Market update
Inner East Property Market
September 2026
September was a harder month to be a seller, and there is no sense pretending otherwise. Brisbane sales volumes are down more than 20 per cent on last year, and the city's auction clearance rate has sat below 50 per cent in 18 of the past 19 weeks.
Homes are still selling. What has changed is that the campaign now decides the result. Our in-room auctions at The Calile cleared 80 per cent in September, against a city running closer to 30. The gap is not luck.
At a glance
What actually changed
The buying frenzy is over. Cotality has Brisbane sales volumes tracking more than 20 per cent below last year, which puts the city among the sharpest transaction contractions in the country. Brisbane remains the second most expensive capital in Australia, with a median dwelling value of $1,080,142.
Cotality's head of research Tim Lawless put it plainly: volumes are "tracking well below both year-ago levels and the five-year average, which points to a clear reduction in buyer demand."
Brisbane has cleared below 50 per cent in 18 of the past 19 weeks. In a market like that, the campaign behind a home matters more than it has in years.
Why the campaign now decides the result
REIQ chief executive Antonia Mercorella described the shift better than I could. Agents, she said, are reporting "a return to traditional, old-fashioned real estate with more rounded campaigns, more due diligence being undertaken and longer days on market."
That is the whole story of September. When buyers were queuing, almost any campaign worked. Now the pool is smaller and more hesitant, and the difference between a good process and a lazy one shows up directly in the price.
We are an auction agency, and in a market like this that matters more, not less. A properly run auction campaign puts every interested buyer in one room on one day and makes them compete in front of each other. It sets a deadline in a market where buyers otherwise have no reason to hurry, and it surfaces the real price rather than negotiating down from a number nobody believed.
Our in-room campaigns at The Calile cleared 80 per cent in September, in a city averaging closer to 30. Same buyers, same month, same conditions.
Featured · 4 Satellite Street, Coorparoo
Eighty groups through the door in a market where most listings struggle to hold attention for three weekends.
4 bed · 3 bath · 2 car · 600m² · Auction Saturday 10 October
Eighty inspections is a number that would be respectable in a hot market. In this one it is the clearest evidence I have that demand has not disappeared, it has concentrated. Buyers are still out there and still motivated. They are simply being far more selective about which homes are worth their Saturday.
The campaign goes to auction on Saturday 10 October. For anyone weighing up their own timing, watch what happens on the day. It will tell you more about the state of the inner east than any median figure.
September results
A selection of what transacted across the inner east through September.
September's strongest result in the group, and on one of the smaller blocks. At the top of the market, buyers are paying for the finished product rather than the land under it.
A 350m² block clearing $2.27M says the Camp Hill premium is holding. Smaller land, strong price, and a reminder that position inside the suburb still carries more weight than size.
610m² with four bedrooms and three bathrooms. Compare it against Grant Street: nearly double the land for $170,000 less. That spread is the clearest illustration of what the market is currently paying for.
A three-bedroom, one-bathroom home on 597m². Priced as a land and renovation play rather than a finished home, and still comfortably past $1.5M. The floor under inner-east land has not moved.
| Address | Beds | Land | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 83 Elliot Street, Hawthorne | 5 | 405m² | $2,715,000 |
| 16 Grant Street, Camp Hill | 4 | 350m² | $2,270,000 |
| 60 Burn Street, Camp Hill | 4 | 610m² | $2,100,000 |
| 14 Strangman Terrace, Coorparoo | 3 | 597m² | $1,550,000 |
What it means
Fewer homes are selling across Brisbane this year than last. That is simply true, and any agent telling you otherwise is managing you rather than informing you. But the homes that sell well are still selling very well, and the gap between those two outcomes is wider than it has been in years.
What separates them is not luck or timing. It is a price the market believes on day one, a campaign that reaches every buyer rather than the easy ones, and a deadline that forces a decision. Satellite Street pulled 80 groups because the campaign was built to do that.
If you are considering selling before Christmas, the window is narrowing and the margin for error has gone. A home that sat on the market for six weeks in 2024 and still sold will not get the same forgiveness now.
Thinking about selling in the inner east?
I can give you a confidential view of your home's current value, what buyer demand actually looks like right now, and the campaign approach I would recommend. Yours to keep, whether you sell or not.
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