Twelve months ago, a well-priced house in Perth was typically under offer in about a week and a half. The median is now 26 days. Brisbane has gone from 17 to 38.
If you got into real estate in either city in the last five or six years, there’s a fair chance you’ve never had a campaign run past a month. You probably haven’t had to ring a vendor on day 30 and explain why the phone’s gone quiet. A lot of Agents are having that call for the first time this spring.
Plenty of Agents have worked through slow markets before, and what got them through can be learned. Below is a practical look at what’s different now, and what to do about your pipeline, your vendors and your own head.
What’s actually changed
Buyers are still out there. After four rate rises this year, they’ve got more to choose from and less to spend, so they take longer to commit.
| Market | Median days on market, a year ago | Median days on market, now | Total listings, change over the year |
| Brisbane | 17 | 38 | +60.4% |
| Perth | 11 | 26 | +64.7% |
| National | 26 | 41 | +19.1% |
Source: Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, October 2026, four weeks to 11 October.
The discount figure is the one to watch. Capital city vendors are taking a median 4.4% off, which Cotality says is the highest in five years. Brisbane’s preliminary clearance rate dropped to 25.6% on the first weekend of October (Real Estate Business).
On the ground you’ll probably see fewer offers per campaign, and more of them with conditions. Buyers come through twice, then disappear. And many vendors are still pricing off what next door got 18 months ago.
Your pipeline needs to be bigger than you think
When homes sell in a week and a half, you can get away with a thin pipeline. Stretch that to five or six weeks and each listing takes up more of your time, and the commission lands a month or so later than you’re used to. Most Agents don’t feel the squeeze until two or three months in, and by then it’s harder to fix.
Start with your own numbers. Whatever your appraisal-to-listing rate was in 2024, it’s probably lower now, because more vendors are getting an appraisal and then sitting on it. Pull your last 90 days, count how many appraisals it actually took to win each listing, and set this quarter’s targets off that.
Then make prospecting a daily habit, not something you do when the board looks empty. Put an hour in the diary each morning for calls and door-knocking and guard it like a listing appointment. If you wait until you’re short of stock, you’re already six weeks behind.
Don’t forget who’s already in your database
Nationally, new listings are running 11.9% below the five-year average. Owners who’d normally sell are holding off. They’re next year’s vendors, and the appraisal usually goes to whoever kept in touch: past appraisals, buyers who missed out, owners in your patch. We’ve written about follow-up habits that win deals if you want ideas that don’t sound like a form letter.
Be careful which listings you take
When you’re keen for stock, agreeing to the vendor’s number is tempting. For the last few years, a rising market often covered for it. It won’t now. An overpriced home sits on the portals for weeks with your name on the board, and buyers notice. If you lose one to an Agent who quoted high, stay in touch with the vendor. A fair few of those come back.
Talk to your vendors more, not less
When a campaign drags, most of us want to wait until there’s good news before we call. Vendors don’t see it that way. To them, silence usually means you’ve moved on to your other listings.
The easiest fix happens before the campaign starts. At the appraisal, tell the vendor what a campaign in their area looks like right now. If the local median is 38 days, show them the figure. Someone who expects five weeks stays calm in week four. Someone who was hoping for one week starts ringing your Principal on day ten.
Once you’re live, send an update at the same time every week, good week or bad. Keep it short: enquiries, inspection numbers, what buyers said, and what you’re changing. Quote the feedback as buyers said it where you can. “Loved the kitchen, but we can’t get past the main road” lands harder than your paraphrase, and it starts the price conversation for you.
It also helps to lock in a review date before launch, usually somewhere near the local median. Then a talk about price is something you both agreed to, not a surprise. Our guide to repricing without losing vendor confidence walks through how to run that meeting.
One more thing. The weekly report can go by email, but a low offer or a price conversation needs a phone call at the very least. Vendors remember how you handled a tough campaign, and they’ll tell their friends about it one way or the other.
Look after your own headspace
No one runs a training session on this bit. If your confidence was built on quick results, a slow patch can start to feel like a verdict on you. Keep the bigger picture in view: about 21% fewer homes sold nationally in September than a year earlier. Every Agent in the country has fewer deals to go around.
What helps most is judging yourself on the things you can control. You can’t make a buyer decide faster. You can decide how many calls you make, how many appraisals you book and whether every follow-up goes out on time. Set weekly targets for those and track them. The results still come, they just take longer to show up than they used to.
Talk to the older hands in your office too. Most agencies have someone who sold through 2008, the Sydney and Melbourne correction in 2017 to 2019 or Perth’s long flat stretch after the mining boom. Ask them what they changed. Most will be happy to be asked, and you’ll pick up things no course covers.
And be practical about money. Longer campaigns push commission further out. If your spending is set around what you earned in a hot market, it’s worth looking at now, not when the gap arrives.
Slow markets show who’s doing the work
When everything sells, it’s hard to tell a good Agent from a lucky one. It’s much easier now. The habits you build over the next six months will still pay off when the market picks up, and the vendors you treated well in a hard campaign are the ones who’ll call you first.
Most of this comes down to staying in touch with a lot of people for a long time. That’s hard to manage with your memory and a spreadsheet. Grow CRM keeps contacts, inspection feedback and nurture workflows in one place, so follow-ups go out on time and you’ve got more hours for the phone.