Australia’s current housing downturn has ended the recent run of record resale results, with the share of profitable sales falling from a 21-year high and the median gain retreating from its March peak. Cotality’s latest Pain & Gain report analysed more than 94,000 residential resales in the June quarter, finding 95.4% delivered a nominal profit,…
![Brisbane housing market update [video] | September 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/brisbane-270x200.jpg)
Brisbane fell 1% in August — its third consecutive monthly decline, taking values 2.7% lower across the winter. But the number that reframes Brisbane’s position most sharply is a supply figure: advertised stock is now 51% higher than it was a year ago. Half again as many properties on the market as twelve months ago….
For generations, Australians have responded to housing affordability pressures in a predictable way – when the home they wanted became too expensive, they moved further from the city. But something important is changing. Australia’s affordability problem has become so entrenched that many buyers are making a different compromise. Rather than simply changing where they live, they…
For years, the housing affordability debate has focused heavily on property prices, with the assumption that if home values fall, homes automatically become more affordable. But the latest figures from the Real Estate Institute of Australia remind us that affordability is much more complicated than the price on the contract. Australian house prices softened over…
![Sydney housing market update [video] | September 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/sydney4-270x200.jpg)
Sydney’s August result was the steepest single month of this entire correction. Home values fell 1.8%, extending a decline that has now run six consecutive months and pushing the market 7.1% below its February record high. Across the three winter months alone, Sydney shed 4.7%. But the figure that captures how complete this has become…
![Melbourne housing market update [video] | September 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/melbourne-1-270x200.jpg)
Melbourne has now recorded nine consecutive months of falling values — the longest unbroken decline of any Australian capital city in this cycle. August delivered a further 1.1% fall, leaving the market 6.5% below its November cyclical high and 6.8% below the March 2022 peak. Melbourne is not correcting from a recent high — it…
Australia’s housing downturn has reached the point where the exceptions have run out. Cotality’s House Price Index fell a further 0.9% in August 2026 — the fifth consecutive month of decline — leaving national home values 3.6% below the March peak. But the number that defines this month is not the headline figure. It is…
There is no doubt that our housing markets are facing challenges from all directions, but clearly they have remained more resilient than the property pessimists had predicted. To better understand what’s happening, this monthly collection of charts from Cotality paints an interesting picture. According to Cotality, Australia’s most expensive homes are leading the housing downturn, with upper-quartile…
Something interesting is happening in Australia’s property market, with auction clearance rates only telling part of the story. Auctions work best when several motivated buyers compete for the same property, creating urgency and pushing prices higher. But as buyer demand has softened in 2026, that competition has become harder to generate. New Domain research shows…
There is a dangerous tendency in Australia’s housing debate to assume that anything that makes life harder for property investors must automatically make life easier for first-home buyers and tenants. It’s a good political argument that sounds appealing, particularly when housing affordability is such an emotional issue, but housing markets don’t work in isolation. Investors,…
