Cotality’s November figures, released on 2 November, confirm what most Brisbane offices already feel. There are fewer sales to win, and owners are taking longer to decide.

What the numbers say

  • Values: Brisbane fell 2.0% in October. Values are down 6.1% over the quarter and sit 8.3% below the May 2026 peak. The median dwelling value is $1,018,401.
  • Sales: home sales in the three months to October were down 29% on a year ago in Brisbane, against 23% nationally.
  • Stock: across the capitals, listings are at their highest for this time of year since 2019, while fresh listings are running almost 18% below average. Homes took a median 39 days to sell, with 4.7% vendor discounting.
  • Rates: the RBA lifted the cash rate to 4.85% on 3 November, its fifth rise this year.

What it means for your pipeline

Fewer new listings and more stock sitting unsold usually means one thing. Owners who would have listed are waiting. They haven’t decided not to sell. They’ve decided not to sell yet.

Those owners are already in your CRM. Many of them had an appraisal with you this year and didn’t list. Some pulled a campaign when the offers came in under what they hoped. Each of them has already shown you they’re thinking about selling, which is more than any new lead can say.

When sales are down by more than a quarter, every listing is more contested. The office that is still in touch when an owner is ready gets the first conversation. That doesn’t win the listing on its own, but it puts you in the room.

Five things worth doing this month

Count them

Pull two lists from your CRM: appraisals from the last 24 months that didn’t list, and withdrawn or expired listings that never relisted. Then check how many of each have had any contact in the last 90 days. Most offices are surprised by the second number.

Sort by what the owner told you

The notes field is where the next listings hide. An owner who said “after Christmas” or “once the kids finish school” has given you a date. Put those first, and set a reminder for the week before.

Give each owner one real reason to hear from you

A sale on their street, a change in what buyers are paying in their suburb, or the timing they mentioned at the appraisal. One message with one question is enough. Keep prices and valuations for a conversation, not a text.

Be fast when someone replies

A reply from an owner you appraised is the warmest lead your office will get this month. In OpenAgent’s 2020 data, the top 10% of agents replied to vendor leads in 98 minutes on average, against 146 minutes for the typical agent. The faster agents also won 63.7% of the appraisals they went for, against 42.6%. Speed isn’t the only difference between the two, but it is the easiest one to copy.

Texts and emails that promote your services need the owner’s consent. They must also identify your agency and give a clear way to opt out. Consent you can infer from a past dealing fades as that dealing gets older. In November, ACMA announced that SpinTel had paid a $653,400 penalty for emailing former customers without consent. Keep commercial messages to owners you’ve dealt with recently, and stop at once for anyone who asks. This is general information, not legal advice.

TL;DR

The market has slowed, but the owners who will list next year are mostly already known to someone. The question for each office is whether that someone is you.

If you’d like the count done with you, our free missed-listings audit takes 20 minutes on a screen share: nextlisting.au/audit. Or see how your office’s follow-up compares in two minutes with the follow-up health check.