Australian mortgage brokers are already seeing the first hard evidence that the Reserve Bank’s February cash rate increase is cooling buyer activity at the margin, with new real-time data from Ray White showing a swift pullback in open home attendance.
Ray White Group chief economist Nerida Conisbee (pictured) stresses that tracking prices alone is no longer enough to understand buyer behaviour.
“While price data shows where the market has been, open home attendance provides a real-time read on behaviour,” Conisbee said.
Earlier, she warned that RBA is lifting rates while housing-driven inflation is “not yet under control”, with the board unanimously hiking the cash rate 25 basis points to 3.85% as it expects inflation to “remain above target for some time” – a move that risks higher borrowing costs choking new supply.
The new dataset, drawn from NurtureCloud check-ins at Ray White open homes nationally, logged 34,816 attendees across 8,774 opens in the week of the RBA decision. Every buyer who checks in is recorded, allowing the group to measure the average number of attendees per property week by week.
Nationally, attendance slipped to 3.3 people per open during the decision week, down 0.4 from the previous week and 0.2 on the same period a year earlier.
“Every major city recorded a week-on-week decline,” Conisbee said, suggesting buyers paused to reassess borrowing capacity and serviceability immediately after the move.
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For brokers, Perth is clearly leading the pack, with 6.8 people per open home and attendance still “1.3 higher than a year ago.” Brisbane is next at 5.9 buyers per open and has “the largest annual increase of any capital, up 1.6 year-on-year.” Adelaide and Darwin also sit slightly above last year’s levels, underlining the depth of demand in these smaller capitals.
By contrast, Sydney and Melbourne are now seeing thinner buyer depth per listing, with attendance “down 0.6 and 0.3 respectively” compared with a year earlier, even though prices continue to edge higher.
Secondary markets, including the Gold Coast and Canberra, are recording sharper year‑on‑year drops in open home volumes, hinting that the frantic competition seen in recent years has eased back to more typical levels.
Crucially for brokers advising rate-sensitive clients, “this shift occurred immediately following the rate rise announcement.” Earlier price data suggested expectations of higher rates hadn’t yet changed behaviour, but the open home numbers indicate activity turned quickly once policy tightened.
Even so, with stock still scarce and new building lagging population growth, Conisbee argues that higher rates are more likely to slow price growth than trigger widespread declines.
For mortgage brokers, the emerging message is to prepare customers for a market marked by caution rather than collapse, and to watch open home traffic as a leading indicator of where borrowing appetite is heading next.
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