# Australia's auction clearance rates: who counts what, and when
A clearance rate is a fraction, and Cotality and Domain do not build it the same way. How each counts, why the first figure is revised and what the rate cannot say.
---
Every spring weekend in Australia ends with a percentage. It is quoted on Saturday night, repeated on Monday morning and treated as the pulse of the housing market until the next one arrives. The auction clearance rate is the fastest figure the market has, weeks ahead of any price index, and that speed is the reason people watch it.
It is also one of the easiest figures to misread. There is no single clearance rate. Several bodies publish one, each with its own list of auctions, its own week and its own rule for the auctions that never took place. The first number of the weekend is a provisional one, and the firm that publishes the best-known national rate replaces it with a final figure four days later.
This guide explains what the fraction is made of, how the data firms Cotality and Domain each build theirs according to their own pages, why the preliminary figure moves, why the number of auctions matters as much as the rate, and what the rate does and does not say about prices. The dated figures in it are examples of method, each with its source and date. They are not a market report.
48.2%Cotality's preliminary national rate, reported Monday 5 October
45.4%final rate for the same week, 8 October
2.8 ptswhat the rate lost between the two
Cotality's combined capital city figures as reported by ABC News on 5 and 8 October 2026. The difference is this guide's arithmetic.
## A clearance rate is a fraction
A clearance rate is the number of properties counted as sold, divided by the number of auctions counted. Everything that makes two published rates differ sits in one of those two numbers.
The top of the fraction raises a first question: sold when? A property can sell under the hammer on the day. It can also sell before the auction, to a buyer who makes an offer the vendor accepts during the campaign, or shortly after it, in a negotiation with the highest bidder. A publisher that counts all three will show a higher rate than one that counts hammer sales alone, on the very same weekend.
The bottom of the fraction raises a second: which auctions? The widest choice is every auction that was scheduled for the week. A narrower one is every auction whose result is known to the publisher. Narrower again is every auction that actually went ahead, which leaves out those withdrawn beforehand. Each step down shrinks the denominator and lifts the rate.
None of these choices is wrong. They answer different questions. The trouble starts only when a figure built one way is compared with a figure built another way, as if the gap between them were news about the market.
## The outcomes behind the number
A scheduled auction can end in one of five ways, and a reader of clearance rates needs to know where each one lands in the fraction.
1. Sold at auction. Bidding reaches the vendor's reserve price and the property is knocked down to the highest bidder.
2. Sold before auction. The vendor accepts an offer during the campaign and the auction is cancelled because the property has a buyer.
3. Passed in. Bidding stops below the reserve. The property may still sell afterwards by negotiation, in which case some counts move it to the sold column.
4. Withdrawn. The auction does not go ahead as scheduled and the property has not been sold. The vendor may have changed the method of sale, postponed, or taken the home off the market.
5. Not reported. The auction was scheduled, but the publisher has no result for it when the rate is calculated.
The first three are uncontroversial. The last two are where the methods part. A withdrawn auction is not a failed auction in the ordinary sense, because nobody bid. Yet it is a campaign that set out to end in an auction sale and did not. A publisher has to decide whether that counts against the rate. And an unreported auction is simply a blank: it sits in the list of scheduled auctions but in neither the numerator nor the denominator of most published rates.
## One Saturday, four possible rates
A worked example shows how far the choice of method can carry the number. The figures are invented for the purpose and describe no real city.
Suppose 500 auctions are scheduled in a city for one week. By Saturday night the publisher holds 350 results. Of those, 220 properties have sold: 180 under the hammer and 40 before auction day. Another 100 were passed in and 30 were withdrawn. The remaining 150 scheduled auctions have no reported result yet.
The same 350 results, counted four waysIllustrative clearance rate, per cent
Illustrative figures: 500 scheduled auctions, 350 reported results, 220 sold (180 under the hammer), 100 passed in, 30 withdrawn.
The first bar divides the 220 sales by the 320 auctions that either sold or were passed in. The second divides them by all 350 reported results, withdrawn auctions included. The third keeps the 350 but counts only the 180 hammer sales. The fourth divides the 220 known sales by all 500 scheduled auctions, as if every unreported auction had failed.
Nearly 25 points separate the highest reading from the lowest, and nothing about the weekend changed between them. A headline that says "clearance rate of 69%" and another that says "clearance rate of 51%" could both be describing this city on this Saturday.
## How Cotality counts
Cotality, a property data firm, publishes the national figure that most news reports quote. Its auction results page sets out the method in a few lines, and each line settles one of the choices above.
The numerator is wide. The firm says its rates use the total known number of properties sold before, at or after auction. A sale agreed on the Thursday before the auction and a sale negotiated after a pass-in both count as clearances.
The denominator is the total known number of auction results, and the page states that this includes passed-in and withdrawn auctions. In the terms of the example above, Cotality's rule is the second bar: withdrawn auctions count against the rate, and unreported ones are outside it.
The week is defined as auctions scheduled during the week ending Sunday. The combined figure for the capital cities is presented as a weighted average, so a city with many auctions moves the national rate more than a city with few. For Tasmania, the page says rates are reported at state level only.
The page is candid about the limits. It says the firm tries to capture the result of every known auction, and that not all results are available or known to it when the rates are calculated and reported. It adds that where fewer than 10 auction results have been collected, the clearance rate should be treated as statistically unreliable. And it says the results shown on the page are preliminary, with final clearance rates published each Thursday in the firm's national auction market preview.
## How Domain counts
Domain, the listings and data company, publishes a results page for each capital city. Its pages show their working in a way that lets a reader check the rule without a method note.
Each page gives a week, a date of last update and a short row of counts: auctions scheduled, auctions reported, sold, passed in and withdrawn, with a clearance rate, a total value of sales and a median price. The pages read for this guide covered the week from Sunday 4 October to Saturday 10 October 2026, were last updated on 10 October, and carried a line saying the results are preliminary and current at the time of publication.
Two of those pages serve as examples. Adelaide showed 147 auctions scheduled and 87 reported: 39 sold, 43 passed in and 5 withdrawn, with a clearance rate of 45%. Canberra showed 75 scheduled and 59 reported: 22 sold, 15 passed in and 22 withdrawn, with a rate of 37%.
In both cities the sold, passed-in and withdrawn counts add up exactly to the reported total: 39, 43 and 5 make 87, and 22, 15 and 22 make 59. And in both the published rate is the sold count divided by that total. For Adelaide, 39 out of 87 is 44.8%, shown as 45%. For Canberra, 22 out of 59 is 37.3%, shown as 37%.
So Domain's rule, read from its own arithmetic, is also the second bar of the example: the rate is a share of reported results, and a withdrawn auction weighs on it exactly as a passed-in one does. Canberra shows how much that can matter. Leave its 22 withdrawals out and the same page gives 22 sales out of 37 auctions that sold or passed in, which is 59.5%, more than 22 points above the published 37%. That second figure is this guide's calculation, not Domain's, and it is given only to show the size of the choice.
Two firms, one family of methodAs stated on each firm's own pages, October 2026
Question
Cotality
Domain
Which week
Auctions scheduled in the week ending Sunday
Sunday to Saturday
Divided by
Known results, passed-in and withdrawn included
Reported results, passed-in and withdrawn included
Withdrawn auctions
Count against the rate
Count against the rate
Status of the first figure
Preliminary; final rates each Thursday
Preliminary and current at publication
Cotality: wording of its auction results page. Domain: its Adelaide and Canberra results pages, last updated 10 October 2026, and the arithmetic of their counts.
The two firms treat withdrawals alike, yet their figures for one city rarely match. They do not hold the same list of auctions, they do not collect the same share of results by the same hour, and their weeks are cut one day apart. A third count exists for one state: the Real Estate Institute of Victoria publishes its own weekly clearance rate for Victoria. The questions in this guide apply to it, and to any other body's rate, in the same way.
## Why the first figure moves
The preliminary rate is not an estimate of the whole weekend. It is the exact rate of the results collected so far. That is a different thing, and the difference explains the revision.
Results do not arrive at random. A sale is good news for the agent who achieved it and tends to be reported quickly. A property passed in, or an auction quietly cancelled, is reported later or has to be chased. The early sample therefore leans towards sales, and the results that come in from Sunday to midweek lean the other way. As they join the count, the rate usually slips.
The week of spring that ended on Sunday 4 October 2026 is a published example. ABC News reported on Monday 5 October that Cotality's preliminary clearance rate was 48.2%, on 1,223 auctions held in the capital cities. On Thursday 8 October the ABC reported the final rate published by Cotality for the same week: 45.4%, on 1,212 auctions. The rate lost 2.8 points in four days. The auction count moved too, by 11, which shows that the list of auctions is itself tidied between the two releases.
One week is an illustration, not a rule. The size of the revision depends on how many results were missing on the first night and how those turn out. The invented city of the earlier example makes the mechanism visible. Its Saturday rate was 62.9%, from 220 sales in 350 results. Suppose 130 more results arrive by midweek: 55 sold, 60 passed in and 15 withdrawn, with 20 auctions never reported. The final count is 275 sales in 480 results, or 57.3%. The late results cleared at only 42.3%, and they pulled the rate down by 5.6 points.
Domain's pages let a reader measure the blank directly. In Adelaide, 60 of the 147 scheduled auctions, or 41%, had no reported result when the page was last updated on 10 October. In Canberra it was 16 of 75, or 21%. The wider that gap, the more room the rate has to move.
> A preliminary clearance rate describes the auctions that have reported. The final one describes the weekend.
## The number of auctions matters as much
A rate is a share, and a share says nothing about size. A clearance rate of 60% on 2,000 auctions is 1,200 sales. The same 60% on 1,000 auctions is 600. A market can post a steady rate while the number of homes changing hands halves.
The published figures for early October 2026 show why the count belongs next to the rate. According to the ABC's report of Cotality's final figures on 8 October, the capital cities held 1,212 auctions in the week, against 1,958 in the same week a year earlier, a fall of 38.1%. Melbourne and Sydney together held 710 fewer auctions than a year before, most of the combined decline of 746. A reader who saw only the 45.4% would know that fewer than half of the reported auctions cleared, but not that the programme itself had shrunk by more than a third.
Volume also governs how much weight one rate can bear. With 59 reported results, as on Domain's Canberra page, a single extra sale moves the rate from 37.3% to 39.0%, a step of 1.7 points. Two or three late results can change the story of the week in a small city. Cotality's own page draws the line at fewer than 10 collected results, below which it calls the rate statistically unreliable, but caution is sensible well above that level.
The same logic applies to a national figure. Because Cotality's combined rate is a weighted average, it is mostly a figure about the cities that hold the most auctions. An illustrative case: one city reports 800 results and clears 50% of them, another reports 100 and clears 70%. A simple average of the two rates is 60%. The weighted rate is 470 sales in 900 results, or 52.2%. Tim Lawless, Cotality's research director, told the ABC on 5 October that Sydney and Melbourne "have been a drag on the national result", which is the weighting at work.
## Weeks, long weekends and fair comparisons
Even the word "week" is not shared. Cotality's week ends on Sunday. Domain's pages run from Sunday to Saturday. Most auctions are held on Saturdays, so the two overlap heavily, but an auction held on a Sunday falls into different weeks at the two firms.
The calendar inside a week matters more. Public holidays and major sporting events empty the auction programme of one city while leaving another untouched, and the national count swings with them. The ABC's two reports from early October give an example from each of the two largest cities. Melbourne held 284 auctions over the grand final long weekend and 666 the week after, a rise of 134.5%. Sydney went the other way over its own long weekend, from 774 auctions to 299, a fall of 61.4%.
Neither movement said anything about buyers. A week-on-week comparison across a holiday measures the holiday. Three habits make comparisons fairer:
- Compare a rate with the same publisher's figure for the same week a year earlier, which usually shares the season and often the holiday.
- Compare final with final, or preliminary with preliminary. Setting this week's first figure against last week's final one builds the usual downward revision into the comparison.
- Read the rate over several weeks. One weekend, in one city, is a small sample.
Worth knowing
Stay with one publisher from week to week
Each body's rate is consistent with its own past figures and with nothing else. A rate from one firm set against a rate from another measures the difference in their methods and samples as much as any change in the market. Two rates for one weekend are never averaged.
## What the rate says about prices, and what it cannot
A clearance rate counts outcomes. It does not record a single price. A property that sells for well under the vendor's first hopes, after the reserve was lowered on the day, is a clearance. A property passed in on a strong bid that the vendor refused is not. The rate can therefore tell a reader how often vendors and buyers reached agreement, which is a fair description of the balance between them, but not at what level.
That is why the rate is best read as a signal of conditions, not a measure of value. When few auctions clear over many weeks, vendors are not getting the prices they set as reserves, and a period of weak clearance tends to sit alongside weak prices. The ABC's report of 5 October described exactly that pairing: clearance rates at or below 50% for several months, in a market where dwelling values had fallen for six months running. The clearance rate did not measure those falls. A home value index did.
Three further limits are worth keeping in mind.
First, auctions are only part of the market. Many homes are sold by private treaty and never appear in an auction count, and the share sold at auction differs widely from one city to the next. The rate describes the auction market of the cities where auctions are common.
Second, the homes that go to auction change from week to week. Vendors choose the method, and they choose it with the market in view. When confidence falls, some switch to private sale or withdraw, and the properties left in the programme are not the same mix as before.
Third, the prices published beside the rate are not an index. Domain's pages show a median price and a total value of sales for the week's auctions. The Canberra page of 10 October gave a median of A$850,000 and total sales of A$11,007,000, on 22 sales. A median of 22 homes moves with whichever 22 homes happened to sell. It is a description of one week's auction sales, not of what a typical home in the city is worth.
A forecast is a different matter again. A clearance rate is a count of what happened last weekend. What prices do next depends on interest rates, listings and incomes, and no weekly percentage settles it.
## Where each figure appears, and when
The week has a rhythm, and knowing it tells a reader which version of the number is in front of them.
The week of one clearance rate
SaturdayMost auctions are held. Domain's city pages are updated with preliminary counts for the week ending that day.
Sunday and MondayCotality's week ends on Sunday and its preliminary rates are made available by Sunday morning, then updated. Monday's news reports quote them.
ThursdayCotality publishes final rates in its national auction market preview. This is the figure to keep.
Cotality's results page says the firm aims to make results available by Sunday morning, with progressive updates as the full set is collected, so even the preliminary rate is not one fixed number. A figure quoted at breakfast on Sunday and one quoted on Monday afternoon may differ. Domain's pages carry their own date of last update, which is the first thing to read on them.
Whichever figure arrives, five questions place it:
1. Who published it, and for which city or cities?
2. Is it preliminary or final?
3. How many auctions were scheduled, and how many results does the rate rest on?
4. Are withdrawn auctions inside the count?
5. What is it being compared with: the same publisher, the same stage and a comparable week?
A rate that comes with answers to all five is a useful reading of how often vendors and buyers met at auction that week. A bare percentage, with no count and no publisher beside it, cannot be placed at all.