SQM Research released its August 2026 residential vacancy rate data together with its lat-est advertised rents data. Australia’s national residential vacancy rate held at 1.3% in August 2026, unchanged from July, with 41,039 residential vacancies recorded. Against August 2025 the picture is less static: vacan-cies are up by around 3,300 dwellings (8.7%) and the national…
![Perth housing market update [video] | September 2026](https://cdn.propertyupdate.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Perth-city-270x200.jpeg)
Perth has now been falling for four consecutive months. August delivered a further 0.8% decline, leaving the market 3.2% below its April peak and taking $33,370 off the median dwelling value since the turn began. For a market that spent five years as the most spectacular performer in the country, that is a strange sentence…
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…
Australia desperately needs more homes, yet the latest building approval figures show how difficult it will be to deliver them. National dwelling approvals fell 2.7% in July, with approvals for detached houses dropping 4.2% and units declining 0.4%. At the same time, the cost of building a new home is rising again, placing further pressure…
![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…
Before we get into this week’s numbers, it’s worth stepping back and looking at where we sit in the cycle. The Reserve Bank held the cash rate at 4.35% at its August meeting, and it won’t sit down again until the 29th of September. Underlying inflation is still running above the RBA’s target band, and…
