![Sydney housing market update [video] | October 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/sydney4-270x200.jpg)
Sydney’s correction has now cost the median homeowner roughly $112,000. September delivered another 1.4% fall, capping a September quarter in which values dropped 4.9% and leaving the market 8.6% below the record high set in February. Eight months ago Sydney was at a peak. It has given up more than eight percent of its value…
![Melbourne housing market update [video] | October 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/melbourne-1-270x200.jpg)
For the first time in nearly a year, Melbourne has something that could cautiously be described as good news. Values fell 0.7% in September, the tenth consecutive monthly decline, but also the smallest monthly fall since March. That matters because Melbourne has spent this entire cycle as the market with no bottom in sight. Ten…
SQM Research released its latest data on residential property vacancy rates and advertised rents for September 2026. Australia’s national residential vacancy rate increased to 1.4% in September 2026, up from 1.3% in August. The total number of residential vacancies rose to 42,290 dwellings, compared with 41,039 the previous month. Compared with September 2025, when the national…
Australia’s housing downturn has stopped sparing anyone. Cotality’s National House Price Index fell 1.1% in September 2026, the sixth consecutive monthly decline, bringing the cumulative drop since March to 5.2%. Every capital city except Darwin recorded a fall over the September quarter, and 97% of capital city suburbs saw values decline across those three months….
Australia has a housing problem that everyone seems to agree needs fixing. We need more homes, our population continues to grow, rental markets remain tight, and governments have set ambitious housing targets. Yet there is an uncomfortable contradiction underneath all this: while governments are asking the property industry to build more, the businesses expected to…
Affordability and cost-of-living pressures have taken the heat out of Australia’s rental market, driving a marked slowdown in rental growth during the September quarter as vacancy rates rose to their highest level since January 2025. Cotality’s latest Quarterly Rental Review shows national rents increased 0.5% in the three months to September, a marked slowdown on…
For the last few years, Australia’s rental market has followed a fairly predictable pattern. There haven’t been enough rental properties available, vacancy rates have fallen to extraordinarily low levels and rents have risen as tenants competed for the limited stock on offer. But something interesting is now happening. The rental shortage remains, vacancy rates in…
With national property values down by 5.2% in September from their March peak, Australia’s housing market is in a distinct downturn. This has sparked concerns voiced by Opposition Leader Angus Taylor of a housing market “in freefall”. Translated into dollar terms, using the Domain property price series, the price of a typical home has dropped…
For years, we’ve talked about Australia’s property market as though there were one type of buyer responding to one set of conditions. Interest rates rise, borrowing capacity falls, affordability deteriorates and buyers supposedly react in much the same way. Of course, property markets don’t work like that. Australia is made up of hundreds of individual…
Are you overwhelmed by interest rates, falling confidence, gloomy headlines and a new prediction every week? Right now, the property noise is deafening, and it’s easy to freeze. My message is simple: there is light on the horizon. The short term will remain uncertain, but the long term is still very much on our side….
