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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's early auction result has almost doubled in seven days. Cotality's preliminary figures for the week ending 12 July, published on Monday 13 July, show a clearance rate of 43.0 per cent from 128 Brisbane auctions. The week before, the same early measure was 23.8 per cent.
That is a rise of 19.2 percentage points, larger than the gains Cotality reports for Adelaide, Sydney or Melbourne. It lifts Brisbane off the six-year low it reached at the start of the month. It does not lift it off the bottom of the table.
Where the rebound starts from
The size of the jump says as much about the week before as about this one. In its release of 6 July, Cotality put Brisbane's preliminary rate for the week ending 5 July at 23.8 per cent from 120 auctions, and described it as the city's lowest early result since May 2020, when the figure was 21.4 per cent. It was also the fourth week in five in which Brisbane's early rate had come in under 40 per cent.
The final count did not soften that picture. On 9 July Cotality settled the same week at 23.5 per cent from 119 auctions, with 77 homes passed in, and called it Brisbane's weakest final reading since late April 2020. Roughly two in three vendors, in the firm's words, could not secure a buyer at auction that week.
Against that base, 43.0 per cent is a return to the range Brisbane was in before the start of July, not a new high. Cotality's release for the last week of May had Brisbane's early rate at 43.3 per cent, which at the time it described as the city's lowest since April 2023. A number that looked weak six weeks ago now reads as a recovery.
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The volume figure is the less expected one. Cotality counts 128 Brisbane auctions for the week, up 7.6 per cent on the 119 of the week before and 25.5 per cent higher than the same week of 2025.
Every other large market went the other way on the annual comparison, or stood still. Sydney's 452 auctions were 18.7 per cent fewer than a year earlier. Melbourne's 585 were 6.8 per cent fewer. Across the combined capitals, the total of 1,318 was down 8.7 per cent on the previous week and 8.0 per cent on the previous year. Canberra's 60 were level with a year ago.
Brisbane is a small auction market, and a 25.5 per cent rise on a base this size works out at about 26 homes. The firm's preview of 9 July had listed 133 Brisbane auctions as scheduled for the week, against 102 in the same week of 2025, so the 128 counted so far is five short of the schedule and still well ahead of last winter. Brisbane sellers are booking auctions in mid-winter at a faster rate than they did last July, in a month when the method has been clearing poorly.
Cotality's own explanation for the national decline in volume is partly seasonal. Its 9 July release notes that auction activity usually eases through June and July before rising into spring, and adds that demand-side pressures have been building for twelve months on top of that pattern. Brisbane's count is moving against both.
Still the lowest of the larger markets
Cotality preliminary auction results, week ending 12 July 2026, published 13 July 2026. Perth and Tasmania held too few auctions to compare.
The gap has narrowed without closing. Brisbane sits 1.9 points behind Canberra and 13.2 points behind Melbourne. A week earlier, on the same preliminary measure, it was 30.7 points behind Melbourne.
Related readGold Coast auctions: fewer than one in four sells in mid-June weekThe other capitals improved too, which is why the combined figure moved as it did. Cotality's preliminary clearance rate for the combined capitals was 54.8 per cent, up from 49.8 per cent and the highest in seven weeks. It is the first time in three weeks the early national figure has been over 50 per cent. Sydney's 57.5 per cent was its highest preliminary result in ten weeks, Melbourne's 56.2 per cent its highest in four, and Adelaide recovered to 59.1 per cent from 45.7 per cent.
Cotality's summary of the week pairs the better rates with the lower volumes. Fewer homes went to auction nationally, and a larger share of them sold. The longer comparison is less comfortable. The firm's final figures for the week ending 5 July put the combined capitals at 46.0 per cent from 1,443 auctions, against 67.9 per cent from 1,794 in the same week of 2025, and counted it as the sixth week in a row under 50 per cent.
That release also split the unsold homes of the first week of July into two groups. Across the capitals about 540 were passed in, meaning the auction ran and bidding stopped short of the reserve, and about 230 were withdrawn before the day. Both count against the clearance rate in Cotality's method, so a week with fewer withdrawals can post a better rate without any change in the bidding. The firm's early figures for the week ending 12 July rest on 978 reported results from 1,318 capital city auctions, of which 536 were sales.
Related readGold Coast and Sunshine Coast out-clear Brisbane in a 23.5 per cent weekWhat the early count covers
A preliminary rate is not calculated on every auction held. It is the share sold among the results Cotality has collected by the time it publishes on Monday. The tables in the firm's weekly indicator summary show how many results that was for each market, and the coverage differs a good deal between the capital and the coasts.
| Market | Auctions held | Results reported | Sold, and early rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 128 | 86 | 37 sold, 43.0% |
| Gold Coast | 73 | 45 | 15 sold, 33.3% |
| Sunshine Coast | 46 | 38 | 14 sold, 36.8% |
Cotality Property Market Indicator Summary, week ending 12 July 2026. Rates are calculated on reported results only.
In Brisbane, 42 of the 128 auctions, close to a third, had no result in the count. On the Gold Coast the missing share was larger: 28 of 73. The Sunshine Coast was the best covered of the three, with results in for 38 of its 46 auctions.
Neither coast shared in Brisbane's rebound. The Gold Coast's early 33.3 per cent and the Sunshine Coast's 36.8 per cent sit close to where the two markets finished the week before, when Cotality's final table had the Gold Coast at 35.9 per cent from 64 auctions and the Sunshine Coast at 35.0 per cent from 60. In the first week of July both coasts cleared a larger share than the capital. On this week's early figures the order has reversed, with Brisbane about ten points ahead of the Gold Coast and six ahead of the Sunshine Coast.
The Gold Coast held 73 auctions, nine more than the week before, and the Sunshine Coast 46, which is 14 fewer. Together the two coasts held 119 auctions, not far short of the capital's 128.
Why Thursday matters more than usual
The final rate, published on Thursday, adds the results that come in after Monday morning. Cotality says it collects about 99 per cent of auction results each week on average, so the final figure rests on nearly every auction held. It also applies a floor to what it will publish: a clearance rate is reported only where at least ten results are in hand, which is why Perth, with eight auctions, and Tasmania, with two, appear in the tables without a rate.
In the first week of July the two measures were almost identical for Brisbane: 23.8 per cent on the Monday and 23.5 per cent on the Thursday. That is one week, and it is not a rule. With 42 Brisbane results still to arrive, the direction of the revision depends on what those auctions turn out to be. If most were passed in or withdrawn, the rate falls. If they sold at the same pace as the reported ones, it holds.
So the 43.0 per cent is best read as a first indication that the start of July was the low point of the month so far, and not yet as a measure of how far Brisbane has come back from it. Cotality's final figures for the week ending 12 July are due on Thursday 16 July, along with its count of auctions scheduled for the week after. In its 9 July preview the firm expected national volumes to keep easing, to about 1,300 auctions in the week ending 19 July and about 1,200 in the week after that.
For sellers with an auction booked in the second half of July, and for the agents and auctioneers running those campaigns, the week offers a modest piece of good news: more homes went under the hammer in Brisbane than in the same week last year, and more of them appear to have sold than at any point so far this month.
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.
