homes. The RBA attributes the fall to a mix of factors, and isolating the tax effect is difficult.

There is a rental angle too. The RBA reported CPI rent Inflation rose to 0.9% in the September quarter, from 0.6%, and was 3.6% over the year, although vacancy rates have risen modestly.

Victoria's auction drop has its own cause

Melbourne has been an outlier. Victoria's reserve price transparency rules, overseen by Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV), are now in force, and Melbourne auction numbers have run about 55% below last year's since mid-October, excluding the long weekend.

CAV said on 27 October its taskforce had monitored more than 3,330 campaigns, issued more than 420 written warnings and issued 260 infringement notices totalling more than $3 million. CAV director Nicole Rich said "agents and sellers are adjusting".

Lawless linked part of the national auction decline to a "sharp reduction" in Melbourne auction sales that coincided with the rules. That means some of the national Volume fall reflects a change in selling method in one state, not only weaker demand.

What to watch

The next few weeks bring several tests of buyer confidence.

- Weekly auction results will show whether volumes recover from the 40%-plus falls. - Victorians vote on 28 November, with land tax and other property taxes on the agenda. - Cotality's December home value index on 1 December will show whether the pace of decline is easing. - MYEFO, due in December, may update official assumptions on housing and tax revenue. - 1 July 2027 is when the negative gearing and CGT changes take effect.

For now, the clearest signal is that buyers and sellers are still some distance apart, and volumes are adjusting more than prices.