August 2026 · Issue #3
Listings hit a seven-year high — and buyers just got their leverage back
Total housing supply across the combined capitals is now at its highest level in seven years, with record new listings for July. Homes are taking longer to sell, and the balance of power has moved.
Domain’s July market insights make the shift hard to miss. Supply across the combined capitals is at a seven-year high, July set a record for new listings, and selling times are stretching out. When stock builds and days on market lengthen, leverage moves to the buyer. That is where we are.
The auction data tells the same story from another angle. The combined-capitals clearance rate lifted to 49.1% — which sounds like an improvement until you note it is the weakest July result since 2005. Withdrawals climbed to 15.9%, the highest since April 2020. Sellers are increasingly pulling homes rather than meeting the market.
Annual supply growth by capital
| Perth | +52.7% |
| Brisbane | +38.3% |
| Sydney | +16.4% |
| Canberra | +15.9% |
This is soft demand, not distress
One number is worth holding onto: distressed listings remain historically low. That matters. What we are seeing is buyers stepping back, not owners being forced out. Those are very different markets, and they behave very differently — a demand-led softening tends to correct when confidence or borrowing capacity returns, whereas forced selling feeds on itself.
Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra are seeing the sharpest tilt toward buyer-friendly conditions. Adelaide and Perth continue to outperform.
Domain’s Dr Nicola Powell: affordability remains stretched, rising supply is increasingly the deciding factor, and the first rate cut is not expected until the middle of 2027.
The Redlands read
Brisbane supply is up 38.3%. Here is the uncomfortable part
That figure is the one Redlands owners should actually sit with, and I am not going to dress it up. More competing stock across greater Brisbane means fewer eyes on any single listing and buyers who can afford to take their time. Nobody selling this spring is going to enjoy that.
I would rather show you my own numbers than talk in generalities. On a recent campaign just outside our patch we produced 84 buyer enquiries in forty-two days across both portals — genuinely strong interest, ahead of most homes in that suburb. Of those eighty-four people, 24 took any action suggesting they intended to inspect. Five actually registered. That is this market in three numbers: plenty of looking, very little committing.
The follow-through for a Redlands seller is direct, and it is worth being blunt about. Enquiry volume is no longer evidence that your campaign is working. Two years ago it was. Today what matters is how many of those enquiries walk through the door, and conversion is exactly where homes are quietly failing. If you are four weeks in with healthy enquiry and empty open homes, you do not have a marketing problem — you have a price or a presentation problem, and every week it goes unaddressed makes it more expensive to fix.
It also means the withdrawal figure is a warning rather than a strategy. Pulling a listing and relisting later into even more supply rarely improves anything; it just adds days on market to a home that already has too many.
The honest summary is that this is a harder market to sell into than any I have worked in the Redlands for several years. That is not a reason to panic, and it is certainly not a reason to sit on your hands. It is a reason to be realistic about the number before you go to market rather than after, and to spend on presentation while it can still change the outcome.
The upside, if you are buying
This is the best position buyers have been in for years. More choice, more time, less competition at the pointy end, and vendors who are increasingly realistic. If you have been waiting for the market to hand you some room, it just has.
Thinking of selling into this? Let’s talk about what you’re actually competing with before you set a price.
What’s mine worth?
Greg Leigh — local Redlands specialist, Queensland Sotheby’s International Realty. Published 12 August 2026.
Sources: Domain July 2026 Market Insights, reported by Mortgage Professional Australia (12 August 2026), via Real Estate Weekly. Local campaign figures from realestate.com.au and Domain performance reports, June–August 2026.