Spring is traditionally Australia's busiest housing season. As the weather warms up, more properties hit the market, auction activity increases and many buyers who put their plans on hold over winter start actively looking again.
NAB Housing Monitor August 2026 - NAB
4 August 2026
Economy and Markets Housing
Key points
- Dwelling prices continue to fall, and price declines have broadened to the mid-sized capitals.
- Sydney and Melbourne continue to lead declines, down 1.4% mom and 1.2% mom respectively and 5% below their recent peaks. In the July data, prices are now flat to lower across Perth, Brisbane and Adelaide as well.
- Revisions continue to show starker price declines than initially reported, with Perth data especially susceptible to recent downward revisions.
- We estimate the seasonally adjusted turnover rate fell to 4.1% in July, down from 5.2% a year ago, but still above levels around 3.5% in the 2018-19 slowdown. Median days on market has risen to 34, a 5-year high.
- Recent data had left the risk skewed firmly to the downside of our earlier house price forecasts. We now formally revised down that outlook. We see prices across the 8 capital cities declining 5% over this year (previously 2%), led by ~10% declines in Sydney and Melbourne, with 2-4% declines across the mid-sized capitals.
- 2018-19 price declines followed the east coast apartment boom, with improved supply conditions having been feeding through into cooler rents growth for some time. That is not the case now. Vacancy rates remain low and advertised rents growth remains elevated.
- Dwelling approvals data to June have held up, but we expect new building demand to cool somewhat going forward. Pipelines of work remain elevated outside of Sydney and Melbourne, and Q2 PPI data showed renewed material input cost inflation.
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