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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →New listings of homes for sale across Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide were 17 per cent higher in the September quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, while Sydney and Melbourne together recorded 16 per cent fewer. REA Group, which owns the country's most visited property portal, gave the figures to shareholders at its annual general meeting on 8 October 2026 and lodged them with the Australian Securities Exchange the same morning.
The meeting was the first for chief executive Cameron McIntyre, who took the role in November 2025. Alongside the market update, he and chairman Hamish McLennan set out how many people use the company's sites, what its new artificial intelligence features do, and where it has been buying into other technology businesses. For Queensland agents, whose listings and marketing budgets run through the portal, the document is the most detailed public account of what the platform is building.
REA Group market update, 8 October 2026. PropTrack new listings for sale, July to September 2026 against the same quarter of 2025.
A market moving at two speeds
The company counts new "Buy" listings, meaning homes newly advertised for sale, through its data arm PropTrack, and compares each quarter with the same quarter a year before. It reports three lines: the national total, Sydney and Melbourne together, and Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide together. Brisbane is not reported on its own.
| Quarter | National | Sydney and Melbourne | Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide |
|---|---|---|---|
| October to December 2025 | -3% | +5% | -14% |
| January to March 2026 | +1% | +6% | -6% |
| April to June 2026 | +11% | +8% | +17% |
| July to September 2026 | -2% | -16% | +17% |
REA Group annual general meeting presentation, 8 October 2026, from PropTrack national new Buy listings.
The table shows a reversal inside a single year. At the end of 2025, owners in the two largest cities were listing more homes than the year before and owners in the three smaller capitals were listing fewer. By the middle of 2026 the smaller capitals had swung to strong growth, and in the latest quarter Sydney and Melbourne fell away sharply while Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide held their 17 per cent rise.
Related readThe software inside a real estate agency, and what trust law asksMr McIntyre described it as a two-speed market, with the smaller capitals offsetting quieter conditions in Sydney and Melbourne. The national fall of 2 per cent was, he said, in line with the guidance the company gave with its full-year result, and listing volumes remain comparable with long-term averages.
A rise in new listings is a count of homes coming to market. It says nothing by itself about whether they sell. More homes listed in a quarter can reflect owners who are confident of a sale as much as owners who need to sell.
What the chief executive said about prices
The market update included a short outlook. Mr McIntyre told the meeting that further price falls were likely over the coming months, as the interest rate rise at the end of September, tax changes and the cumulative effect of higher borrowing costs weigh on buyer demand. He set against that resilient employment, limited forced selling, the equity most owners hold in their homes and a constrained supply of housing, which he said should put a floor under the falls.
"Interest rates are the biggest factor contributing to market uncertainty at the moment," he said.
He added that the company expects consumer confidence to improve and buyer activity to pick up as interest rates stabilise. These are the views of a company whose revenue depends on listing volumes, given to its shareholders, and they are an expectation, not a forecast with a figure attached.
How many people use the portal
The size of the audience is the reason the portal matters to agents, and the company restated its figures for the year to June 2026, all measured by the Ipsos iris audience service.
Related readVirtual tours, 3D models and floor plans: accuracy and the lawREA Group annual general meeting presentation, citing Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, people aged 14 and over, yearly averages.
The company said its monthly audience was 5.2 million people larger than that of its nearest competitor, and that nine in ten Australians who visited any residential property site visited its own. Visitors made an average of 146.4 million visits a month and spent an average of 36.4 minutes each on the site.
Behind the audience sits a membership base of logged-in users, which grew 14 per cent in the year. Owners were tracking 5.2 million properties through the platform by June 2026, up 15 per cent, buyer enquiries averaged 2.5 million a month, up 8 per cent, and the number of seller leads passed to agents rose 22 per cent. All of those are the company's internal figures.
Its commercial property site also grew, to an average of 2.9 million visitors a month from 1.9 million the year before.
What the AI features do, by the company's numbers
The meeting gave a usage figure for the portal's AI Assistant, a feature that lets logged-in members ask questions in plain language while they search: about a property, about what they can afford, or to compare homes. According to the presentation, 21 per cent of AI Assistant sessions between 11 June and 30 July 2026 led to what the company calls a high-value action. The presentation does not define the term. Mr McIntyre said the aim is for the assistant to deliver more valuable leads to agents.
On the agent side, the company began rolling out a feature called Campaign Assist in the June quarter. It sits inside Ignite, the self-service platform agents use to manage their advertising, and uses search behaviour and automated valuation data to recommend ways to lift a listing's performance. Average monthly active users of Ignite rose 17 per cent over the year.
Related readWhere sold prices come from: Queensland's sales data and its limitsThe company's mortgage broking arm, Mortgage Choice, reported that half of its brokers now use AI agents to automate parts of their work, and that a search tool for lender policy saves up to four hours on a complex query. Home loan settlements that began as leads from the portal rose 30 per cent.
Several of the figures concern paid products. Agents who hold the company's top subscription tier received 88 per cent more seller leads in calendar 2025 than agents without it, the presentation says, and the number of customers on that tier more than doubled in the year to June. The comparison is the company's own and does not adjust for the size or activity of the agencies that choose the tier.
A portal's audience and its listings feed each other, which is why the number of homes coming to market each quarter matters as much to the company as its software does.
The 3D tours and the Brisbane link
Part of the strategy is what the company calls immersive experiences. In October 2025 it bought 61.5 per cent of Planitar, the Canadian maker of the iGUIDE camera system, which produces 3D tours and measured floor plans. The meeting heard that 180 of the cameras reached the Australian market in the year to June 2026 and that uploads of the tours are accelerating.
The company also increased its investment in IMMERSIV, a 3D visualisation business that the trade publication Startup Daily describes as Brisbane-based. Its software lets buyers walk through off-the-plan apartments and masterplanned estates on screen before anything is built.
An April 2025 survey of the portal's audience, cited in the presentation, found one buyer in three saying video and 3D tours made them more likely to inspect a home.
Related readACCC accepts REA undertaking: agencies need not list every propertyThree other purchases were listed: a minority stake in BeforeYouBuy, a marketplace for property due diligence reports; Neighbourlytics, an Australian neighbourhood data business; and 70 per cent of Simplicity, a brokerage that specialises in commercial lending.
The company behind the numbers
The financial results were restated for shareholders. For the year to 30 June 2026, revenue from core operations rose 7 per cent to $1.79 billion, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose 12 per cent to $1.09 billion, and net profit rose 15 per cent to $650 million. The full-year dividend was $2.97 a share, up 20 per cent, and the company completed a $200 million share buyback. Over the ten years to 2026, Mr McLennan said, revenue grew by an average of 11 per cent a year and earnings by 12 per cent.
The company also reported on a foundation it launched with the property industry during the year to support people made homeless by domestic and family violence. In its first year the foundation raised $1 million, which went to four organisations working in that field.
Mr McLennan told the meeting the share price during the year had reflected market caution about AI, seen globally, together with harder conditions in the Australian property market after consecutive interest rate rises and tax changes.
Abroad, the company agreed in July 2026 to sell its remaining Indian business to Aurum PropTech, lifting its holding in that company to 24.9 per cent. In the week before the meeting it announced an agreement to buy 35 per cent of Distilled, which operates the leading residential property portal in Ireland. That purchase needs regulatory approval and is expected to complete before the end of 2026.
On the board, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin is retiring after nearly five years as a director and Sally Bruce, whose background is in financial services, joins in November.
What comes next
REA Group will publish its financial results for the September quarter in November. It will be the first financial reading of a quarter in which Sydney and Melbourne listings fell and those of Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide rose.
For Queensland, the next listing figures will show whether the three smaller capitals can hold a 17 per cent rise for a third quarter. Mr McIntyre told the meeting that vendors had continued to bring their properties to market despite the tax changes, global events and rate rises weighing on sentiment.
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.
