Brisbane opens winter with 201 auctions and fewer than half selling

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Kooky

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Brisbane took 201 homes to auction in the week ending 31 May, and fewer than half of the results reported so far ended in a sale. Cotality's preliminary count, released on Monday 1 June, puts the city's early clearance rate at 43.3 per cent.

That is below the 45.7 per cent recorded a week earlier, a figure Cotality had described at the time as Brisbane's weakest early result since April 2023. Two soft readings in a row, on a rising number of auctions, is the pattern to note as winter begins.

More homes offered, fewer sold

The number of auctions is not the weak point. Brisbane's 201 auctions compare with 194 the week before, a rise of about 3.6 per cent, and that earlier week had itself been 7.2 per cent busier than the one preceding it, according to Cotality's release of 25 May. Sellers kept coming to market in the final days of autumn.

What changed is the outcome. Of the 141 Brisbane results Cotality had collected by Monday, 61 were sales and 80 were not, which is where the 43.3 per cent comes from. A property counts as unsold in this tally when it is passed in, meaning bidding stopped below the seller's reserve, or when the auction is withdrawn before the day.

The count is also incomplete. Sixty of the 201 auctions, close to three in ten, had no reported result when the preliminary figure was calculated. Those results arrive over the following days and feed the final clearance rate, which Cotality publishes each Thursday. By then, the firm says, it has collected 99 per cent of results on average. The final figure can land above or below the early one, so 43.3 per cent is a first reading and not the last word on the week.

The coasts are softer still

Outside the capital, the early numbers are lower. On the Gold Coast, 82 homes went to auction, the busiest market in the state after Brisbane. Of the 58 results collected, 22 were sales, a preliminary clearance rate of 37.9 per cent.

The Sunshine Coast held 31 auctions. Nine of the 24 results collected were sales, or 37.5 per cent. That is a small sample: one more sale would have lifted the rate by about four percentage points. Cotality does not report a clearance rate at all for a region with fewer than 10 results, and figures only a little above that floor move sharply from week to week.

Taken together, the three markets held 314 auctions in the week. Cotality had results for 223 of them, and 92 of those were sales, which works out at 41.3 per cent across south-east Queensland. In each of the three, more reported auctions failed to sell than succeeded.

The share of results in hand was similar in each market. Cotality had heard back on about 70 per cent of Brisbane's auctions, 71 per cent of the Gold Coast's and 77 per cent of the Sunshine Coast's when it ran the numbers, against 72 per cent for the combined capitals. Queensland's early figures are therefore no more provisional than anyone else's this week, and no less.

The same summary gives two regional markets in New South Wales as a point of reference. Newcastle and Lake Macquarie recorded 50.0 per cent from 22 results, and the Illawarra 64.7 per cent from 17. Both are small samples as well, but they sat above every Queensland market Cotality reports.

How the other capitals fared

Brisbane was not the lowest capital in the week. Canberra was, and Adelaide remained well ahead of everyone else.

Across the combined capitals, 2,681 homes were taken to auction. Cotality puts that 15.2 per cent above the previous week and 8.1 per cent below the same week of 2025, when 2,918 auctions were held and the early clearance rate was 60.0 per cent. Of the 1,939 capital city results collected this time, 1,056 were sales.

Melbourne was the busiest market with 1,264 auctions and slipped from 60.2 per cent a week earlier. Sydney held 997 and fell from 56.9 per cent to what Cotality calls its second weakest early result of the year. Adelaide's figure, the strongest of the group, was still down from 72.0 per cent the week before and 75.7 per cent the week before that. Canberra's 39.1 per cent, from 64 results, is described by the firm as that city's lowest since June 2019.

Brisbane's distance from the national figure is 11.2 percentage points. A week earlier, with the city at 45.7 per cent and the combined capitals at 58.2 per cent, the gap was 12.5 points. Both moved down together.

What Cotality says is behind it

The firm's commentary treats the week as part of a longer shift and not as a one-off. Its headline describes the combined capitals' preliminary rate as a six-year low, the weakest reading since April 2020, and its summary says the mix of rising volumes and falling early clearance rates points to a sizeable change in the balance between demand and supply since last spring.

On the demand side, Cotality lists affordability constraints, three interest rate rises and weaker consumer sentiment. The rate rises are a matter of record. The Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the cash rate target from 3.60 per cent to 3.85 per cent on 3 February, and its statement of 5 May announced a third increase of the year, from 4.10 per cent to 4.35 per cent, citing materially higher inflation since mid-2025 and sharply higher fuel prices.

On the supply side, the firm says conditions have eased from the very tight levels of late 2025, with a gradual increase in the total stock of homes for sale. More choice for buyers and a higher cost of borrowing both tend to reduce the number of people willing to commit on auction day, where a bid cannot be made conditional.

None of that is specific to Brisbane, and Cotality does not single the city out for a separate cause. It does say the softness was most pronounced in Sydney and Brisbane among the larger markets.

How an auction ends up in each column

A clearance rate measures one way of selling. In Cotality's method, a home counts as sold whether the deal is done before the auction, under the hammer or shortly afterwards, and it is compared with every known result, including passed-in and withdrawn auctions. A campaign that ends in a negotiated sale on the Monday still adds to the sold column in the final figure.

Queensland's own rules shape what "passed in" means in practice.

That is why a passed-in auction is a stage in a campaign and not its end. The government's guidance for buyers also notes that a registered bidder who buys the home within two business days of an unsuccessful auction does so without a cooling-off period, exactly as if the hammer had fallen. Sales struck in that window are among the late results that move a final clearance rate.

The rate also says nothing about price. A week in which fewer than half of auctions sell tells readers that sellers and bidders did not meet often on the day. It does not tell them what the homes that did sell achieved, or what happened to those sold by private treaty, which is how most Queensland homes change hands.

A short week ahead in the south

Cotality expects the national auction count to fall sharply this week, to around 1,250 homes, because of the King's Birthday long weekend, before returning to about 2,190 the week after. The holiday will not explain anything in Brisbane's numbers. The Queensland Government's public holiday calendar places the King's Birthday on Monday 5 October in this state, so the first weekend of June is an ordinary trading weekend for Queensland agents and auctioneers.

That makes the coming Brisbane figures a cleaner test than those of Sydney or Melbourne. If volume holds near 200 while the southern capitals thin out, Brisbane will carry more weight than usual in the combined capitals count.

The final clearance rates for the week ending 31 May are due from Cotality on Thursday 4 June.

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.

About Kooky and Shaka →