Australia's property market has entered what Hotspotting describes as one of its most disrupted periods in a decade, with new data from the group's June 2026 Price Predictor Index revealing sharp divergence beneath a broadly cooling national picture.
The proportion of markets classified as positive fell from 52.1% in March to 43.3% in June, while the number of declining markets surged 265% over the same quarter, from 132 to 482. Eleven of the 15 capital city and regional jurisdictions tracked recorded a fall in positive share, pointing to a broad-based, if uneven, slowdown.
One shift beneath the headline figures: markets carrying a "Rising*" tag — flat on volume but hot on live conditions — fell from 401 in March to just five in June.
Hotspotting managing director Tim Graham (pictured left) said the scale of disruption was reshaping the market unevenly rather than uniformly.
"Three RBA rate rises, geopolitical trade uncertainty, cost-of-living pressures, and federal budget changes have all hit at once, but the impact isn't uniform," Graham said. "Some markets are cooling sharply, while others are still running incredibly hot with our new Thermometer methodology making those differences visible in real time."
Six of the country's ten hottest local government areas are within Greater Adelaide, led by Onkaparinga (77/100) and Mitcham (76/100) on Hotspotting's Thermometer scale, which measures live market pressure through inventory, days on market and sold-above-asking activity rather than historical price movement.
Hotspotting founder Terry Ryder (pictured right) attributed the result to acute supply constraints.
"When stock clears quickly, the live-market pressure becomes extreme. Inventory thins, days on market collapse, properties sell above asking, and vacancy disappears," Ryder said.
Greater Perth told the opposite story, recording the weakest positive share of any jurisdiction nationally at just 23.4%, a sharp reversal for a market that led the post-pandemic boom.
Ryder said listings were still finding buyers at a reasonable pace, but described the shift as a cycle rotation rather than a downturn.
"What's changed is the underlying demand trend. The volume signal has rolled over, so, we're witnessing the cooling in real time," he said. "But it's not a crisis. Instead, it's a normal cycle turn happening faster than usual because disruption is hitting buyer sentiment."
New South Wales was the standout counter-trend performer, lifting from 40.9% to 47.6% positive — the only large state to record a positive shift this quarter — driven by Sydney's inner and middle rings and the Hunter Valley. The ACT posted the second-highest reading nationally at 51.8%, with 45 pure Rising markets out of its 112 tracked.
Graham said the jurisdiction-level breakdown carried practical implications for buyers and brokers alike, noting that in cooling markets, delaying a sales campaign could cost vendors money, while in rising markets, it supported stronger pricing confidence.
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