Australia’s appetite for real estate has ‘diminished’

July 27, 2026

With the country’s auction market slumping for two consecutive months and clearance rates below 50%, leading Sydney auctioneer Tom Panos has delivered his most pessimistic assessment yet, claiming Saturday’s auction in Sydney was the worst of his career, which spans 30 years.

“Today was the worst auction day of my real estate auction career”Panos said in his Saturday evening wrap. “I’ve been auctioning for 30 years. Today was the worst. Zero out of six”.

“But that’s not the metric that’s going to worry you. I’ll tell you what the metric is that’s going to worry you. I didn’t have a single person register to bid. Do you understand?”

“Not a single registration, not one person even said to themselves, you know what? There are some deals. I can go in and see what’s actually going on… No one has registered. I’ve never done that,” he said.

Panos warned that zero registrations suggested that the appetite for real estate had died down:

“Getting zero registrations is a clear sign. It basically says that the appetite for property has died down. And the only people who seem to be transacting are the people,” he said.

Panos also warned that if the Reserve Bank raises interest rates next month, it will give the market another hammer blow.

“God help us on August 11” He said in connection with the next monetary meeting of the Reserve Bank. “We certainly don’t need rate hikes in the real estate market”.

“If we have a rate hike in August and we have more inventory coming into the spring, then there should be more easing in prices.”

“We’re going to have an increase in stocks in the spring. We’re going to have a rate increase. And that’s basically going to mean that the supply and demand equation is going to help it even more in a buyer’s market,” he said. Panos warned.

Finally, Panos warned that a drop in sales volume would hurt real estate agents, state budgets, and others connected to the real estate industry.

Australia’s appetite for real estate has ‘diminished’

Source: Cotality

“I’ve got to tell you, don’t worry about the real estate agents… they’re going broke, why? Because the volume of stories is down about 40 percent,” he said. Panos said.

“Prices don’t bother me nearly as much as volume. Volume actually affects people dramatically. It affects people who are working in these services, removalists, renovators, lawyers, vehicles, furniture places.”

“But let me tell you who is affected the most. Think about it. 25% of our state government revenue comes from stamp duty… state government revenue has just been broken”, Panos warned.

Panos announced this while removing his wrap. “Australia is entering new territory and very scary territory”.

Louis Christopher, founder of SQM Research, noted on Twitter (X). “When you have leading Sydney agents describing their worst auction day in 30 years, you know the housing market is in dire straits,” he said. Rising spring inventories and the possibility of another rate hike are bad omens for the market, he added.

The aforementioned testimony from Tom Panos and Louis Christopher confirms why I believe Australia is witnessing the deepest house price correction in 40 years.

The coefficient is declining from the peak.

Source: Cotality

For those who believe Australia is safe for a deep housing correction, I recommend looking to New Zealand, which has a banking system similar to Australia’s and has seen real house prices fall to early 2018 levels: