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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Brisbane held 201 auctions in the week ending Sunday 11 October 2026, and only 21.4 per cent of the results reported by Sunday were sales, according to Cotality's weekly Property Market Indicator Summary published on Monday 12 October. Cotality says it is the city's lowest preliminary clearance rate since April 2020.
The figure arrived in the busiest week of Brisbane's spring auction season so far. Volumes rose by 45.7 per cent on the long-weekend week before and by 58.3 per cent on the same week of 2025, while across the combined capitals the preliminary rate edged up to 48.8 per cent. More homes went under the hammer in Brisbane, and a smaller share of them found a buyer on the day.
Cotality, Property Market Indicator Summary, week ending 11 October 2026 (preliminary results).
What Cotality counted on Sunday
Cotality's summary lists 201 Brisbane auctions for the week. By the time the preliminary figures were compiled, it had collected 145 results. Of those, 31 were recorded as cleared and 114 as uncleared, which gives the 21.4 per cent rate. Put the other way, almost four in five of the Brisbane results known on Sunday did not end in a sale.
Fifty-six of the week's auctions, a little over a quarter, had no reported result when the preliminary rate was struck. Those homes are not left out of the story for good: they are added as agents report them over the following days, and they feed the final figure Cotality publishes on Thursday.
The summary does not split Brisbane's uncleared results into homes passed in and homes withdrawn, so it is not yet possible to say how many sellers took their property off the auction schedule and how many reached the rostrum without meeting their reserve. Under Cotality's method, both outcomes count against the clearance rate.
Related readJuly at auction: Brisbane's four final results, none above 35.4 per centAcross the combined capitals, Cotality recorded 1,781 auctions and 1,208 collected results, of which 590 were cleared and 618 were not. The combined preliminary rate of 48.8 per cent was slightly better than the 48.2 per cent recorded the week before, but it is the second week in a row below 50 per cent.
A low last seen in April 2020
Cotality's comparison with April 2020 reaches back to the most disrupted period Australian auctions have seen in years. On 24 March 2020, after a National Cabinet meeting, the then Prime Minister announced that public real estate auctions and open house inspections could not continue from midnight on 25 March, as part of COVID-19 social distancing rules.
Brisbane's early readings have tested that benchmark several times this year. Cotality's preliminary figure for the week ending 7 June was 31.9 per cent, which it described as the lowest since May 2020. In the first week of July the preliminary rate fell to 23.8 per cent, again the lowest since May 2020, as Real Estate Business reported from Cotality's figures on 6 July. In the week ending 4 October it was 25.6 per cent, the third time in 2026 the rate had dropped into the 20s, according to Cotality's release of 6 October. The 21.4 per cent figure is the first to reach back as far as April.
The weekly figures have not moved in one direction. Cotality's preliminary rate for Brisbane was 41.6 per cent in the week ending 13 September and 42.6 per cent in the week ending 27 September, before the long-weekend dip and this week's fall. Even those better weeks sit well below Brisbane's results earlier in the year: in the week ending 15 March, Cotality recorded a preliminary rate of 65.9 per cent across 190 Brisbane auctions and called it the city's softest result of the year at that point.
Related readLong-weekend auctions: Brisbane's early clearance rate sinks to 25.6%More homes on the schedule, fewer sold
What sets this week apart is volume. Nationally, Cotality counted 1,781 capital city auctions, up 46.9 per cent on the long-weekend week but down 31.2 per cent on a year earlier. It says auction volumes over the first six weeks of the spring season are 31.2 per cent below the same period of 2025, and that only 2020 had a quieter start.
Brisbane is moving the other way. Its 201 auctions compare with 127 in the same week last year, and with 138 in the week ending 4 October, according to Cotality's final count for that week. Week by week, Cotality's figures show Brisbane at 131 auctions in the week ending 6 September, 169 in the week ending 13 September, 176 in the week ending 20 September and 140 in the week ending 27 September, before this week's jump to 201.
A rising number of auctions alongside a falling share of sales points to a gap between the prices sellers hope for and the bids that turn up on the day. Every scheduled auction is a seller's decision, usually taken weeks earlier when a campaign is planned. A larger schedule tells how many owners chose to test the market under the hammer; the clearance rate tells how many of those tests ended with a signed contract by Sunday.
Cotality's release of 6 October said the recent rise in the cash rate likely contributed to the weaker national result in the week ending 4 October. The Reserve Bank raised the cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.60 per cent at its September meeting, the fourth increase of 2026, according to the Commonwealth Bank's report of the decision published on 30 September.
Related readBrisbane is the only capital holding more auctions than a year agoHow Brisbane compares
Brisbane recorded the lowest preliminary rate of any capital with enough results to measure. Melbourne, with 707 auctions, led at 54.8 per cent, up from 50.6 per cent. Sydney held 653 auctions and cleared 52.9 per cent, down 2.8 percentage points and its lowest in ten weeks. Adelaide's 140 auctions cleared 46.8 per cent, and Canberra's 66 auctions cleared 36.4 per cent. Perth, with 14 auctions and 7 collected results, had too few for Cotality to publish a rate, and Tasmania held none.
Cotality, Property Market Indicator Summary, week ending 11 October 2026. Preliminary rates; Perth had too few results to publish a rate.
The gap between Brisbane and the combined capitals was 27.4 percentage points this week. Part of it reflects how auctions are used in Queensland. Cotality's head of research told Real Estate Business in July that auctions are less common in Brisbane than in the larger capitals and lean towards higher-value homes, the end of the city's market where he said conditions had deteriorated.
Outside the capital, Cotality's regional tables show the same softness. The Gold Coast held 62 auctions and collected 43 results, of which 15 were cleared, for a preliminary rate of 34.9 per cent. The Sunshine Coast held 34 auctions and collected 24 results, 6 of them cleared, for 25.0 per cent. Both coasts cleared a larger share than Brisbane, but neither came close to half.
Why the first figure tends to fall
A preliminary clearance rate is built on whatever results have reached the data collector by Sunday. Cotality's own explanation of its auction data says the rate compares homes sold before, at or after auction with the total known number of auction results, with passed-in and withdrawn auctions counted in that total. It also notes that not all results are known when rates are first calculated, and that the final rates appear in its Thursday auction preview.
Related readBrisbane opens winter with 201 auctions and fewer than half sellingThe results that arrive late are not a random sample. SQM Research, which waits for nearly all results before publishing its own figures, says on its methodology page that auctions reported late, or not at all, tend to be failed campaigns, and that preliminary rates published by others are often revised lower.
The three recent Brisbane weeks for which Cotality has published both figures follow that pattern.
| Week ending | Preliminary | Final | Revision |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13 September | 41.6% | 38.5% | 3.1 points lower |
| 27 September | 42.6% | 32.9% | 9.7 points lower |
| 4 October | 25.6% | 21.2% | 4.4 points lower |
Cotality preliminary releases of 14 and 28 September and 6 October 2026, and final clearance rate releases of 17 September and 8 October 2026.
In each of those weeks the final rate came in lower than the Sunday reading, by between 3.1 and 9.7 points. That history does not fix the size of any revision to the 21.4 per cent figure, but with 56 Brisbane results still to be collected, the Sunday number is best read as a first estimate. The figure to compare with other weeks is the final one.
What sellers and bidders face
For sellers already booked to auction, a week like this one is a reminder that the auction is one step in a campaign rather than the end of it. When bidding stops below the reserve, the property is passed in, and the Queensland Government's guidance notes that buyers can then negotiate with the seller.
Queensland's rules shape how those post-auction deals work. According to the Queensland Government's guidance on buying at auction, a contract signed under the hammer has no cooling-off period. The same guidance says the cooling-off period does not apply either to a private treaty contract signed within two business days of an unsuccessful auction of that property, while a buyer who agrees a deal more than two days after the auction does get one. The Government's cooling-off page puts the standard period at five business days, and a seller may keep up to 0.25 per cent of the price from a buyer who withdraws during it.
Related readBrisbane's early auction result drops to 23.8 per centFor bidders, a weak week does not set the price of any one home: each campaign turns on its own reserve, its own seller and its own buyers. What a weak week does change is the setting after the hammer: with most Brisbane results on Sunday recorded as uncleared, a passed-in home competes for attention with many others still looking for a buyer.
The rules on the day are unchanged. Only registered bidders may bid. The auctioneer may accept bids made on the seller's behalf only up to the reserve price, and must announce each one. The reserve itself is not disclosed, though the auctioneer may say whether there is one. Once the reserve is met, or if none is set, the property is on the market and the auction must end in a sale. The Government's guidance also points out that a winning bidder must go ahead with the purchase even if the home later fails an inspection or the buyer changes their mind.
What comes next
Cotality publishes the final clearance rates for the week ending 11 October in its Thursday auction preview, once the late results for Brisbane's 56 uncollected auctions are added. Its release of 12 October expects about 1,500 auctions across the capitals in the week ending 18 October, roughly 15 per cent fewer than this week, with Sydney the only capital where the number of scheduled auctions is higher.
The coming weeks will show whether Brisbane's larger auction schedule holds as sellers watch results like this one, or whether more owners switch to private treaty or wait. For a market where auctions have been expanding while the national schedule shrinks, the number to watch alongside the clearance rate is how many Brisbane homes are booked to go under the hammer each week, and how many reach it.
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.
