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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →The number of homes for sale in Brisbane is now nearly 70 per cent above its lowest point of 2026, according to an analysis of August listings by realestate.com.au reported by Broker News on 28 September 2026. Homes in the city are taking about two weeks longer to sell than they did earlier in the year.
Six days earlier, on 22 September, Australian Property Update reported a Ray White analysis of the months since the federal Budget in May. It found sellers pulling back hard in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, and barely at all in Brisbane. Read together, the two pieces of work describe a city whose owners have kept listing through a slowing market, and who now share the stage with a great many unsold homes.
realestate.com.au analysis of August 2026 listings, as reported by Broker News on 28 September 2026.
What the August listings show
The realestate.com.au analysis groups Brisbane with Adelaide and Perth, the three mid-sized capitals where prices rose sharply in 2025. Across the three, active listings rose 4 per cent in August compared with July. Active listings are everything advertised on the site: the month's new listings plus the unsold stock carried over from earlier months.
The climb from the bottom is steepest in Brisbane. Active listings are more than 50 per cent above their low point in Perth and in Adelaide, and nearly 70 per cent above it in Brisbane. New supply is part of the reason. New listings in August were about 20 per cent higher than a year earlier in each of the three cities, and across the three combined, winter brought 19 per cent more new listings than the winter of 2025.
Related readPreparing the seller disclosure statement: what a Queensland seller gathersThe other part is time. According to the analysis, homes in Brisbane and Perth are taking about two weeks longer to sell than earlier in the year, and homes in Adelaide about one week longer. Every extra week a home spends on the market is a week it stays in the active count.
The site's senior economist, Angus Moore, links the build-up to prices. Its August home price index recorded falls of 0.9 per cent in Adelaide, 0.3 per cent in Brisbane and 0.2 per cent in Perth over the month, declines he describes as milder than those in Sydney and Melbourne. Nationally, the same index had fallen for a fifth month in a row to sit 2.7 per cent below its March peak.
Where sellers have pulled back, and where they have not
Ray White's analysis asks a different question: how have sellers behaved since May? Its answer, as reported by Australian Property Update, is that the number of new listings fell 6.8 per cent nationally between May and August. Sydney led the retreat with a fall of 12.6 per cent, followed by Perth at 10.5 per cent and Melbourne at 9.7 per cent. Brisbane's fall was 2.7 per cent, the smallest of the four cities reported.
The stock on the market moved in two directions. In Sydney and Melbourne, where sellers stepped back sharply, active listings fell. In Brisbane and Perth they surged.
| City | New listings | Active listings |
|---|---|---|
| Sydney | Down 12.6% | Down 5.6% |
| Melbourne | Down 9.7% | Down 7.4% |
| Perth | Down 10.5% | Up 20.2% |
| Brisbane | Down 2.7% | Up 27.5% |
Source: Ray White analysis, as reported by Australian Property Update on 22 September 2026.
Ray White's chief economist Nerida Conisbee sees the Sydney and Melbourne pullback as a stabiliser. "When enough sellers make that decision, the reduction in new supply starts to offset weaker demand," she said in the analysis. Fewer homes arriving means less pressure on price, and she describes that as an important buffer for the two largest cities, while calling the outlook fragile.
Related readPropTrack counts 22 per cent more new Brisbane listings than last JuneBrisbane has had much less of that buffer. Its new listings slipped by 2.7 per cent while its stock grew by 27.5 per cent. The article notes price declines in both Brisbane and Perth over the past month.
Why Brisbane sellers kept listing
Neither analysis claims to know the motives of individual owners, but the figures suggest some explanations and rule out others.
The first is the starting point. Brisbane began 2026 with very little for sale. Cotality, in an analysis published on 27 August, put the city's total listings around 43 per cent below the five-year average in the four weeks to 11 January. A market that thin makes selling look easy, and owners who had been waiting for a good moment had reason to believe they had found one. Cotality noted a spike in new listings in Brisbane between early February and early June.
The second is price. Sydney and Melbourne have fallen further, so an owner there has had more reason to conclude that this is not the year to sell. Australian Property Investor reported on 4 September, from Cotality data, that values over the three months to August were down 4.7 per cent in Sydney and 3.9 per cent in Melbourne. Brisbane prices kept rising until May: in August they were 2.7 per cent below that peak yet still 10.8 per cent higher than a year earlier. An owner who compares today's price with last year's still sees a gain.
The third is that many Brisbane sellers are also buyers. Someone trading one home for another in the same city sells and buys in the same market, and a softer price on the way out is matched by a softer price on the way in.
Related readQueensland holds a third of Australia's distressed listings, SQM saysStill a tight market by older standards
One line of the realestate.com.au analysis puts the surge in proportion. Active listings remain about 30 per cent below their March 2020 levels in all three mid-sized capitals, Brisbane included.
That is the other way to read a 70 per cent rise: it is measured from an exceptionally low floor. A buyer in Brisbane this spring has far more choice than in January, and still less than a buyer had before the pandemic.
For a seller, the two comparisons carry different messages. Against January, competition has grown enormously. Against the years before 2020, the shelves are not yet full.
A rise from a low is not the same as a level
"Nearly 70 per cent above the 2026 low" says how fast Brisbane's stock has grown. "About 30 per cent below March 2020" says how much is actually for sale. Both come from the same realestate.com.au analysis, and a seller needs the second as much as the first.
Four counts of the same market
Sellers following the news in September have met at least four sets of listing figures for Brisbane. They differ because they count different things over different periods.
| Source | New listings | Stock for sale | Compared with |
|---|---|---|---|
| realestate.com.au, August | About 20% higher | Nearly 70% higher | August 2025; the 2026 low |
| Ray White, May to August | Down 2.7% | Up 27.5% | May 2026 |
| SQM Research, August | Up 5.4% | Up 26.5% | August 2025 |
| Cotality, to 23 August | Almost 5% lower | Over 16% higher | Five-year average |
Sources: Broker News, 28 September 2026; Australian Property Update, 22 September 2026; SQM Research, 1 September 2026; Cotality, 27 August 2026.
The new-listing figures look contradictory and are not. Compared with August 2025, when few Brisbane owners were selling, this August was busier. Compared with May 2026, when the autumn rush was still running, it was slightly quieter. Compared with a typical late winter over five years, it was a little below par. Each statement is a fair answer to its own question.
On stock, all four agree on the direction. Whatever the yardstick, there is much more for sale in Brisbane than there was. SQM Research, which counts every advertised listing in a calendar month, put the August total at 20,374 in its release of 1 September, and recorded a 13.8 per cent monthly rise in listings older than 180 days.
What two extra weeks mean for a seller
A longer selling time changes the practical shape of a campaign more than any index does. Marketing that was planned for a few weeks runs on. A seller who has bought elsewhere carries two properties for longer, and anyone relying on the proceeds for the next purchase has to plan for the gap. The realestate.com.au analysis gives the increase, about two weeks, without publishing the number of days it started from, so it shows the direction of travel better than the destination.
Cotality's monthly chart pack of 10 September adds a national reference point. It puts the median time on market across Australia at 39 days, up from 28 days a year earlier, and the median vendor discount across the capitals at 4.2 per cent, the widest since January 2023. The vendor discount is the gap between the first advertised price and the price finally accepted.
How much of that applies to one Brisbane home depends on its suburb, its price bracket and how many similar properties are competing nearby. City-wide medians are averages of very different streets.
What comes next
Interest rates are the next variable. Broker News reports that the comparison site Canstar expects the Reserve Bank to lift the cash rate to 4.6 per cent, and estimates that a rise of 0.25 of a percentage point would add $91 a month to repayments on a $600,000 loan. A higher rate reduces what buyers can borrow, and with it the pool of people able to bid on any given listing.
The seasonal pattern is the other. Cotality's five-year figures show new listings nationally rising by almost 25 per cent between the end of August and the middle of November. If Brisbane follows even part of that pattern, the spring's new homes will join a stock that is already large by this year's standards. The September listing counts, due from the data providers in the first days of October, will be the first to show how the season began.
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.
