September 2026 · Issue #7
Brisbane has joined the fall — and 93% of suburbs with it
Two weeks ago I wrote that Brisbane was holding steady while the southern capitals fell. The August numbers from Cotality have moved on, and I’d rather tell you straight than pretend otherwise: Brisbane values came off 1.0% in August. The national index fell for a fifth month, and the figure that stopped me was this one — 93% of capital-city suburbs recorded a fall over the past three months, up from 45% only a quarter earlier. Tim Lawless at Cotality summed it up: “the downturn has reached the point where the exceptions have run out.”
Cotality home value index, August 2026
| National dwelling values, August | −0.9% |
| National values vs March 2026 peak | −3.6% |
| Brisbane, August | −1.0% |
| Sydney / Melbourne, August | −1.4% / −1.1% |
| Capital-city suburbs falling (3 months) | 93% |
| Sales volumes, year-on-year | −15% |
What a 1% month actually means on your street
A per cent a month sounds dramatic. On a $900,000 Redlands home it’s about $9,000 — real money, but not a collapse, and well inside the spread between a good sale and an ordinary one on the same street. What it does change is the direction of travel: a home priced to last year’s market no longer gets rescued by a rising tide. It sits, it gets stale, and then it sells for less than it would have if it had been priced right on day one. That’s the pattern I’m seeing, and it’s the whole reason I keep banging on about pricing to this month.
The tide has stopped lifting every boat. What you do with the price now matters more than it has in years.
Fewer sales means every sale counts
Sales volumes are down around 15% on a year ago. In a suburb like Wellington Point or Ormiston, that can mean only a handful of comparable sales in a quarter — so the one that happens becomes the benchmark the next buyer’s valuer uses. A well-run campaign that achieves a strong result doesn’t just help that seller; it resets the reference point for the neighbours. The reverse is also true.
What’s still holding
Not everything in the release is soft. Rents are still growing at 5.7% a year, vacancy nationally is 1.9%, and gross yields have edged up to 3.79% as prices ease and rents don’t. Locally, Thornlands units and townhouses have risen around 17% over the year to a median near $762,500 — the smaller, better-priced end of our market is behaving very differently to the national average.
The Redlands read
If you’re selling this spring
Price to the last sixty days of evidence, not the last twelve months. I’ll show you exactly which sales I’m using and why.
Treat the first fortnight as the campaign. That’s when your home is new, the buyers who’ve been waiting come through, and a competitive result is most likely.
If you’re buying, the leverage has shifted your way — but in the tightly held pockets, the good homes still find their buyer. Don’t mistake a slower market for a market with no competition.
A note on the source: these are Cotality’s numbers, written up by their research director. I read them on Property Update, which is run by a buyer’s agency, so I’ve quoted the data and left the sales pitch where I found it.
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Greg Leigh — local Redlands specialist, Queensland Sotheby’s International Realty. Published 16 September 2026.
Sources: Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) home value index, August 2026, via Tim Lawless’s monthly market update (14 September 2026). Thornlands unit and townhouse figures as reported in Issue #6.