In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Fewer Brisbane owners than usual put a home on the market in the last weeks of winter. In an analysis published on 27 August 2026, Cotality counted new listings in Brisbane almost 5 per cent below the five-year average over the four weeks to 23 August, at the very moment the spring selling season normally starts to build.
The same analysis carries a second number that looks like a contradiction. The total stock of homes advertised for sale in Brisbane was more than 16 per cent above its five-year average over those four weeks. Fewer people are deciding to sell, yet a seller who lists today faces far more competing homes than one who listed in January. Both things are true, and together they describe the market a Queensland vendor walks into this spring.
Cotality, four weeks to 23 August 2026, published 27 August 2026.
What Cotality counted
Cotality tracks two things each week. New listings are the homes freshly advertised for sale over a rolling four-week window: they measure decisions, the number of owners who have just chosen to sell. Total listings are everything on the market over the same window, new or not: they measure the choice a buyer has, and the competition a seller meets.
Nationally, Cotality counted just over 33,000 newly listed properties in the four weeks to 23 August. That is 8.2 per cent below the average of the past five years, and 2.0 per cent below the same weeks of 2025, which Cotality itself describes as weak. Total listings stood at more than 137,000, 1.7 per cent above the five-year average.
Related readValuers say investors have stepped back from Queensland's sale marketThe retreat of new sellers is uneven. Sydney is the furthest from its usual pace, Melbourne follows, and Brisbane's shortfall is the mildest of the three large east-coast capitals. Adelaide is the exception: Cotality notes that its vendors have been slower to respond, with new listings still above average.
| Market | New listings | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | More than 14% below average | Fewer sellers |
| Melbourne | More than 9% below average | Fewer sellers |
| Brisbane | Almost 5% below average | Fewer sellers |
| Adelaide | Around 4% above average | More sellers |
| Australia | 8.2% below average | Fewer sellers |
Source: Cotality, "A slowdown in new listings coming to market points to a cooler spring selling season", 27 August 2026.
Fewer new sellers, more homes for sale
The Brisbane figures only make sense once the two measures are separated. A home leaves the total count when it sells or when its owner withdraws it. If sales slow, homes stay in the count for longer, and the total rises even when fewer new ones arrive. Stock is a pool: what matters is not only how fast water runs in, but how fast it drains.
Brisbane's pool has filled quickly. Cotality puts the city's total listings around 43 per cent below the five-year average in the four weeks to 11 January 2026. By the four weeks to 23 August they were more than 16 per cent above it. Cotality singles out the mid-sized capitals as the markets that have changed the most this year, and Brisbane as the clearest case. Nationally the swing was smaller, from almost 26 per cent below average in mid-January to 1.7 per cent above in late August.
- Four weeks to 11 JanuaryTotal listings sit around 43 per cent below the five-year average. Sellers have little competition.
- Early February to early JuneNew listings run broadly in line with average nationally, with a noticeable spike in Brisbane and Adelaide.
- Four weeks to 23 AugustNew listings fall almost 5 per cent below average, yet total stock is more than 16 per cent above it.
The middle step matters. According to Cotality, new listings between early February and early June were broadly in line with the five-year average across the country, with a noticeable spike in markets such as Brisbane and Adelaide. Many of the homes that came to market in that autumn rush have not sold as fast as their owners expected, and they are still there in August. Other counts tell the same story from a different angle. SQM Research, in its listings release of 4 August 2026, counted 20,273 residential listings in Brisbane in July, 18.0 per cent more than in June, and recorded a 6.0 per cent rise in listings older than 180 days.
Related readHow an asking price is set in Queensland, and what the law says about itWhy owners are waiting
Cotality's explanation is that the people who would normally list in August are looking at a market that has turned against them and are choosing to sit still. Its analysis sets this spring against the last one. Twelve months ago, it writes, home values were rising, the Reserve Bank had just made its third rate cut, consumer sentiment was stronger and investors were highly active.
None of that holds now. Cotality's research head Gerard Burg, quoted by Commonwealth Bank's newsroom on 27 August, put the owner's view this way: "They're seeing home values going backwards across the country and they're seeing pressures on the demand side." The same article reports capital city prices down 2.8 per cent over four months and a cash rate of 4.35 per cent.
Interest rates are the other half of the calculation. Cotality's analysis says the Reserve Bank looks unlikely to start cutting until well into 2027 at the earliest, and that some risk of a further rise remains. In comments reported by Real Estate Business on the same day, Mr Burg said owners who can afford to wait for stronger conditions may choose to do so, which would extend the weak run of new listings.
That choice is not open to everyone. An owner who has already bought elsewhere, a family settling an estate, a couple separating or a borrower under pressure sells when they must. What the figures suggest is that discretionary sellers, the ones with a choice of timing, are the ones stepping back.
Related readPool safety certificates when selling a Queensland homeWhat a normal spring adds
Spring matters because of what usually happens next. Over the past five years, Cotality calculates, the number of new listings nationally has risen by almost 25 per cent between the end of August and the middle of November. That seasonal lift is why agents, photographers, stylists and conveyancers plan their year around September and October.
Cotality's headline judgement is that this spring may prove cooler. It does not forecast a number. Its reasoning is that the conditions which discouraged listings in August, falling values, cautious and constrained buyers and an uncertain rate outlook, do not look likely to improve in the short term.
For Brisbane there is a particular twist. A cooler flow of new listings would normally tighten the market in favour of the sellers who do list. This year it meets a stock level already above average. Even a subdued spring adds to a pool that has not drained.
What a Queensland seller faces
The practical consequence is that the competition for a Brisbane vendor this spring comes less from the home that lists the same week and more from the homes that have been waiting since autumn. A buyer inspecting a new listing in September can compare it with properties whose owners have had months to reconsider their price.
Cotality draws the buyer's side of this plainly: elevated stock implies more choice and a greater ability to negotiate. Mr Burg's remark to Commonwealth Bank's newsroom adds a nuance worth keeping in mind. It is, he said, a buyer's market largely because so many buyers have been pushed out of it by borrowing costs. Fewer buyers with more to choose from is a different thing from many buyers circling a few homes, which is how Brisbane began the year.
Related readPreparing the seller disclosure statement: what a Queensland seller gathersHow this plays out for one property depends on things no city-wide count can show: the suburb, the price bracket, the condition of the home and how many comparable properties sit within a few streets. A count 16 per cent above average across Greater Brisbane hides pockets where stock is still thin and others where it has built much faster. The figures describe the weather, not the conditions at one address.
New listings and total listings answer different questions
New listings show how many owners have just decided to sell. Total listings show how many homes a buyer can choose from. In a slowing market the first can fall while the second rises, because homes take longer to leave the count.
Why other counts look different
Sellers reading the news in late August will find numbers that seem to disagree with Cotality's. They mostly measure something else. SQM Research counts every advertised property over a calendar month and compares it with the previous month and the same month a year earlier: on that basis its 4 August release put Brisbane's July listings 38 per cent above July 2025. PropTrack's analysis for realestate.com.au, reported by Broker News on 23 July, found new listings in Brisbane in June 22 per cent higher than a year earlier.
A comparison with last year and a comparison with a five-year average can point in opposite directions without either being wrong. Brisbane's listings in 2025 were unusually low, so almost any normal month in 2026 looks large beside them. Cotality's benchmark is the average of five years, which is a higher bar. The window differs too: four rolling weeks to 23 August against a calendar month. A vendor comparing figures should check three things before drawing a conclusion: what is counted, over which period, and against what.
What comes next
Cotality updates its four-week listing counts weekly, so the first evidence of whether spring lifts the flow of new Brisbane sellers will arrive through September. Its own five-year pattern points to mid-November as the usual seasonal high point for new listings.
SQM Research publishes its monthly listings count in the first days of each month, as its 4 August release for July shows; the August figures are the next to come and will show whether Brisbane's total kept climbing after July's jump. The Reserve Bank's remaining decisions of 2026 are the other dates in a seller's calendar, since Cotality names the rate outlook as one of the three things keeping owners on the sidelines.
Until then the picture for a Queensland seller is unusually two-sided: a quieter queue of new vendors than a normal spring would bring, and a far fuller shop window than Brisbane showed in January.
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.
