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About Kooky and Shaka →Commonwealth Bank's chief executive, Matt Comyn, said on Wednesday 7 October 2026 that the bank still expects national home prices to fall about 9 per cent in this downturn, and that he does not expect the market to reach its floor until well into 2027. He was speaking on ABC radio's RN Breakfast, in an interview reported the same day by The Nightly and Yahoo Finance and the next day by InDaily Queensland.
The 9 per cent figure is not new this week. The bank's economists published it on 1 September 2026 on the CommBank newsroom. What is new is the confirmation that it survives the Reserve Bank's fourth rate rise of the year, a timing for the bottom from the head of the country's largest home lender, and a second big bank, NAB, moving to a deeper number. For Queensland readers the detail matters more than the headline: the forecast is a fall from peak to trough, not a fall for a calendar year, and Brisbane sits in the milder half of it.
Commonwealth Bank economists, forecast published 1 September 2026; timing as stated by Matt Comyn on ABC radio, 7 October 2026. Forecasts, not outcomes.
What the chief executive said
Mr Comyn was asked how far prices would fall and when they would stop. On the first point he pointed back to his economists' work. "That's still the published forecast," he said of the 9 per cent figure, as quoted by The Nightly.
On the second he was less exact. "It's hard to be precise, but certainly, I would expect it to be well into 2027," he said, in the words reported by Yahoo Finance.
He also offered a comparison. National prices fell by just over 8 per cent across 2022 and 2023, he said, which would make the fall his bank now expects slightly larger than the last one. Asked about interest rates, he said the next Reserve Bank decision would be reviewed once the quarterly inflation figures are in, most likely around November, and described it as a live decision.
Related readHow house price forecasts are made, and how often they are revisedNo new written forecast was issued this week, and Mr Comyn gave no figure for any city.
Three revisions between March and September
The magazine reported on 4 June that the bank had cut its 2026 forecast to flat. The September note is a different kind of number, and the path to it shows how quickly the view has moved.
- March to MayGrowth of 5% forecast for 2026, trimmed to 3% after the federal Budget.
- 4 JuneNo growth for the rest of 2026, then a 3% rise over 2027. Cash rate assumed to stay at 4.35%.
- 1 SeptemberA fall of about 9% from peak to trough, then a rise of about 2% over 2027.
The March, post-Budget and June figures are as reported by Savings.com.au on 4 June 2026; the September figures are from the bank's own newsroom article. The first three were calendar-year growth rates. The last measures the whole slide from the top of the market to the bottom, whenever each occurs, which is why it cannot be set beside the June figure as if one replaced the other.
The September note explained the change in plain terms. "The adjustment over the past three months has been larger and faster than we anticipated," said Trent Saunders, a senior economist at the bank. At that point national prices had fallen 0.9 per cent in August, the fifth monthly fall in a row, and stood 3.6 per cent below their March peak, according to the note.
Mr Saunders gave three reasons: momentum had weakened faster than expected, the downturn had spread to cities where tight supply had been expected to support prices, and the outlook for interest rates had shifted higher. The note added that these pressures come on top of the housing tax changes announced in the federal Budget.
Where Brisbane sits in the forecast
The September note does not give Brisbane a number of its own. It groups Brisbane with Perth and Adelaide and expects a fall of about 8 per cent from peak to trough for the three. Sydney is forecast to fall about 13 per cent and Melbourne about 12 per cent. Newsreel, which reported on the underlying research paper on 2 September, added that the bank expects the five largest capitals together to bottom about 10 per cent below their peak.
Related readHow interest rates reach Queensland home prices, step by stepThe Brisbane evidence in the note is about speed of sale more than price. The median time a Brisbane home spent on the market rose from 15 days at the start of the year to 35 days over the three months to August, the bank said, and values had fallen for three consecutive months. Mr Saunders described the downturn as having "broadened materially".
One more Brisbane figure comes from Newsreel's account of the same paper: for the calendar year 2026, the bank expects Brisbane prices to end only about 1 per cent lower, because the falls since winter follow strong growth in the first months of the year. A market can finish a year close to where it started and still be well below the high point it touched in between.
How much of the forecast fall has already happened is harder to state with confidence, because the banks and the index providers do not all measure from the same point. NAB's economists put Brisbane 5.4 per cent below its recent peak after September, in the bank's Housing Monitor published on 7 October. Set against the Commonwealth Bank's 8 per cent, that would leave about 2.6 percentage points still to come. Nationally, Cotality's index was 5.2 per cent below its March peak after a 1.1 per cent fall in September, the sixth monthly fall in a row, according to the index published on 1 October; against 9 per cent, that leaves about 3.8 points. Both sums assume the forecast is right.
Related readHow Queensland home price indexes work, and why they give different numbersNAB now expects a deeper fall for Brisbane
The Commonwealth Bank is no longer the most cautious of the large lenders. NAB's latest Housing Monitor, published on the bank's website on 7 October 2026 and reported by Broker Daily on 9 October, lifts its forecast fall in dwelling prices across the eight capital cities over 2026 from 6 per cent to 8 per cent, and expects about 11 per cent from peak to trough, with a floor in the June quarter of 2027. The city figures in the table are NAB's peak-to-trough forecasts, not calendar-year ones.
| Capital | Commonwealth Bank | NAB | Already below peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | About 13% | About 14% | 8.6% |
| Melbourne | About 12% | About 11% | 7.2% |
| Brisbane | About 8% | About 11% | 5.4% |
| Perth | About 8% | About 11% | 6.0% |
| Adelaide | About 8% | 8.5% | 2.9% |
Commonwealth Bank: newsroom article of 1 September 2026, with Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide forecast as one group. NAB: Housing Monitor published 7 October 2026, with Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth forecast as one group; the last column is NAB's reading after September.
For Brisbane, NAB's figure is three percentage points deeper than the Commonwealth Bank's. Part of the explanation is timing: NAB's forecast was written with September's results in hand, while the Commonwealth Bank's dates from the start of that month. NAB also reported that homes across the capitals were taking a median 41 days to sell, the longest since late 2020.
Other forecasters go further. The Nightly noted on 7 October that AMP has set out a scenario in which national values fall by up to 15 per cent, which leaves the Commonwealth Bank's 9 per cent at the mild end of the published range.
The rate path under both numbers
On 1 September the bank expected the Reserve Bank to lift the cash rate by a quarter of a point to 4.60 per cent in November 2026, then cut in May and August 2027. The rise came sooner. The Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Board lifted the cash rate target by 25 basis points to 4.60 per cent on 29 September 2026, according to its media release of that day. It was the fourth increase of 2026, after those of 3 February, 17 March and 5 May, and, as InDaily noted on 8 October, the highest level in 15 years.
Related readQueensland prices rise while national housing value falls, ABS saysSince then the bank's economists have pushed the cuts back. Yahoo Finance reported that they now expect the first cut in August 2027 and a possible second in November 2027. InDaily reported that the bank's economists believe rates are at or near their peak, and that the economist Lucinda Jerogin continues to expect two cuts in late 2027. Yahoo Finance added that the bank accepts a further rise in November remains possible, depending on the inflation data. Westpac and ANZ, according to The Nightly, do expect another rise in November.
This matters because the forecast rise of about 2 per cent over 2027 depends on rate cuts arriving, according to the September note. If the cash rate stayed at 4.60 per cent through 2027, the bank estimated, national dwelling prices would be broadly flat over the year. The cuts were then pencilled in for May and August. With the first now expected in August, the recovery the bank described has less of the year to work with, which is consistent with Mr Comyn placing the floor well into 2027 and not early in it.
Borrowing power is the channel. Cotality estimates that the four rate rises of 2026 have reduced what a typical buyer can borrow by almost $90,000, Broker Daily reported.
A peak-to-trough fall is not a forecast for any one home
It describes an index for a whole city or the whole country, from its highest month to its lowest. Suburbs, houses and units move differently, and the banks named here have each revised their figures more than once this year.
What the listings company told its shareholders
The second voice in InDaily's report was REA Group, which owns the realestate.com.au listings site. Its chief executive, Cameron McIntyre, told shareholders at the company's annual meeting that further falls in prices are likely as buyer demand weakens, and that the largest source of uncertainty is the prospect of higher interest rates.
Related readQueensland's mean dwelling price is now second only to NSW, ABS saysREA did not put a percentage on it, so there is no REA forecast to place in the table. What Mr McIntyre did offer was a view on why the decline should stay orderly. He listed "resilient employment, limited forced selling and homeowner equity buffers" as the supports under the market, InDaily reported.
The Commonwealth Bank's September note argued from the supply side: it pointed to a national rental vacancy rate of 1.8 per cent in August, which it called historically low, and said lower prices would in time improve affordability and rental yields and bring buyers back.
What would change the forecast
Three things named by the sources will test the 9 per cent figure before the end of the year.
The first is the quarterly inflation release, which Mr Comyn identified as the trigger for the bank to revisit its rate view around November. A further rise would push the cash rate above the 4.60 per cent on which the bank's flat-2027 scenario was built.
The second is the monthly price data. The forecast was set when the national index was 3.6 per cent below its peak; a month later it was 5.2 per cent below. If monthly falls continue at September's pace of 1.1 per cent, the national index would pass the 9 per cent mark within about four months, well before the point at which Mr Comyn expects the floor.
The third is the bank itself, which has changed its published view three times since March, each time in the same direction.
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.
