August 2026 · Issue #3
National values keep falling — but the Redlands is not the national market
Values across the big five capitals slipped another 1% over the past month. Before you read that as a verdict on your own home, it is worth looking at where the falls actually are.
Cotality’s daily index has dwelling values across the five largest capital cities down 1% over the past month. Sydney led the fall at -1.5%, Melbourne close behind at -1.2%, with smaller declines across the rest. Both Sydney and Melbourne are now more than 5% below their peaks. On the five-city aggregate, values sit about 3% below the recent high.
The other capitals are earlier in the cycle rather than exempt from it — their downturns have only just started. So the honest reading is that this is a broad correction, and it is still running.
The month in numbers
| Five-capital dwelling values, past month | −1.0% |
| Sydney | −1.5% |
| Melbourne | −1.2% |
| Sydney & Melbourne, from peak | more than −5% |
| Five-city aggregate, from peak | −3% |
The one bright spot is the auction room
Preliminary clearance rates lifted to 55.1%, an eleven-week high and a genuine improvement on the June low of 47.4%. Melbourne came in at 60.8% and Sydney at 57.0%.
That said, it pays to read the fine print. Final clearance rates — the ones that count once the unreported results come in — have sat below 50% for ten straight weeks, against a decade average of 68%. And auction volumes were 12.5% lower than a year ago, the twelfth consecutive week of annual declines. Fewer homes going under the hammer, and fewer of those selling.
A rising clearance rate on shrinking volume is a smaller room, not a fuller one.
The Redlands read
What this means if you own here
Redlands is not Sydney, and it is not Melbourne. The two markets doing the heavy lifting on that national average are the two furthest into their corrections. South-east Queensland went through its adjustment on a different timetable.
The clearest local evidence I have is our own patch. Thornlands units and townhouses rose roughly 17% over the past year to a median near $762,500 — while the national number was going backwards. That is not me being a cheerleader; it is three separate buyer pools competing for very little stock in one small pocket.
I should be straight about the limits of that figure, though. Seventeen per cent is backward-looking — it covers the year just gone, and conditions right now are softer than they were through most of it. It tells you the Redlands has held up better than the national average. It does not promise it will keep doing so, and anyone quoting it to you as a forecast, including me, should be treated with a degree of suspicion.
The practical point: a national index is an average of everything, and nobody lives in an average. If a headline has you wondering whether you have missed your window, the useful question is not what the five-capital aggregate did last month. It is what has actually sold in your street in the last ninety days, and what is currently competing with you.
What I would take from it
The Redlands has held up better than the national average. That is true, and it is close to the last comfortable thing in this article.
Values are going backwards nationally, local supply is well up on a year ago, and the buyers still in the market can afford to wait. If you are selling into this, the straight position is that you are selling into a softening market with more competition than you have faced in years. I would rather say that plainly than find you a silver lining, because the silver lining will not help you set a price and the truth will.
If you are buying, this is the most negotiating room buyers have had in some years, and it is unlikely to be handed back quickly.
Wondering where your own place actually sits in all this? I’ll give you the honest number, with the comparable sales behind it.
What’s mine worth?
Greg Leigh — local Redlands specialist, Queensland Sotheby’s International Realty. Published 12 August 2026.
Sources: Cotality daily home value index, reported by MacroBusiness (12 August 2026), via Real Estate Weekly. Local median figures from Issue #2 of The Redlands Insider.