Active property listings across Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth rose 4% in August compared with July, according to realestate.com.au, giving buyers in the three capitals more choice as spring gets under way.
In a new analysis, realestate.com.au senior economist Angus Moore (pictured) said the August lift extended a trend that has run through 2026. Active listings, which combine new listings with unsold stock carried over from earlier months, are now more than 50% above their low point in Perth and Adelaide, and nearly 70% higher in Brisbane.
The latest figures extend earlier data from the portal showing buyer choice returning to Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide after years of tight stock, and follow August reporting that listings were piling up across most capitals.
Homes in Perth and Brisbane are now taking about two weeks longer to sell than earlier in the year, and Adelaide about a week longer. That leaves more unsold stock from previous months on the market.
New listings in August were about 20% higher than a year earlier in each of the three cities, and across the three markets combined, winter brought 19% more new listings than the same period in 2025.
Moore attributed part of the rise to the usual summer lull, when few homes are listed over December and January. The scale of the increase, however, also points to a genuine shift in market conditions.
A shortage of homes for sale helped drive the smaller capitals' price run. With stock now rising and interest rates heading higher, Moore said "we are seeing home prices falling in these cities." He noted the declines so far have been milder than those in Sydney and Melbourne.
PropTrack's August 2026 Home Price Index showed prices falling 0.9% in Adelaide, 0.3% in Brisbane, and 0.2% in Perth over the month, as national prices fell for a fifth consecutive month to sit 2.7% below their March peak.
Pressure on borrowers could build further this week. Canstar expects the Reserve Bank to lift the cash rate to 4.6% at the end of its meeting on 29 September, and data insights director Sally Tindall said, "A 4.6% cash rate takes us back to 2011 levels." Canstar estimates a 0.25 percentage point rise would add $91 a month to repayments on a $600,000 loan with 25 years remaining, if passed on in full.
Even after this year's build-up, active listings remain about 30% below March 2020 levels in all three cities. They are further below the late 2010s, a period Moore described as a fairly soft market, particularly in Perth.
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