What Your Vendor Doesn't Know Yet

Vendors have lowered their price expectations, but buyers have lowered theirs further, so asking prices still sit above what buyers will pay. Louis Christopher (SQM Research) put it as vendors taking one step back while buyers take two. Tom Panos says the choice is to price where a buyer will act now, or join the stale listings competing for a shrinking pool of buyers. For a vendor who doesn’t trust the agent’s read, he suggests an independent registered valuation.

Waiting is rarely free, because the vendor’s own costs don’t wait. Tom Panos points out that buyers’ borrowing capacity drops with every rate rise, and vendors who held out earlier in the year are now chasing the market down. Louis Christopher expects more buyers in February after the holiday break, which happens seasonally even in weak markets. He was clear that this means a little better than now, not a turnaround.

Tell the vendor the truth, and sell your process rather than a price. Tom Panos’s view is that vendors already know the market is hard, because they see it on their phone every few hours. He suggests calling the vendor’s number ambitious rather than impossible, and showing the comparable sales. Make it clear that if a buyer at that price exists, you’ll find them, because no agent owns a buyer. Where trust is the sticking point, he suggests the vendor get an independent registered valuation.

Auctions still work, but in this market many are being used as a deadline to get a hesitant buyer to decide, rather than to create competitive bidding. If buyers keep inspecting but won’t commit, that deadline is the tool. Tom Panos says some agents now list for auction without ever booking an auctioneer, aiming to sell before the day. Auctions are also mainly a Sydney and Melbourne method; most Australian sales go by private treaty. Louis Christopher noted a rise in withdrawn and rescheduled auctions, and SQM Research counts a property withdrawn days before auction as passed in.

Rising interest rates and changes to property taxation are the two main drivers, according to Louis Christopher (SQM Research). His clearest example is Gold Coast units, where new supply, rate rises and tax changes hit an investor-heavy market at the same time. As at 30 October 2026, he expected another rate rise at the next RBA meeting, followed by the usual holiday slowdown.

Stay visible and keep calling while competitors pull back. Tom Panos’s maths: if sales volume drops by 30%, an agent with a 10% share needs about 14.3% to keep doing the same number of sales. When volume returns, that share turns 100 sales into 143. His advice is to work expired listings, stale listings and your own database.

Call at 30 days to check they've settled in, again at 3 months to thank them and ask for a referral, then once or twice a year after that, enough to stay front of mind for when they sell again.

A distressed listing is a property advertised with wording that signals pressure to sell, such as bank forced sale, deceased estate, divorce sale, price slashed, must sell now, make an offer, or previously discounted. That is how SQM Research identifies and counts them, according to founder Louis Christopher. As at 30 October 2026, distressed listings were rising in every state shown in the session, with Queensland at about 2,000 and New South Wales at about 1,120, but from a low base and not yet at elevated levels. For agents, a rising count is an early sign of owners who may need to make a decision sooner than they planned.

Yes. Louis Christopher (SQM Research) named Melbourne the best value capital city in Australia as at 30 October 2026, though he was not suggesting anyone rush in. Melbourne rental yields were the highest on SQM’s records. State property taxes there are very high and may change, and higher interest rates are still weighing on the market. His view is that the value will show once rates peak and start to fall, possibly in 2027 or 2028. For Melbourne agents, that is the case to put to buyers and investors waiting on the sidelines.