Market Update - August #2
Best Auction Week in 17. Biggest Listing Surge in a Year.
Two numbers landed within days of each other this month, and together they tell buyers on the Lower North Shore almost everything they need to know heading into the second half of the year. Sydney’s auction clearance rate climbed to 53.3% for the week ending 26 July – its strongest result in 17 weeks. At the same time, SQM Research recorded Sydney property listings 28% above year-ago levels, the strongest stock levels the city has seen in more than a year, with asking prices softening as supply outpaces demand. The RBA’s board meets this week, on 10-11 August, and a hold at 4.35% is now the near-universal expectation. Confidence is returning. Choice has never been broader. And the rate picture has, for the moment, stopped being the story.
THE MARKET FINALLY CAUGHT UP
Two weeks ago we noted that the auction market had not yet caught up to the improved inflation outlook – Sydney had just posted a four-week low of 42.4%. It has now caught up, decisively. The clearance rate climbed 10.9 percentage points to 53.3% for the week ending 26 July, Sydney’s best result in 17 weeks and the strongest of any capital city that week. The national weighted average rose to 49.7%, an eight-week high, even as auction volumes remained well below year-ago levels.
This is precisely the pattern we flagged: sentiment moves with a lag behind the underlying data, and once it moves, it tends to move quickly. Buyers who were sitting on the sidelines waiting for rate certainty appear to have started re-engaging as soon as the June CPI print took a further hike off the table. That is a meaningful shift after nine consecutive weeks of sub-50% clearance rates – but it is not, on its own, the signal to stop paying attention. The reason sits in the second number.
“A 17-week-best clearance rate tells you buyer confidence has turned a corner. It doesn’t tell you the negotiating window has closed – not with the amount of stock that’s come onto the market behind it. If anything, this is the moment to be moving with intent, before that confidence catches up to the choice that’s now available.”
GERARD MAZAR
Director, Mazar Martin Buyers Advisory
THE LISTING FLOOD BEHIND THE REBOUND
While auction sentiment has improved, the total pool of properties on the market has grown even faster. SQM Research recorded Sydney listings up 6.6% for the month of July alone, taking total stock to 39,400 properties – 28% above July 2025 and the city’s strongest listing levels in over a year. Nationally, total stock rose 12.4% in a single month to just under 279,000 dwellings, a 22.8% annual increase that SQM’s research director described as giving buyers considerably more choice than they have had for some time.
The composition of that stock matters as much as the total. Properties listed for more than 180 days rose 6.6% across Sydney in July, meaning a meaningful share of the increased choice on offer is vendors who have already run one campaign without success and are trying again, or persisting through a longer sale than they anticipated. Combined capital city asking prices eased around 1% over the month as supply outpaced buyer demand – and auction listings specifically remain roughly 20% below year-ago levels even as total stock surges, confirming that vendors continue to prefer private treaty campaigns over testing the auction system directly.
“What we’re looking at right now is a genuinely unusual combination: buyer confidence recovering at the same time as vendor choice is expanding faster than it has in over a year. That doesn’t happen often, and it doesn’t last. Normally one side of that equation corrects the other pretty quickly. On the Lower North Shore, where the stock increase has been more modest than the Sydney-wide average, that combination is particularly favourable for a buyer who moves now rather than waiting to see which way it resolves.”
JEREMY MARTIN
Director, Mazar Martin Buyers Advisory – Buyers Agents, Lower North Shore
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THIS WEEK’S RBA DECISION – AND WHAT ACTUALLY MATTERS NOW
The Reserve Bank’s board meets on 10-11 August, and after three hikes across February, March and May followed by a hold in June, a further hold at 4.35% is the position economists and comparison services alike are expecting. That expectation is now largely priced into buyer and vendor behaviour – which is exactly why the auction clearance rebound and the listings surge are the more important signals for Lower North Shore buyers this month, not the RBA decision itself. Some economists continue to flag the possibility of one more hike before year end if inflation reaccelerates, but that is a scenario for the final quarter of 2026, not this week’s meeting.
For buyers across Mosman, Cremorne, Neutral Bay, Cammeray and Lane Cove, the practical takeaway is that the rate story has stabilised while the market story is still moving. A returning auction clearance rate combined with the broadest listing choice in over a year is a combination that typically does not persist much past the point buyers collectively notice it. SQM Research’s own view is that further supply increases are likely as the market moves into spring, which should keep negotiating conditions favourable for buyers through the next several months – but the sharpest opportunities tend to sit in the gap before that broader recognition sets in, which is where the market sits right now.
Gerard Mazar
DIRECTOR · MAZAR MARTIN BUYERS ADVISORY
Specialist buyers agent on Sydney’s Lower North Shore with deep expertise across Mosman, Neutral Bay, Cremorne, and the wider harbourside market including suburbs surrounding Willoughby to Chatswood.
Jeremy Martin
DIRECTOR · MAZAR MARTIN BUYERS ADVISORY
Specialist buyers agent on Sydney’s Lower North Shore with deep expertise across Mosman to Cremorne, but also Lane Cove, Cammeray, Crows Nest. His work is built on daily market intelligence and long-standing agent relationships.
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