Michael Janda

And until recently, the fear that there could be one or two more rate rises, although maybe less likely now.

Less panic buying as well, Carrington.

Yes, exactly.

You've got the investors with the speculation, but in terms of the owner occupiers and first home buyers, there's fewer people feeling like I have to rush in now or I'll never get in because the prices do seem to be coming down rather than going up.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of the analysis around particularly the negative gearing changes sort of indicated that it might be worth three, perhaps even four interest rate hikes for investors in terms of the extra cost because of not being able to write off those losses immediately against their other income.

That is for new investors who aren't grandfathered.

Um, so people are factoring that into their decision, which is why you're seeing investors drop out of the market.

But of course you're right, Carrington, if rents keep growing, that goes some way to making up that investment return gap.

And eventually you will see investors come back into the market.

There's also a couple of other factors that are really interesting in this cotality data that struck me.

Nearly a quarter of scheduled auctions were withdrawn.

So.

You know, the clearance rate's low enough as it is, but a quarter of properties didn't make it to auction.

About half of those were sold prior to auction.

And so that's quite telling because that tells you that the sellers were like, you know, take bird in hand rather than two in the bush.

Yes, we might get a better price at auction, but I'd rather take what I can get now.

Because if you go to auction and fail, any prospective buyers are going to be in a much stronger negotiating position, knowing that there's no one else out there, you know, in the ballpark.

The other factor that could put, as you say, a bit of a floor under the property price fall, and this is what usually happens when property prices fall in Australia, and particularly when the jobs market is still relatively strong and you don't see many forced sales, is that we're seeing fewer properties go to auction.

An 11% drop on the previous week and nearly 7% lower in terms of properties going to auction than the same week a year earlier.

We could start seeing eventually listings fall.