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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Almost a quarter of the homes booked for auction across Australia's capital cities last week never reached auction day. Cotality's preliminary results, released on Monday 22 June, show about 23.6 per cent of the 1,869 auctions scheduled for the week ending 21 June were withdrawn.
In Brisbane, 142 auctions were held and the early clearance rate was 33.3 per cent. Cotality says it is the fifth week in a row that the city's preliminary rate has been below 50 per cent.
Source: Cotality preliminary auction results for the week ending 21 June 2026, released 22 June 2026.
Withdrawals at an unusual level
A withdrawn auction is one the seller cancels before the day. The home may have been taken off the market, moved to a private treaty sale with an asking price, or held back for another time.
The share is high by the standards of this month alone. In Cotality's final figures for the week ending 7 June, 164 of 1,175 capital city auctions were withdrawn, or 14.0 per cent. In the final figures for the week ending 14 June, published on 18 June, 345 of 2,095 were, or 16.5 per cent. Those are final counts and last week's is preliminary, so they are not a like-for-like set, but the step up to 23.6 per cent is large.
Cotality's summary reads the number as a sign of sellers' caution. It says vendors appear unwilling to test the market under auction conditions, and reports that 48 per cent of the homes recorded as sold changed hands before the auction took place. Taken together, the two figures describe a week in which a good deal of the business was settled, one way or the other, before any bidding opened.
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- The auction is scheduledThe home is advertised with an auction date and enters the week's count.
- The seller withdraws itThe auction is cancelled before the day. No bidding takes place.
- It is counted as a resultCotality includes withdrawn auctions among known results, beside passed-in ones. Unless the home sold beforehand, it adds to the unsold side.
Cotality describes its rate as the number of properties known to have sold before, at or after auction, set against all known auction results, including passed-in and withdrawn auctions. A week with many withdrawals therefore produces a lower clearance rate even if the auctions that did go ahead performed as usual.
A national low not seen since April 2020
That is part of what happened last week. The combined capitals' preliminary clearance rate fell to 47.4 per cent, from 616 sales among 1,298 results, the lowest since April 2020. Cotality notes the early rate has held below 60 per cent in 10 of the past 12 weeks, and that this is the first time it has dropped under 50 per cent since the early months of the pandemic.
Volume fell as well. The 1,869 auctions were 10.8 per cent fewer than the week before and 6.7 per cent fewer than in the same week of 2025.
| City | Auctions | Results collected | Early clearance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melbourne | 910 | 609 | 50.6% |
| Sydney | 645 | 475 | 47.4% |
| Brisbane | 142 | 108 | 33.3% |
| Adelaide | 91 | 50 | 40.0% |
| Canberra | 65 | 51 | 47.1% |
Source: Cotality, Property Market Indicator Summary, week ending 21 June 2026. Perth held 16 auctions and Tasmania none.
Each of the three largest southern markets set a marker of its own. Cotality describes Sydney's figure as its lowest early result since the week ending 19 April 2020, Melbourne's as its lowest since September 2021 and Adelaide's as its lowest since May 2020. Melbourne had recorded 57.6 per cent a week earlier and Sydney 52.8 per cent.
Preliminary figures are usually revised once late results come in. Last week gave a measure of the distance: the combined capitals' early 54.0 per cent for the week ending 14 June became a final 48.3 per cent on Thursday 18 June, which Cotality called the second lowest result of the year. The firm's four-week average of final rates stood at 48.9 per cent, down from 53.2 per cent in the previous four-week period. The final rate for the week ending 21 June is due on Thursday 25 June.
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Brisbane's 33.3 per cent, from 36 sales among 108 results, follows a better reading a week earlier, when the preliminary rate was 42.0 per cent. It is close to the low point of the month: the early rate for the week ending 7 June was 31.9 per cent, and Cotality notes last week's result was slightly above that.
The number of auctions held was almost unchanged, at 142 against 144 on the previous Monday's count, and 6.6 per cent below the same week of 2025. Brisbane sellers are still booking auctions at a steady pace. It is the share ending in a sale that keeps moving, up by about 10 percentage points one week and down by almost nine the next.
Swings of that size are partly a matter of scale. With fewer than 150 auctions, and 34 of them not reported by Monday, a dozen results either way shift the rate by several points. One weak week does not establish a new level, and neither did one stronger week.
The previous week also shows that Brisbane's early figure is no longer being revised upward as it was at the start of June. The 42.0 per cent first reported for the week ending 14 June finished at 39.4 per cent, with 56 of 142 auctions sold.
The Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast
The two coasts went in different directions. The Gold Coast held 44 auctions, and only eight of the 34 results collected were sales, an early clearance rate of 23.5 per cent. A week earlier its early figure had been 36.8 per cent and its final figure 31.5 per cent, from 17 sales in 54 auctions.
Related readSelling at auction in Queensland: the seller's choices and the law's rulesThe Sunshine Coast held 30 auctions. Eight of its 18 reported results were sales, or 44.4 per cent, compared with a final 34.6 per cent the week before. Twelve results were still to come, so that figure is especially provisional.
Weakness in regional auction markets was not confined to Queensland. Cotality's summary shows Newcastle and Lake Macquarie in New South Wales at 29.4 per cent, from five sales among 17 results.
What a withdrawal can mean for a seller
A withdrawal is a decision, not a failed sale. Some homes are withdrawn because an acceptable offer arrived before the day. Under Cotality's method those count as sold. Others are withdrawn because interest during the campaign was thin and the seller preferred not to test the reserve in public.
In Queensland the choice has a practical side. The Queensland Government's guidance for buyers states that it is illegal for a seller or agent to give a price guide for a property being sold at auction, although a comparative market analysis may be handed over with the seller's approval. A home that moves from auction to private treaty can be advertised with a price, which changes the conversation with buyers who were unsure where the seller stood.
The change of method also changes the buyer's position. The same guidance says an auction purchase is unconditional and carries no cooling-off period, and that this still applies to a registered bidder who buys within two business days of an unsuccessful auction. A private treaty contract can include conditions such as finance. Buyers who would not bid without that protection can make an offer once the auction is off the table, which widens the field for a seller whose campaign drew interest but few registered bidders.
The figures cannot separate those cases. They show that in the third week of June an unusually large number of sellers who had planned an auction decided, before the day, to do something else. They do not show what those homes sold for, or whether they have sold since. Queensland is also not broken out: the 23.6 per cent is a figure for the combined capitals, and Cotality's preliminary summary does not give a withdrawal share for Brisbane alone.
One Brisbane number points the same way without settling the matter. Cotality's preview of 18 June listed about 150 auctions scheduled in the city for the week, broadly in line with the 152 held a year earlier. Monday's count shows 142. Scheduled and held counts are compiled at different times and seldom match exactly, so the gap of roughly eight is an indication, not a tally of withdrawals.
What is scheduled next
Cotality expects auction numbers to keep easing. Around 1,800 capital city auctions are scheduled this week and fewer than 1,500 the week after, which the firm puts down partly to the season and partly to weaker selling conditions.
The week ending 21 June was also the first full auction week after the Reserve Bank of Australia left the cash rate target at 4.35 per cent on 16 June. One week of results is too little to read anything into that.
Cotality's final clearance rates for the week ending 21 June, including the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, are due on Thursday.
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.
