Fewer sales, longer campaigns: Brisbane's slowdown seen from the agency

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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Real Estate Business set out on 6 October 2026 how far Brisbane's slowdown reaches beyond the price index, and the figures it gathered describe an agent's working conditions as much as a market. Citing Cotality data, the trade publication reported that the number of sales in Brisbane is 27.2 per cent below its level a year earlier, the sharpest fall of any capital city, and that the median time on market has stretched to 35 days from 19. Total listings are 53.3 per cent higher than a year ago, while new listings are up only 5.4 per cent.

Put together, those numbers mean fewer transactions shared among the same agents, each one taking longer, with more unsold homes on the books at any time. This article looks at what that changes in practice for the people doing the selling, and at the Queensland rules on appointments, pricing and advertising that apply with more force when a campaign runs long.

Source: Cotality figures as reported by Real Estate Business, 6 October 2026.

The figures behind the headline

The price fall is the part most readers have already seen. According to the same report, Cotality's Home Value Index shows Brisbane dwelling values down 4.7 per cent over the latest quarter and 5.4 per cent below their peak in May 2026. The report's argument, made through a Brisbane buyer's agent, Melinda Jennison of Streamline Property Buyers, is that prices are the last thing to move and the other measures tell the story sooner.

Jennison told the publication that sales volumes, days on market, listing volumes, auction clearance rates and buyer behaviour need to be read together, and that buyers now have more time, more choice and in many cases more negotiating power than they have had for several years.

The gap between the two listing figures is the detail that matters most to an agent. New listings, the homes coming to market for the first time, rose 5.4 per cent over the year. Total listings, everything for sale including homes that have not sold, rose 53.3 per cent. Sellers have not rushed to the market. Buyers have slowed down, and stock that would once have cleared in under three weeks is accumulating.

Auctions show the same thing from another side. The report puts Brisbane's four-week average clearance rate at 32.8 per cent in late August.

What it does to an agent's week

An agent is paid when a sale completes. Take the citywide figure at face value and apply it to one desk, as an illustration only: an agent who sold 40 homes in the year to last spring would, at 27.2 per cent fewer, sell about 29 in the year since. The work per sale has not fallen with the count. It has risen.

The time on market shows why. A median of 35 days against 19 is 16 more days for the typical sale, a campaign 84 per cent longer. Each of those days carries open homes, buyer follow-up, feedback to the seller and, often, a conversation about price that nobody enjoys. An agent with the same number of listings as a year ago is carrying each one for nearly twice as long, which is one way to read the 53.3 per cent rise in total stock.

The national picture from within the profession is similar, with a caution. Tom Panos, the founder of the training business Real Estate Gym, told Real Estate Business on 9 September that the leading agents he works with were running 10 to 20 per cent below their earlier results, against falls he put at around 50 per cent across the broader industry, and that auction volumes were down by more than 30 per cent on the previous spring. Those are one trainer's estimates, given after the publication's Top 100 Agents event in Sydney, and they are national. They suggest the slowdown is not shared evenly: established agents with repeat clients lose less than those who relied on a fast market.

How different it looked a year ago

Two earlier sets of figures show the distance travelled. Reapit, whose sales software is used by agencies across Australia and New Zealand, reported in May that across its platform between September 2025 and February 2026, Queensland listings drew an average of 1.98 offers each, against 1.53 nationally, and sold faster than the national average. Its general manager, Simon Berglund, described buyer depth in Queensland as consistently strong. Reapit counts days on market its own way, so its number cannot be set beside Cotality's, but the comparison was clear: on Reapit's data Queensland was the only state ahead of the national average on offers, selling time and commission rate together.

The second is the Real Estate Business ranking of Queensland's top 50 agents, published in late May from 2025 results. Those agents averaged 104 settled sales each in the calendar year and 34 days on market. That 34-day average, earned by the state's highest-volume agents in a strong year across the whole of Queensland, is now roughly the median for every sale in Brisbane.

Neither comparison is exact, because the measures and the areas differ. Both make the same point about pace. Last summer a Queensland agent on Reapit's platform could expect about two offers on a typical listing. The Cotality figures reported this week describe a market where many listings wait for their first.

The appointment clock

A longer campaign runs into a rule that a fast market rarely tested. Under the Property Occupations Act 2014, as the Office of Fair Trading's guidance sets out, a sole or exclusive agency appointment for the sale of one or two residential properties can run for no more than 90 days. An appointment can be renewed, but the seller must sign the reappointment, and no earlier than 14 days before the current term ends.

When the median sale took 19 days, most campaigns finished with two months of the appointment to spare. At 35 days the median still fits comfortably, but a median is a midpoint: half of all sales take longer, and the 53.3 per cent rise in total listings shows how many homes are sitting in that slower half. More campaigns are reaching the point where the agent has to go back to the seller and ask to be reappointed.

That is a decision point for the seller, by design. The 90-day limit exists so that an owner is never locked to one agent indefinitely. The office's guidance also says that where the agreed term is longer than 60 days, either side can end a sole or exclusive appointment with 30 days' written notice, provided the appointment runs for at least 60 days. In a slow market, the agent's record of communication through the first term becomes the case for a second.

Pricing when the comparable sales are ageing

The second pressure is on price advice. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance says an agent who gives an estimate of a home's value must base it on a comparative market analysis of at least three properties of similar standard or condition, within five kilometres, sold within the previous six months. Where three such sales cannot be found, the agent must give the opinion in writing and explain how it was reached.

In a rising market, sales from six months ago understate today's price and the seller is pleasantly surprised. With values 5.4 per cent below a May peak, a sale from April or May sits near the top, and three such sales can support a figure the present market will not pay. The rule fixes the outer limit of what counts as comparable. It does not stop an agent choosing the most recent sales within that window, and the conduct rules in the Property Occupations Regulation 2014 require reasonable steps to verify the facts material to a sale so that what is said about a property is not exaggerated.

Advertising follows from the appointment. The office's guidance on property advertising says an "offers over" figure should be the minimum the seller is willing to accept, and that advertising a price the agent knows the seller will not take is bait advertising. The regulation adds that an agent may market a property only at the price the client has instructed in writing. When a seller lowers their expectations after five weeks without an offer, the instruction has to change before the advertisement does.

Reading the next figures

The report rests on monthly data, and the season is still running. Cotality publishes its home value index at the start of each month and its listing and sales counts through the month, so the figures for October will show whether the gap between new and total listings has kept widening through spring.

For agents the more useful measures are the ones in the middle of the report, not the price index: how many sales, how long each takes, and how much stock is waiting. Those decide how many campaigns one person can run well, how often a seller must be asked to renew, and how old the evidence behind a price opinion has become. The rules on each were written for all conditions. A year in which Brisbane's sales fell by more than a quarter is when they are used most.

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 →