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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Roughly one in four reported Brisbane auctions ended in a sale over the King's Birthday long weekend. Cotality's preliminary results for the week ending 4 October put the city's clearance rate at 25.6 per cent, the lowest of the five capitals for which a rate was published. The combined capitals rate was 48.2 per cent, which the ABC reported on Monday 5 October as the weakest preliminary result since the 47.4 per cent of late June.
A week earlier, Brisbane's preliminary rate was 42.6 per cent. The fall, which Cotality puts at 16.9 percentage points, came in a week that held both a public holiday and the first auctions since the Reserve Bank raised the cash rate to 4.60 per cent on 29 September.
Brisbane against the other capitals
Sydney and Melbourne held up better than the smaller markets, and the distance between Brisbane and the rest was wide.
Cotality, Property Market Indicator Summary, week ending 4 October 2026. Preliminary results. No rate was published for Perth, where eight auctions were held.
Cotality's summary table shows what sits behind each bar. Sydney's 55.7 per cent, up 2.1 points on the week, comes from 128 sales among 230 collected results. Melbourne's 50.6 per cent, up 1.9 points, comes from 250 sales among 494, and the firm notes that Melbourne's early rate has averaged 55.4 per cent over the first five weeks of spring. Adelaide's 41.5 per cent, from 17 sales among 41 results, was its fourth-lowest reading of the year. Canberra fell 12.2 points to 41.7 per cent, 5.6 points under its spring average of 47.3 per cent.
Cotality's own commentary, quoted in the press coverage, was that low clearance rates outside Sydney and Melbourne had been a drag on the national result. Across the capitals, 422 of the 875 results collected were sales. The firm describes the 48.2 per cent as the second-lowest preliminary rate of the year to date.
Related readFrom 23.8 to 43 per cent: Brisbane's auction rate rebounds in a weekTwenty sales from 78 results
Brisbane held 139 auctions in the week, according to Cotality's table, 6.1 per cent fewer than in the same week last year. By the time the summary was compiled, 78 results had been collected: 20 sold and 58 not sold. That leaves 61 auctions, more than four in ten, without a reported result.
It is the thinnest Brisbane sample of the spring, as the firm's five Monday tables show.
| Week ending | Auctions | Sold of reported | Early rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 September | 133 | 25 of 101 | 24.8% |
| 13 September | 168 | 52 of 125 | 41.6% |
| 20 September | 174 | 45 of 120 | 37.5% |
| 27 September | 144 | 40 of 94 | 42.6% |
| 4 October | 139 | 20 of 78 | 25.6% |
Cotality, Property Market Indicator Summary for each week from 6 September to 4 October 2026. Preliminary results only.
Two things stand out in the table. The number of Brisbane auctions barely changed between the last two weeks, at 144 and 139, so the long weekend did not thin the city's list the way it thinned Sydney's. What changed was the number of reported sales, which halved from 40 to 20. And the season's early readings have swung between the mid-20s and the low 40s without settling: across the five weeks, 182 of 518 reported Brisbane results were sales, or about 35 per cent.
Cotality notes that this is the third time this year Brisbane's preliminary rate has been in the 20s. The other two were a 23.8 per cent reading earlier in the year and the 24.8 per cent of the first week of spring, which the firm described at the time as the second-lowest early result of 2026. That September figure went on to finalise slightly higher, at 26.0 per cent. The two that followed finalised lower, at 38.5 per cent and 31.4 per cent.
The coasts fall further than Brisbane
The Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast, which had both posted higher first counts than Brisbane a week earlier, recorded lower ones this time.
Related readBrisbane sellers keep choosing auction as bookings rise 15 per centOn the Gold Coast, Cotality collected 34 results and seven were sales, a preliminary clearance rate of 20.6 per cent. The region's first count for the week ending 27 September was 48.3 per cent, from 28 sales among 58 results. On the Sunshine Coast, two of the 18 results collected were sales, a rate of 11.1 per cent, against six of ten the week before.
Both are the lowest early figures either region has recorded this spring, and both rest on very few results. Cotality publishes no rate at all where fewer than ten results have been collected, and 18 is not far above that floor. The summary does not say how many of the outstanding coastal auctions were withdrawn or postponed over the holiday, and the final table later this week will give the complete count. Until then, the two coastal percentages are best read as a sign of a slow weekend, not as a measure of it.
A short week by design
The low national volume was expected. Across the combined capitals, 1,223 homes went to auction, which the ABC reported as 12.8 per cent fewer than the previous week. Cotality's summary sets that against 1,958 auctions in the same week last year, a fall of about 38 per cent. The firm had said on 23 September that it anticipated fewer than 1,300 auctions, because the King's Birthday holiday in Queensland and Labour Day in New South Wales, the ACT and South Australia all fell on Monday 5 October.
The pattern between the two largest cities reversed. Melbourne, back from its AFL Grand Final weekend, held 670 auctions, a rise of 136 per cent on the week. Sydney, on its own long weekend, held 304, a fall of 61 per cent. Adelaide held 69 auctions, 32 per cent fewer than the week before though 6.2 per cent more than a year earlier, and Canberra's 31 were 46 per cent below last year's count, the largest annual fall of any capital.
Related readSeventeen weeks under 40 per cent for Brisbane's auction marketA holiday week is a poor guide to the weeks around it
Sellers and agents usually keep their campaigns clear of long weekends, so the homes that do go to auction are fewer and less typical. The preliminary rate is also drawn from a part of the results only. Both features make this week's figure less reliable than an ordinary week's.
The rate rise in the background
The auctions were the first to be held since the Reserve Bank's decision of Tuesday 29 September, which the ABC described as the fourth increase of the year. Cotality's commentary on the weekend, as reported by the ABC and MacroBusiness, was that the rise had probably played a part in the weaker outcome, with prospective buyers facing reduced borrowing capacity and low confidence.
That is the research firm's reading of one week, and it is offered with a "probably". The holiday and the rate decision arrived together, and a single preliminary figure cannot say how much each contributed. For Brisbane the caution applies twice over: the city's rate was already below 40 per cent on final counts in the weeks ending 6, 13 and 20 September, the last of them at 31.4 per cent.
Two other publications from the past week describe the conditions bidders are working in. Cotality's Home Value Index for September, released on 1 October, showed Brisbane dwelling values down 1.5 per cent over the month, the sharpest fall of any capital, with national values down 1.1 per cent in a sixth straight monthly decline. The same release put the number of Brisbane home sales over the past three months 27.2 per cent below the level of a year earlier, the steepest annual drop among the capitals.
The Reserve Bank's Financial Stability Review, also released on 1 October, took a longer view. It found that most Australian households with mortgages remain well placed to manage more difficult conditions, even if housing prices were to fall sharply, while noting pockets of stress. The auction figures and that assessment describe different things. One counts how many reserves were met in a given week; the other looks at the resilience of households that already hold a loan.
What follows
Cotality's final results for the week ending 4 October are due later this week, along with its count of the auctions scheduled for the first ordinary weekend of October. Those two numbers will say more about spring in Queensland than the long weekend can: how many of the holiday-week auctions eventually sold, and how many sellers have chosen to go to auction with the cash rate at 4.60 per cent.
Further out, the Reserve Bank's published schedule has the Monetary Policy Board meeting next on 2 and 3 November, with four October weekends of auctions before it.
For buyers, the conditions on the day have not changed with the headline. Bidding at a Queensland auction is still usually unconditional and carries no cooling-off period, as the Queensland Government's guidance sets out, whatever the clearance rate says about the room.
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.
