Australian home auction activity edged higher last week, offering what Bloomberg described as hopes of a recovery for a property market that has slumped as interest rates rose this year. According to property researcher Cotality, auctions across the capital cities rose 1.2% from a week earlier to 1,734, and are set to exceed 2,000 in the next seven days.
The improvement came in the first week of auctions since the Reserve Bank of Australia's fifth rate rise of 2026. Mortgage Professional Australia reported that the RBA lifted the cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.85%, its highest level since 2008, following earlier rises in February, March, May and September.
What the auction data shows
Cotality's weekly figures show the combined capitals' preliminary clearance rate at 51.5%, up 4.3 percentage points from 47.2% the previous week. The firm said this was only marginally above the spring-to-date average of 51.1% and remained below the winter average of 52.3%. Volumes were also far below last year: the 1,734 auctions were 43.5% fewer than in the corresponding week of 2025, and Cotality said activity has been more than 40% below year-ago levels in three of the past four weeks.
Mortgage Professional Australia noted that the previous week's preliminary result of 47.2% was revised down to 40.7% once final figures were in. Tim Lawless, Cotality's research director, summed up the week: "More auctions, a higher clearance rate, but auction markets remain soft."
A rebound led by Melbourne
Melbourne did most of the lifting. Cotality reported that Melbourne's preliminary clearance rate rose to 59.1%, its highest result in eight weeks, across 612 auctions, an 18.4% increase on the previous week. Volumes there remained 55.9% below the corresponding week last year, and Cotality said Melbourne auction numbers have run about 55% below 2025 levels since reserve price transparency rules came into effect in mid-October.
Sydney moved the other way. It hosted the most auctions, 709, virtually unchanged from 710 the previous week but 40.2% lower than a year earlier, and its preliminary clearance rate declined 1.5 percentage points to 52.3%. Brisbane's preliminary clearance rate improved to 31.2% after results in the mid-20% range over the previous two weeks, while Adelaide recorded 149 auctions, its highest volume since the final week of March, with a clearance rate of 43.5%.
Buyers are becoming more price-selective
Agents described a market split by pricing. Australian Broker quoted Callum Hogan, Ray White New South Wales head of performance: "We're seeing a real two-speed market at the moment." Hogan told Mortgage Professional Australia that interest rates and cost-of-living pressures were dominating buyer conversations, and that some buyers said what they were prepared to pay three months ago had shifted by as much as 10% to 15%.
Ray White's own network pointed the same way. The group booked a preliminary clearance rate of 42.6% across 739 scheduled auctions, up from 35.5% a week earlier, according to Mortgage Professional Australia. Thomas McGlynn, chief executive of performance and value at Ray White Group, said average open home attendance nationally was less than half what it was 12 months ago.
Bubblepedia analysis: a bounce, not yet a turning point
Bubblepedia analysis: one week of higher clearance rates on volumes that remain more than 40% below last year is thin evidence of a recovery. Lawless's own assessment that markets remain soft, the downward revision to the previous week's result and Melbourne's dominance of the improvement all argue for caution before reading the result as a broad turn. Cotality expects capital city volumes to rise to around 2,010 next week, which Mortgage Professional Australia said will test whether the improvement can hold as listings build towards the end of spring.
The longer-run backdrop matters. Bubblepedia's global property comparison records Sydney's price-to-income ratio at about 13 times, against roughly 23 times in Hong Kong, and notes that Toronto and Auckland each fell about 20% in 2022-23. Our comparison of Australian and US housing describes how Australia barely corrected while US home prices fell 33% from their peak. Those entries describe past cycles rather than a forecast; whether this year's rate rises lead to a deeper correction will depend on data that has not yet been published.
Further reading and context
Global Property Markets — A Worldwide Bubble?, Australian Property Bubble vs US Housing Bubble 2008 — Why One Crashed and One Did Not, Canadian Property Bubble.