The top 20 most negotiable suburbs in Australia

Never in my life did I expect to see what we are witnessing today in Australia: our once booming property market has gone into hibernation.

From coast to coast, the feeling - and the data - suggests that while the weather is warming up, the Australian property market is stuck in a winter freeze that no-one can predict a resolution for.

In the weekend just gone by, the auction clearance rate was a (very soft) 38% in NSW and 35% in South Australia. Queensland and WA both managed a dismal 21%. Victoria fared a little better at 53%. In better times for sellers, you’d expect to see clearance rates of 50% to 70%.

If Treasurer Jim Chalmers and RBA Governor Michelle Bullock wanted to crush the market with the twin weapons of tax changes and interest rate hikes, then mission accomplished.

Sellers I know personally feel trapped. But the reality is that some have to sell anyway. And we’re now finding out how low buyers are prepared to go, and how much sellers are willing to knock off to get a deal done.

Where sellers are giving the most ground

This brings me to a fascinating bit of research from the Real Estate Buyers Agents Association of Australia (REBAA). Using Cotality data, it ranked suburbs by the median discount sellers accepted off asking prices in the three months to September 2026. In five suburbs, that discount was in double digits.

The biggest was in Culburra Beach, NSW, where the median vendor discount hit 14.1%. What stands out to me is several popular seaside suburbs made the list. Shoalwater, WA and Paradise Point, QLD are both there. My read is that the post-COVID sea-change boom is starting to unwind in some of these pockets.

At No. 2 was Charters Towers City, Queensland, an old gold-rush town about 130 kilometres inland from Townsville. It’s home to what the local tourism office calls Australia’s largest handmade mosaic. It also had the lowest median dwelling value on the list, at about $345,000. Even at that end of the market, the median discount was 12.8%.

Then you have Daylesford, VIC, where the median dwelling value was just over $740,000. Values softened by 2% over the year, but the median discount sellers accepted to get a deal done was a much steeper 11.5%.

Source - REBAA analysis of Cotality data. Median vendor discounts are for the three months to September 2026.

The three biggest discounts were all in regional markets, even though most of the list was metropolitan. Sydney alone had seven entries, from Lalor Park and Kingswood in the west to Potts Point and Darlinghurst in the inner city. Greater Melbourne had three, including Tootgarook and Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsula. The Gold Coast had three of its own, with Ashmore and Merrimac joining Paradise Point.

As REBAA president Zoran Solano points out, national property prices may tell one story, but conditions on the ground can vary significantly from suburb to suburb.

"The data shows there are many markets where sellers are becoming increasingly negotiable, which is creating opportunities for buyers who do their research and enter the market well prepared," he says.

Is it time to buy?

Of course, all of this leads us to the million-dollar question. Is it time to rush into property the way you might if CBA shares finally traded at a discount?

I’m going to dare utter the four words investors are always told to avoid: “This time is different.”

We’ve had soft patches in Australian property before, and many of them have been brief. But as Coolabah Capital Investments' Christopher Joye told me, we could be facing the mother of all housing corrections. 

“I can't think of too many silver linings... I think the outlook's pretty grim for bricks and mortar right now," he said.

Even so, for some people the reasons to buy outweigh the reasons to wait. If you’re starting a family, you’ve got a secure income and homes are coming up near the school you want your kids to go to, I can see why you’d want to have a look. 

If you can comfortably afford the repayments and you’re in it for the long haul, the stability of having a place of your own can outweigh the whole property-versus-shares-versus-renting argument in my book. And if a place you like has been sitting on the market for a while, why not haggle?

Cotality Research Director Tim Lawless said although the flow of new listings coming to market is tracking almost 20% below average for this time of the year, advertised supply levels have accumulated as homes take longer to sell. In other words, sellers are feeling the pinch, creating prime conditions for haggling.

“Higher inventory levels are giving buyers more choice and greater negotiation power, which is in stark contrast to a year ago when advertised supply was tight and sellers held most of the leverage at the negotiation table."

If you’re buying as an investment, I’d look at it differently. 

With tighter negative gearing rules for buyers of established homes, you’ve got to ask whether the price, the rent and the cost of carrying the property make it worth your while. A 10% discount off asking might feel like a win today. It’ll feel a lot less clever if comparable homes are selling for 20% less than you paid a year from now.

I framed my conversation with Joye around Canada, where the property market has been in the doldrums for more than four years. There were faint signs of stabilisation, then prices slipped again in September.

When a property market goes bad, it can stay soft for a long time. How long that lasts here depends in part on where interest rates go and when buyers get their confidence back.

Then again, the very conditions that make it feel like you’re catching a falling knife can give you the entry price that makes for an outsized return over the long run. The question I’d ask before putting in an offer is whether I’d still be happy owning the place if it took years for that return to show up.