Brisbane clearance rate jumps to 41.6 per cent but trails last year

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Kooky

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A week after one of its weakest early results of the year, Brisbane's auction market has bounced. Cotality's preliminary figures for the week ending 13 September, released on Monday 14 September, show 168 auctions held in the city and a preliminary clearance rate of 41.6 per cent. That is 16.8 percentage points above the 24.8 per cent recorded a week earlier and, according to Cotality, the highest early result in four weeks.

Two comparisons keep the rebound in proportion. In the same week last year, Cotality says, Brisbane's rate was 69.7 per cent, about 28 points higher. And among the capitals with a published rate this week, Brisbane was still last.

A busier week than a year ago

The more unusual number is the volume. Cotality counted 168 Brisbane auctions, up 28.2 per cent on the previous week and 15.9 per cent on the same week of 2025. Every large auction market in the country is running well behind last year; Brisbane is not.

Across the combined capitals, 1,594 homes went to auction, which Cotality says was 11.4 per cent more than the week before but 33.6 per cent fewer than the 2,402 held a year earlier. It was the fifth week in a row with an annual fall of more than 30 per cent. Melbourne, with 713 auctions, was down 42.5 per cent on the year, the largest drop of any capital. Sydney's 557 auctions were 32.8 per cent below last year's level, and Adelaide's 78 were down 20.4 per cent.

Cotality attributes the national decline to fewer new listings and to a larger share of vendors choosing private treaty while clearance rates stay subdued. Brisbane's sellers, on this week's evidence, are making a different choice. The firm's preview of 10 September had listed 169 Brisbane auctions as scheduled, so the count of auctions held is in line with what had been booked.

The size of the two big markets shapes the national figure. Melbourne and Sydney together held 1,270 of the 1,594 capital city auctions, close to 80 per cent. Brisbane's 168 made up a little over a tenth.

Still the lowest of the capitals

The combined capitals rate rose 5.8 percentage points to 58.5 per cent, which Cotality describes as the strongest preliminary result in 19 weeks. A year earlier it was 69.0 per cent. Brisbane's rise was one of the largest of the week, second only to Adelaide's, yet it started from so far back that it stayed at the foot of the table.

Melbourne's 63.3 per cent was a 24-week high on Cotality's count, and Sydney's 59.6 per cent, up 1.9 points, was that city's best early result in 19 weeks. Adelaide recovered about 21 points from the 34.5 per cent of the first week of spring, and Canberra gained 10.2 points as its list grew from 35 auctions to 57.

Behind Brisbane's figure are 125 collected results, of which 52 were sold and 73 were not. The remaining 43 auctions, about a quarter of the list, had not been reported when the summary was compiled. Those late results will be folded into the final rate on Thursday 17 September, and in most weeks the final rate is lower than the first one.

Three early readings side by side

Brisbane's own recent Mondays are the most useful yardstick. Cotality's summaries for the last three weeks give the number of auctions, the number of results in hand and the number of sales among them.

The number of sales is what changed. Reported sales roughly doubled, from 25 to 52, while the number of reported results rose by about a quarter. That is a real difference in outcomes on the day, not an artefact of a thinner sample: the 125 results behind this week's figure are the largest early sample of the three.

The earlier weeks also show what tends to happen next. The 31.5 per cent of the week ending 30 August finalised at 27.4 per cent across 146 auctions, a step down of 4.1 points. The 24.8 per cent of the week ending 6 September went the other way and finalised at 26.0 per cent across 131 auctions, according to Cotality's release of 10 September. A final rate anywhere within a few points of 41.6 per cent would still be Brisbane's best finish of the spring so far.

The coastal markets

The two coastal regions did not share Brisbane's lift, at least on the early count. On the Gold Coast, Cotality collected 33 results from 49 auctions and recorded 12 sales, a preliminary rate of 36.4 per cent. That is a little below the 39.5 per cent the region posted on the first count a week earlier, and below the 38.8 per cent at which that week finalised.

On the Sunshine Coast, 26 auctions were held, ten more than the week before. Eight of the 20 results collected were sales, a preliminary rate of 40.0 per cent. With numbers this small, two or three results reported late can change the percentage noticeably. The previous week showed as much: the region's first nine results held five sales, and its final rate, once all 16 were in, was 37.5 per cent.

Taken together, the three south-east Queensland markets reported 72 sales among 178 collected results in the week, which works out at about 40 per cent. That is a simple sum of Cotality's rows, not a figure the firm publishes, and it carries the same caveat as its parts: roughly a quarter to a third of the auctions in each market had yet to be reported.

What a one-week jump can and cannot say

A rise of 16.8 points in seven days looks dramatic, but Brisbane's weekly rate has been moving around for months. The preliminary figure was 40.4 per cent in the week ending 23 August, 31.5 per cent a week later, then 24.8 per cent, and now 41.6 per cent. On samples of around 100 results, a dozen sales either way is enough to produce swings of that size.

The clearance rate also measures one thing only. Under Cotality's published method, it sets the properties known to have sold before, at or after auction against all known auction results, with passed-in and withdrawn homes both counted as unsold. It says nothing about the prices achieved, and nothing about homes that sell by negotiation after the count has closed.

Cotality's finalised figures for the previous week add some context on why auctions are failing. Across the capitals, 480 homes were passed in and 245 were withdrawn in the week ending 6 September, which the firm read as a sign that vendors' price expectations were running ahead of what buyers would pay. A better clearance rate suggests that in more Brisbane campaigns this week, the reserve and the bidding met.

The backdrop has not changed in a week either. Cotality's monthly Housing Chart Pack, published on 10 September, counted more than 139,100 homes listed for sale nationally, 18.1 per cent more than a year earlier, and put the median vendor discount in the capital cities at 4.2 per cent, the highest since January 2023. For Brisbane, Australian Property Investor magazine reported on 4 September that Cotality's index showed dwelling values down 1.0 per cent in August and 2.7 per cent over three months, while still 10.8 per cent higher than a year before. More stock and softer values give bidders less reason to stretch on the day.

What the week does establish is that more Brisbane homes were offered at auction than a year ago, and that a larger share of them found a buyer than in the fortnight before. For the agents and auctioneers who have run campaigns through a difficult winter, that is a welcome Monday table, even with last year's 69.7 per cent still a long way off.

The weeks ahead

Cotality expects approximately 1,930 capital city auctions in the week ending 20 September, which would be the busiest week of the spring to date. It then expects around 1,510 the week after, because the AFL Grand Final long weekend in Victoria takes much of Melbourne out of the count.

The finalised results for the week ending 13 September are due on Thursday 17 September, together with the number of auctions scheduled in each capital for the following weekend. For Queensland, that release will answer the nearer question: whether the final figures hold on to most of this week's gain, on the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast as well as in Brisbane.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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