The autumn market is projected to slow more than usual this year as a “perfect storm” of economic and global factors affects buyer confidence, while sellers hold out for better prices.
The auction market will continue to slow down over the next couple of months as buyers face uncertain conditions, including cost-of-living pressures, interest rate rises, and repercussions from the war in the Middle East.
For the past couple of weeks, auctions have slowed considerably, with the Easter long weekend delivering the lowest preliminary auction clearance rate for the combined capitals in four years, at 55.5 per cent in the week ending 5 April 2026.
Cotality Property Market Indicator Summary also showed that across the capitals, 694 auctions were held last week, up 7.8 per cent compared to the Easter weekend last year.
Cotality’s head of research, Tim Lawless, said new listing volumes had been strong heading into Easter, but activity was projected to quieten and tail off as the weather cooled down.
“We moved through the seasonal peak in volume, but in terms of clearance rates and value growth, we’re expecting the market to face some headwinds – we’re already seeing some evidence of values falling in Sydney and Melbourne,” he told REB.
“Clearance rates are well below average. They’re sort of holding in the low to mid 50 per cent range. The long run average is about 66 per cent, so that’s well below average.”
According to Menck White auctioneer Clarence White, April had always been a lower-volume month, but listings will plummet further amid the upcoming Anzac Day weekend.
White said listings traditionally picked back up in May; this year, his business hasn’t seen the usual number of bookings so far, describing it as a small trickle rather than the usual flow.
White said it would be a “wait and see” market, as rising rates, potential capital gains tax (CGT) changes, the war in the Middle East, and petrol price spikes fuelled buyer uncertainty.
“You’ve got a perfect storm of factors that have undermined confidence and just made everyone pull back from the table.”
He said purchasers were electing to pull back from the market rather than taking action, which was prompting sellers to rethink listing their properties.
“When everyone starts to get spooked and go, ‘petrol prices are going up, the world’s going to war’, everyone goes, ‘maybe the property market will go down, and how about we all sit and wait and see what happens?’”
“That tends to play itself out in much lower confidence and much lower determination to act from buyers, which obviously translates into less competition, makes things harder to sell.”
White said buyers will likely watch the market cautiously to see whether economic pressures subside and what happens with interest rates, while sellers will need to adjust their expectations.
“Anyone looking to sell their home will have to be quite realistic that the market has changed, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne and the major auction markets.”
According to Lawless, only half of Sydney auctions were selling under the hammer, with clearance rates in the low 50 per cent range for two weeks.
“It does look like a relatively low clearance rate is quite entrenched at the moment - it’s rare to see auction clearance rates fall lower than this.”
Lawless said while there were similar clearance rates in Melbourne, they weren’t as low as Sydney’s, as the city didn’t face the same affordability challenges.
On the other hand, he said Melbourne didn’t have the same level of economic diversity and strength that Sydney had, meaning there will still be a reasonably tough selling period through the rest of autumn and winter.
“But the fact we’re seeing Melbourne a lot more affordable than Sydney probably makes it a bit less sensitive to interest rates moving as high as what some economists are expecting.”
Broadly, Lawless said there was a chance that selling conditions would become more challenging over the coming months, particularly if there were further interest rate rises.
However, he said, regardless, this year’s trend would follow the typical autumn seasonal pattern where auction numbers and listings broadly trended lower.
“Typically, we see activity ramping up as we move into spring, so that will probably be a good test to the depth of demand in the market when we see that normal seasonal ramp up.”
“But at the moment, it really depends on what happens with inflation and what happens with interest rates and whether or not we see this conflict in the Middle East being resolved until then.”
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