Sydney - Eastern Suburbs Spring 2026 Update

Spring is meant to be the Eastern Suburbs’ showcase season. Vendors hold their best homes back for it, the jacarandas come out, and buyers return from the winter lull ready to compete. This year spring arrived on schedule, but a good number of the buyers did not. It has been a while since my last update, and the market looks very different from the one I was writing about in 2023. Back then the burning question was whether the end of cheap fixed-rate loans would unleash a wave of distressed sellers. As it turned out, it never really came. This spring the story is not distressed sellers. It is hesitant buyers, rising rates and a widening gap between the very best homes and everything else.

The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.85% on 3 November, its fifth rise of 2026 and the highest level since November 2008 (Savings.com.au). For a borrower with a $500,000 mortgage that is roughly another $80 a month, and on a typical Eastern Suburbs loan it is considerably more. Prices have been heading the other way. Cotality’s index fell 1.2% nationally in October, the seventh straight monthly fall, leaving values 6.7% below their March peak. Sydney values are now 1.5% below where they sat in October 2021. Homes are taking a median 39 days to sell, the longest since August 2020, and vendor discounting has widened to 4.7% (ABC News). Domain’s chief economist Nicola Powell made a point that will ring true for anyone shopping locally: “We’ve seen the upper end of our markets, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, see price falls for a much longer period of time.”

The auction clearance rate is the best real-time read we have, and it has been sobering. Sydney’s final clearance rate averaged 47% across October, the weakest month since June, and the last weekend of the month came in at just 41.7% (MacroBusiness, citing Cotality). On Domain’s numbers, the week ending 24 October cleared 45%, against 70% in the same week a year earlier, with 37% of scheduled auctions withdrawn. Volumes are down too. Sydney hosted 632 auctions in the week ending 11 October, 36% fewer than a year earlier. Vendors who do not need to sell are simply waiting, and a growing share of the homes that do sell are going before auction, quietly, to a buyer who was ready to act.

For all the gloom in the headlines, the prestige end of the Eastern Suburbs has still produced some strong results this spring. What stands out is how many of them were done quietly before auction day. The top result of the season so far was a four-bedroom house at 19 Chamberlain Avenue, Rose Bay, which sold under the hammer for $9.7m through Ray White (Phillips & Co) in mid-October. Across in Double Bay, a four-bedroom house at 15 Pearce Street sold prior to auction for $4.6m through Sydney Sotheby’s International Realty. In Potts Point, a two-bedroom apartment at 703/1a Tusculum Street in the Rockwall Gardens building sold at auction for $3.595m, a reminder that quality harbourside apartments with level access remain in demand with downsizers. Paddington held its own. A two-bedroom apartment at 303/357 Glenmore Road sold prior to auction for $2.305m, and a two-bedroom house at 37 Campbell Avenue sold at auction for $2.05m. In Bellevue Hill, a three-bedroom apartment at 1/30 Fairfax Road sold at auction for $2.61m (Domain auction results). Plenty of larger family homes also changed hands with the price kept quiet. These include 81 Leinster Street in Paddington, 53 Grosvenor Street in Woollahra and the six-bedroom 29 Bunyula Road in Bellevue Hill, all sold before or at auction in September and October. The harbour also delivered the season’s biggest talking point. A four-bedroom Point Piper waterfront on 1,139 square metres, with its own jetty, boatshed and harbourside pool, sold for around $35 million. It had been listed at $50 million only months earlier (Domain). It is a superb property, and it still sold for $15 million under its asking price. That tells you buyers at every level are now negotiating hard, and vendors who accept that are getting deals done. In my experience the vendors selling in this market are doing so for a reason, whether that is a move, an estate or a downsize, and they tend to be realistic. For a well-prepared buyer that is an opportunity we have not seen for some years.

The people who track the numbers for a living are not sugar-coating it. Cotality’s head of research, Gerard Burg, described the current slide as “really a demand-led downturn”, adding: “We are already on track to see the largest downturn across the past 40 years.” Domain’s Nicola Powell sees room for further falls: “We’ve already seen about a 6 per cent shave from the median house price, so the reality is a 10 per cent drop in price is quite possible” (ABC News). The major banks broadly agree, with NAB, Westpac and ANZ forecasting peak-to-trough falls of between 12% and 14.5% for Sydney. It is worth keeping that in perspective. Forecasts are for Sydney as a whole, and the Eastern Suburbs has always moved on its own rhythm. Scarcity of land, an older and wealthier owner base and very low levels of forced selling have historically cushioned this market on the way down, even if the upper end tends to feel a correction first.

The burning question for summer is whether the Reserve Bank has finished. Its next meeting is on 7–8 December, and with underlying inflation still running at 3.7%, nobody is ruling out another move. I have learned the hard way not to make bold predictions about rates, so I will not start now. What I can say is that this is the most balanced market for buyers in the Eastern Suburbs that I have seen in some years. Competition at auction has thinned, vendors are more willing to negotiate, and good homes are changing hands before auction to buyers who are organised and ready. For those with secure finance and a long-term view, spring 2026 may well look like a window in hindsight. My advice is simple. Get your finance approved on today’s rates with a buffer for one more rise. Be ready to act before auction day. And do not mistake a softer market for a market where every property is a bargain. The best homes on the best streets are still attracting strong interest, and they always will. As always, if you can afford to enter the Eastern Suburbs market, there is a solid long-term home or investment to be found. It simply takes a little more patience, and a little more homework, than it did a year ago.