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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 final auction clearance rate for the week ending 7 June was 34.1 per cent, according to figures Cotality published on Thursday 11 June. The data firm says it is the city's lowest weekly clearance rate since the week ending 7 June 2020, exactly six years earlier, when the rate was 33.3 per cent.
More than half of the 135 auctions held ended without a sale on the day. Cotality puts Brisbane's pass-in rate at 56.3 per cent, the highest of any capital city for the week.
Source: Cotality, final clearance rates for the week ending 7 June 2026, published 11 June 2026.
A final figure slightly above the early one
The final rate is a little better than the first reading. On Monday, with 94 results collected, Cotality's preliminary rate for Brisbane was 31.9 per cent. Once late results were counted, the rate settled 2.2 percentage points higher.
That makes Brisbane the exception of the week. Every other capital with a published rate was revised down between Monday and Thursday: Sydney from 52.9 to 48.9 per cent, Melbourne from 52.3 to 47.4 per cent, Adelaide from 64.2 to 55.7 per cent, Canberra from 50.0 to 48.6 per cent and Perth from 72.7 to 64.3 per cent. In Brisbane, the results that came in late included proportionally more sales than the ones reported first.
The arithmetic is simple. Monday's count held 30 sales among 94 results. Thursday's holds 46 sales among 135 auctions. The 41 results added in between therefore contained 16 sales, a rate of about 39 per cent, against 31.9 per cent for the early group. It is a modest difference and it does not change the reading of the week, but it runs against the usual assumption that late results are mostly bad news.
Related readPass-ins nearly double withdrawals as Brisbane clears 26 per centThe number of auctions was revised too, from 138 to 135, a fall of 31.8 per cent on the week before. The previous week's final clearance rate was 39.9 per cent, so the city has moved down by 5.8 points in seven days. Queensland had no long weekend in the period, which means the lower count reflects fewer homes being offered and not a shorter selling week.
Where the 135 auctions ended
Cotality's final release sorts every auction into one of three outcomes: sold, passed in or withdrawn. For Brisbane it publishes the total, the clearance rate and the pass-in rate, and the rest follows by subtraction.
Source: Cotality final results published 11 June 2026. Sold and passed-in counts are derived from the published rates and total; withdrawn is the remainder.
On those figures, fewer than one Brisbane auction in ten was called off before the day. Nationally the share was higher: 164 of the 1,175 capital city auctions were withdrawn, or 14.0 per cent, and in Sydney 91 were, or 18.8 per cent of that city's auctions.
So Brisbane's low clearance rate was not produced by sellers stepping away early. Most went ahead, opened the bidding and did not get an offer at the reserve. Across the combined capitals 455 auctions were passed in, or 38.7 per cent. Brisbane's pass-in rate was about 18 points above that.
What passed in means under Queensland rules
A passed-in auction is one where bidding stopped below the seller's reserve price. It is not the end of a sale campaign. The Queensland Government's guidance for sellers says an owner whose reserve is not reached does not have to sell and may negotiate with interested bidders.
The same guidance explains why some bids heard on the day are not offers from buyers. In Queensland a seller may bid on their own property, but only up to the reserve, and the auctioneer must announce that the bid is a vendor bid. Once the reserve is reached, any such bid is illegal. A vendor bid can therefore be the last one called at an auction that is then passed in.
Related readReserve Bank holds at 4.35 per cent as Brisbane auctions stay subduedWhat happens next matters for the statistics. Under Cotality's method a home that sells after the auction is still counted as sold when the result is known. The government's guidance for buyers adds a detail that shapes those negotiations: a registered bidder who buys within two business days of an unsuccessful auction has no cooling-off period, while a sale agreed later than that does carry one.
How the coasts and the capitals compared
Cotality also reports the two largest regional auction markets in Queensland. The Gold Coast was close to Brisbane's level. The Sunshine Coast was higher, on a much smaller number of auctions.
| Market | Auctions held | Early rate | Final rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gold Coast | 50 | 33.3% | 32.0% |
| Sunshine Coast | 23 | 44.4% | 43.5% |
| Combined capital cities | 1,175 | 51.1% | 47.3% |
Source: Cotality preliminary summary (8 June 2026) and final results (11 June 2026). The combined capitals figure is a weighted average.
On the Gold Coast, 16 of 50 auctions sold. On the Sunshine Coast, 10 of 23 did. With 23 auctions, the Sunshine Coast figure moves by more than four percentage points for each additional sale, so it is best read alongside other weeks and not alone. For reference, Cotality's table shows Newcastle and Lake Macquarie in New South Wales at 58.8 per cent, from 10 sales in 17 auctions.
Across the capitals, 1,175 homes went under the hammer, 55.8 per cent fewer than the week before because of the King's Birthday long weekend in most states, and 14.4 per cent fewer than the 1,373 held in the same week of 2025.
The combined capitals' final clearance rate eased to 47.3 per cent from 49.0 per cent. Cotality notes it is the second week in a row below 50 per cent and well under the decade average of 64 per cent. Sydney was the one large market to improve on the week before, rising from 46.5 to 48.9 per cent. Melbourne fell from 51.9 to 47.4 per cent and Adelaide from 59.5 to 55.7 per cent.
Related readCash rate rises to 4.60 per cent in the middle of Brisbane's springWhy bidders are holding back
Cotality links the softer results to confidence. It points to the Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment index, which fell almost 3 per cent in June, and to the survey's house price expectations measure, which dropped 14.9 per cent in the month.
The survey itself, released on 9 June and conducted from 1 to 5 June, puts the headline index at 80.6, down from 83.0 in May. Its house price expectations index stands at 128.2, which the release describes as the first reading below the long-run average of 130 in nearly three years. The Queensland component fell 15 per cent to 141, so respondents in this state still expect prices to rise on balance, only far less confidently than a month ago.
Two other readings in the survey bear on auctions. Its index of mortgage rate expectations eased 4.8 per cent to 172.6, a level at which roughly two thirds of respondents still expect rates to rise over the coming year. And its "time to buy a dwelling" index rose 12.6 per cent to 81.1 from a weak 72.0 in May, which remains well under the 100 mark where optimists and pessimists balance.
Borrowing costs are part of the background. The Reserve Bank of Australia has raised the cash rate target three times this year, starting with a move from 3.60 to 3.85 per cent on 3 February and most lately from 4.10 to 4.35 per cent on 5 May. Its published schedule shows the Monetary Policy Board meeting next on 15 and 16 June. A bid at a Queensland auction cannot be made subject to finance, the state government's buyer guidance notes, so a bidder's limit has to be settled before the day and every rate rise lowers it.
Related readSelling at auction in Queensland: the seller's choices and the law's rulesCotality describes the combined capitals' clearance rate as having been on a steady downtrend since late February. It stood at 55.3 per cent in the week ending 3 May and had slipped to 49.0 per cent by the end of that month.
None of this measures prices, and auctions are a minority of Queensland sales. What the figures show is narrower and still useful: in the first week of June, sellers who chose auction and the buyers who turned up agreed on a price less often than at any point since mid-2020.
The comparison with 2020 needs one qualification. The low of 33.3 per cent in the week ending 7 June 2020 was recorded in the first winter of the pandemic. This week's figure comes from an ordinary trading week, with no public holiday in Queensland and 135 auctions held in the normal way.
More auctions booked for the coming week
Sellers have not left the method. Cotality's preview for the week ending 14 June lists 146 Brisbane auctions, 8.1 per cent more than the week just counted and 15.0 per cent more than the same week a year earlier. It is the largest year-on-year rise in volume among the larger capitals.
Nationally, 2,192 homes are scheduled as the southern states return from the long weekend, 86.6 per cent more than last week and almost exactly level with a year ago. Melbourne has 940 on its list and Sydney 898. Sydney's count is 8.3 per cent above the same week of 2025, while Melbourne's is 7.7 per cent below it.
Cotality's preliminary results for that week are due on Monday 15 June.
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.
