July has seen Sydney’s house price downturn steepen, with Cotality reporting a 0.5% decline in values over the past seven days.
The rolling 28-day change in Sydney has worsened, with values falling 1.4% – the steepest rate of decline in this cycle.
Meanwhile, Sydney’s peak-to-trough value decline is now 5.1%, according to Cotality, and at this pace would hit double digits before the end of 2026.
The above data from Cotality helps explain why leading Sydney auctioneer and agent Tom Panos labelled the current market the worst he has seen in his 30 years in real estate.
“Today was the worst auction day of my real estate auction career”, Panos said in last weekend’s wrap. “I’ve been doing auctions for 30 years. Today was the worst. Zero out of six”.
“Not one registration, not one person even said to themselves, you know what? There’s a few bargains out there. I might go in and just see what’s actually happening… No one registered. I’ve never ever had that”.
“To get zero registrations is a clear sign. It essentially has said the appetite for real estate is gone. And the only people that seem to be transacting are the must-have people”, Panos said.
Buyer demand has evaporated, with final auction clearance rates in Sydney averaging only 47% over the past eleven weeks.
The only good news for the market is that Wednesday’s softer-than-expected trimmed mean inflation in June suggested that the Reserve Bank will remain on hold for now.
