{"id":809510,"date":"2026-08-11T00:54:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T00:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/809510\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T00:54:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T00:54:19","slug":"rba-interest-rates-brisbane-buyers-agent-flags-property-recession-as-mortgage-holders-hope-for-rate-hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/809510\/","title":{"rendered":"RBA interest rates: Brisbane buyer\u2019s agent flags \u2018property recession\u2019 as mortgage holders hope for rate hold"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of Australia<\/a>\u2018s biggest markets is in a \u201cproperty recession\u201d and even an expected interest rate hold from the Reserve Bank won\u2019t be enough to spark it back to life, a buyers\u2019 agent has claimed.<\/p>\n

Mortgage holders are crossing their fingers the RBA<\/a> has seen enough in better-than-expected inflation figures and dipping housing prices to not slug them with another rate hike on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A buyer\u2019s agent has claimed Brisbane is in a \u201cproperty recession\u201d.\u00a0Domain<\/p>\n

Big banks and market watchers are overwhelmingly predicting the cash rate to hold at 4.35 per cent but real estate figures are increasingly talking doom and gloom when it comes to the effects of rates, inflation and the federal government<\/a>\u2019s tax<\/a> changes on the property market<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Price Buyers Agents founder Glenn Price sent his followers a note on Monday morning declaring \u201cwe\u2019re in a property recession\u201d, flagging months with more than 60 per cent of auctions failing to sell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis weekend I went to seven properties, all between $950k and $1.1m, the kind of price point that used to have buyers lining up like it was free drinks at a nightclub,\u201d the south-east Queensland<\/a>-based agent wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt more than half of them, I was the only one there.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust me and the real estate agent standing around watching tumbleweeds.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a slow market. That\u2019s a market that\u2019s stopped.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Price Buyers Agents founder Glenn Price.\u00a0Price Buyers Agents<\/p>\n

Cotality figures have measured the national auction clearance rate rate \u2013 often used as an early signal of price falls to come \u2013 below 50 per cent for weeks, and Brisbane<\/a> and the Gold Coast<\/a>\u2019s rate has been below 40 per cent since the week ending June 7.<\/p>\n

The provisional Brisbane figure bounced back slightly last week to 38.1 per cent and the national figure hit 55.1 per cent but Price didn\u2019t see signs of any sort of sustained recovery.<\/p>\n

Price, who admitted \u201cproperty recession\u201d was not any sort of officially recognised metric, said he hadn\u2019t seen anything like it in his five or six years as a buyer\u2019s agent.<\/p>\n

He said while a decent chunk of his clients would normally be the first home buyers the government\u2019s negative gearing and capital gains tax changes were meant to help get a foot in the market, he currently didn\u2019t have any on his books.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He argued cost of living and rates were too high for owner-occupiers to take advantage of falling prices, citing fears of ending up with negative equity if their home values fell as a key concern.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, with inflation being what it is, interest rates<\/a> being what they are, and then you have the investors kind of pulling back, and then the auction clearance rates, and then we\u2019ve obviously got you know you can go further,\u201d he told nine.com.au.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got the war<\/a> in Iran<\/a>, and then is there going to be another pandemic?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are just scared at the moment. I see a real freeze on what\u2019s happening at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another downward signal for the property market, Westpac on Monday said home loan applications had fallen by up to 20 per cent<\/a> and predicted investor demand for mortgages would halve in the next two years.<\/p>\n

Home prices across the five biggest capital cities and the Gold Coast have fallen 2.7 per cent from the previous quarter, based on Cotality figures, with most of that in Sydney<\/a> and Melbourne<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sydney is down 2.6 per cent from last year and Melbourne is down 3.3 per cent but prices in Brisbane and the Gold Coast are still 13 per cent higher than this time last year, with Perth<\/a> up 20 per cent and Adelaide<\/a> up 10.4 per cent.<\/p>\n

Political fights continue over how much of the decreases can be blamed on Labor\u2019s controversial reforms to property tax, including scrapping negative gearing and removing capital gains tax exemptions, and how much is caused by external factors such as interest rates and inflation.<\/p>\n

Still, Price worries the RBA\u2019s \u201cnarrow path\u201d of trying to cool inflation without triggering an economic recession \u2013 commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth \u2013 has become like \u201ctrying to land a jumbo jet on a suburban driveway\u201d.<\/p>\n

The RBA will be hoping the target is not quite so narrow when it announces its decision at 2.30pm on Tuesday after two days of meetings.<\/p>\n

While Bullock warned late last month the board was willing to increase the cash rate<\/a> at this upcoming meeting if needed, all signs point to another hold, following three hikes earlier in the year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Michele Bullock.\u00a0Louise Kennerley<\/p>\n

In a Finder survey of 38 economists, 35 of them believed the cash rate would remain unchanged once again, and the Australian Stock Exchange\u2019s RBA Rate Tracker has a 100 per cent prediction of no change.<\/p>\n

But almost half of the experts surveyed admitted they thought rates would rise at least once before the end of 2026.<\/p>\n

Headline inflation cooled from 4.0 to 3.8 per cent in June<\/a>, better news than what economists were expecting, prompting outliers AMP and Westpac to reverse their predictions for an August rate hike and the markets to follow suit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe markets are absolutely and overwhelmingly expecting no change,\u201d The Motley Fool chief investment officer Scott Phillips told 9News Late on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat I wouldn\u2019t suggest necessarily should be written in pen, but we\u2019re all got our fingers crossed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that inflation was still high, but less high than expected this month, that might just be the get out of jail free card.\u201d<\/p>\n

But real estate valuation and advisory firm Herron Todd White warned late last month<\/a> mortgage holders would be wrong to breathe a sigh of relief just yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter three 25 basis point increases to the cash rate in the first three meetings this year, the RBA decided to keep the cash rate on hold last month,\u201d Kusher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut with inflationary pressures persisting, we certainly shouldn\u2019t count out the potential for a further increase in the cash rate over coming months, possibly as early as next meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Australia\u2018s biggest markets is in a \u201cproperty recession\u201d and even an expected interest rate hold from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809511,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-809510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}