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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Fewer than half of the Sydney auctions with a known result ended in a sale in the week to Saturday 10 October 2026. Domain's preliminary results, last updated on 10 October, give the city a clearance rate of 46%, against 69% at the same time last year, and give Melbourne 58%, also against 69%.
On the same Saturday the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) reported a clearance rate of 71% for its own state. The two Victorian figures, 58% and 71%, describe the same weekend and are both correct on their own terms. They differ because the two bodies do not count the same auctions in the same way.
This article follows the magazine's report of 9 October on the previous weekend, when Cotality's final national rate came in at 45.4%. It brings the first counts of the weekend after, source by source, and sets out what each one measures.
What Domain counted by Saturday night
Domain publishes one results page per capital city. Each page covers the week from Sunday 4 October to Saturday 10 October 2026 and carries a note that the results are preliminary and current at the time of publication. The table gives four of them: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Canberra.
| City | Scheduled, then reported | Sold, passed in, withdrawn | Clearance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney | 807, then 483 | 224, 83, 176 | 46% |
| Melbourne | 710, then 514 | 297, 139, 78 | 58% |
| Adelaide | 147, then 87 | 39, 43, 5 | 45% |
| Canberra | 75, then 59 | 22, 15, 22 | 37% |
Source: Domain auction results pages, last updated 10 October 2026. Preliminary figures.
Three of the four cities sit under one half. Canberra is the lowest, at 37% against 57% a year earlier. Adelaide is the only one above its level of a year ago: 45%, compared with 38% at the same time in 2025.
The sums of money are large even in a subdued week. Domain puts the total value of reported Melbourne sales at A$230,236,928, with a median price of A$950,500. For Sydney the total is A$176,974,114 and the median A$1,370,000. Adelaide's reported sales came to A$24,051,000 at a median of A$885,000, and Canberra's to A$11,007,000 at a median of A$850,000. Some results on the pages are listed with the price withheld, so the totals and medians rest on the prices that were disclosed.
Related readDubai property auctions: what the published record shows, 2012 to 2025The second column matters as much as the last. Across the four cities Domain listed 1,739 scheduled auctions and had a result for 1,143 of them when the pages were last updated. That leaves 596 auctions, about 34% of those scheduled, with no reported outcome. In Sydney the gap is wider: 324 of 807 scheduled auctions, or 40%, had not been reported.
Why Sydney's 46% and Melbourne's 58% are not alike
The arithmetic of Domain's pages shows how the rate is built. In each city the sold, passed in and withdrawn counts add up exactly to the number of reported auctions, and the published rate equals the sold count divided by that total. In Melbourne, 297 sales out of 514 reported results is 57.8%, shown as 58%. In Sydney, 224 out of 483 is 46.4%, shown as 46%.
A withdrawn auction therefore weighs on the rate exactly as a passed-in one does. That is where the two largest cities part ways. Sydney recorded 176 withdrawn auctions, 36% of its reported results and more than twice its 83 properties passed in. Melbourne recorded 78 withdrawals, 15% of its reported results, and 139 properties passed in.
A property is passed in when bidding stops below the vendor's reserve. It is withdrawn when the auction does not go ahead as scheduled. The two outcomes say different things about a market: one is a room where the bids fell short, the other a campaign that never reached the room. Domain's pages do not say why any auction was withdrawn, and the counts cannot tell a change of selling method from a change of mind.
Related readFlorida foreclosure sales: how the clerk's auction works for biddersThe chart sets the published rate of each city beside a second calculation, made for this article from the same Domain counts: sales as a share of the auctions that either sold or were passed in, with withdrawn auctions left out of the count altogether.
Published rates: Domain, last updated 10 October 2026. Second rate for each city: this article's arithmetic on Domain's counts (224 of 307 in Sydney, 297 of 436 in Melbourne).
On the published measure Melbourne is 12 points ahead of Sydney. With withdrawals set aside the order reverses, and Sydney is 5 points ahead. Neither reading is the right one in the abstract. The published rate answers how many scheduled campaigns with a known outcome ended in a sale. The second answers how often a sale followed once a property was actually offered.
REIV's 71% for Victoria
The REIV publishes its own weekly count for Victoria, drawn from results reported to the institute. For the week ending 10 October 2026 its results page shows 380 auctions reported and a clearance rate of 71%. The page gives 70% for the week before, on 435 reported auctions, and 86% for the same week a year earlier, on 915.
The detail on the page explains the level. The REIV lists 178 properties sold at auction, 90 sold before auction and 112 passed in. Those three lines add up to the 380 reported auctions, so the count holds no withdrawn auctions. The 268 sales it totals, worth A$303 million by its figure, are 70.5% of 380, which rounds to the published 71%.
Two things follow. First, a sale agreed before auction day counts as a clearance, and such sales are a third of the REIV's total: 90 of 268. Properties sold under the hammer, 178, are 47% of the 380 reported auctions. Second, the REIV's 71% is close to the 68% that Domain's Melbourne counts give once withdrawals are left out, and far from Domain's published 58%. The treatment of withdrawn auctions accounts for most of the distance between the two Victorian figures, although the samples differ too: Domain's page is for Melbourne and holds 514 results, the REIV's is for the state and holds 380.
Related readBuying a home at auction in New South Wales: the bidder's rulesTwo rates for one Saturday cannot be averaged
Domain's 58% for Melbourne and the REIV's 71% for Victoria use different samples and a different rule for withdrawn auctions. Each can be compared with its own figure for last week or last year. Set side by side, they measure different things.
Where Cotality's national figure fits
The national clearance rate that most headlines quote comes from a third body, the data firm Cotality. Its method is different again. Cotality's auction results page says its rates are calculated for auctions scheduled during the week ending Sunday, that passed-in and withdrawn auctions are included, and that the combined figure is a weighted average. It adds that not every result is known to the firm when the rate is calculated. The firm makes results available by Sunday morning and publishes final rates each Thursday in its national auction market preview.
So even the week is not the same. Domain's pages run from Sunday to Saturday, Cotality's week ends on the Sunday, and the REIV labels its week by the Saturday.
The previous weekend shows how far Cotality's first figure can move. ABC News reported on Monday 5 October that the firm's preliminary combined capital city rate was 48.2%, on 1,223 auctions. On Thursday 8 October the ABC reported the final figure: 45.4% on 1,212 auctions, the lowest level since July. The rate lost 2.8 points in four days as late results arrived.
The final city figures for that week, as the ABC gave them, were 50.4% in Melbourne on 666 auctions and 49.3% in Sydney on 299. Sydney's count was cut short by a long weekend: the ABC put the fall from the week before at 61.4%, from 774 auctions. Tim Lawless, Cotality's research director, told the ABC that the two largest cities "have been a drag on the national result".
Related readSingapore property auctions in figures: listings, sales and sellersCotality's preliminary reading for the weekend of 10 October is left out of this article. Each body is quoted here only from its own dated page or from established press, and the firm's figures for the weekend had not been checked on either when this was written.
Fewer auctions than a year ago
Every source describes a market with far fewer auctions than last spring. The REIV's 380 reported auctions for the week compare with 915 in the same week of 2025, a fall of 58%. Cotality's final count for the week before, 1,212 across the capital cities, was 38.1% below the 1,958 held a year earlier, according to the ABC. Melbourne and Sydney together held 710 fewer auctions than a year before, most of the combined decline of 746.
The ABC's report of 5 October linked the weak results to several pressures at once. The Reserve Bank of Australia has raised the cash rate four times this year, and the ABC put the rate at 4.6% on 8 October, its highest level since 2011. The same report cited SQM Research's count of 276,000 unsold homes nationally, up 21.6% in a year, and the federal budget's changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax.
A thin programme changes what a clearance rate can say. With 59 reported results in Canberra, each sale moves Domain's rate by almost 2 points. Cotality's page makes a related point: it sets apart the cases where fewer than 10 auction results were collected.
What the next four days settle
Nothing published this weekend is final. Domain's pages say so, and 596 scheduled auctions in four cities had no reported result when they were last updated. A week ago the late results pulled Cotality's national figure down, from 48.2% to 45.4%.
- Saturday 10 OctoberDomain updates its city pages with preliminary results. The REIV posts its count for the week.
- Sunday 11 OctoberCotality's week ends. Its preliminary rates are made available by Sunday morning.
- Thursday 15 OctoberCotality's final rates are due in its national auction market preview.
For anyone following one city, the practical point is to stay with one source from week to week. Domain's Sydney figure of 46% belongs beside Domain's 69% of a year ago. The REIV's 71% belongs beside its own 70% of last week and 86% of last year. Cotality's final rate on Thursday 15 October belongs beside last week's 45.4%.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
