Where Prices Are Still Rising: The 22 Regions Bucking the Downturn

Clearance improved for a third straight week — 55.1% on 1,388 auctions (1,049 reported: 582 cleared, 467 uncleared) — and this time volumes rose with it, up 9% on last week in the first early sign of the pre-spring lift. The Domain/Wilson read (50.3%) cleared the halfway line for the first time in ten weeks, with early signs of a pre-spring selling revival — but from a low base: the same weekend a year ago cleared roughly 72%.

The auction floor: week ending 9 August

• Melbourne: 60.8% on 654 scheduled (531 reported; 94 sold prior, 226 under the hammer, 3 after, 140 passed in, 68 withdrawn) — a new post-April high and a second consecutive weekly improvement, on the biggest under-the-hammer count of the winter. The Wilson series read it 64.2%, his highest since March. Whatever the price index says, buyers keep re-engaging at four-years-cheaper prices.
• Sydney: 57.0% on 421 scheduled (302 reported; 91 sold prior, 80 under the hammer, 1 after, 62 passed in) — a 7.3-point snap-back from last week's sub-50 print, with withdrawals easing from 90 to 68 (16% of scheduled, down from 22%). The vendor freeze thawed; more sellers met the market and found buyers there.
• Brisbane: 38.1% on 126 reported — slipped back from 42.0% into its usual soft band, with 64 of 126 reported results passed in. The Wilson read was starker at 26.4%. Auctions remain a minor channel here, but the direction matches the price data's turn.
• Adelaide: 46.8% on a thin 47-report sample (94 scheduled — half the results still unreported at publication). The Domain/Wilson read had Adelaide firming to 58.2%, so treat this week's Cotality print as a reporting-lag artefact rather than a demand signal.
• Canberra: 46.0% on 37 reported — a modest improvement for a second week. Perth reported 6 results with none clearing — a private-sale market whose price index tells the real story.

No Tasmanian auctions were captured — the combined figure is exactly the six-city sum.

The price backdrop: July is now official — and it was the steepest month since 2022

The official July HVI confirmed what the preliminary index flagged: national values fell 0.7% in July, the largest single-month decline since December 2022, taking the national median to $928,421. Five of eight capitals fell, and the combined regionals (-0.2%) recorded their first monthly fall since January 2023. PropTrack's July index, released the same day, agrees on direction (-0.3% nationally, a fourth straight fall) with the national median about 2% below its March peak.

• Sydney — $1,244,617, -1.4% for the month, -4.0% for the quarter, -2.0% annually. The steepest fall of any capital, led by the upper quartile. Asking prices fell a further 0.9% over the month; sales volumes run well below year-ago levels.
• Melbourne — $797,354, -1.2% for the month, -3.4% for the quarter, -2.8% annually — even as its auction floor firms. Four years of underperformance has priced much of the bear case.
• Brisbane — $1,104,094, -0.6% for the month, the first clear monthly step down after the flat quarter, though still +14.8% annually. Inner-city Brisbane ($1.98m) still edged up 0.2% over the quarter — the premium core and the mortgage belt are running different markets.
• Adelaide — $944,909, -0.2% for the month with the quarter fractionally positive at +0.1% — the shallowest turn of the majors, and Adelaide South houses ($1.02m) rose 0.6% over the quarter. But asking prices fell 2.1% over the month, the steepest of any capital: vendor expectations are adjusting fast.
• Perth — $1,029,797, +0.1% and the only capital Cotality has rising — though PropTrack reads it slightly negative, and Cotality revised Perth's June down 120 basis points. When the indices disagree on the sign, the growth phase is over regardless of which is right. Annual growth still leads the nation at +20.5%.

Supply: the spring wave is arriving early

National residential listings jumped to 278,984 in July — up 12.4% in a single month and 22.8% year-on-year — a counter-seasonal surge in what is normally the year's quietest listing period. Distressed listings rose a third straight month to 4,330, their first annual increase in years. Properties are taking longer to sell, stock is accumulating, and vendors who held through winter are arriving together — into a market where clearance is improving but from deeply soft levels. The negotiating balance stays with buyers into spring, and likely widens.

The RBA board meets Tuesday 11 August, and the outcome is about as priced as a decision gets: interbank futures put roughly a 4% probability on a move, and all four major banks expect the cash rate to hold at 4.35% through 2026. The June-quarter CPI did the work — headline inflation eased to 3.8%, the trimmed mean stopped climbing at 3.6% (below the RBA's own forecast track), and Westpac, the last major-bank hawk, scrapped its call for further hikes. A hold on Tuesday confirms the plateau; the statement's language on the inflation trajectory will set expectations for how long it lasts. No major forecaster has a cut before 2027.

The more consequential monetary news this fortnight came from the lenders, not the central bank. AMP Bank launched Australia's first 40-year investor loan with up to 10 years interest-only and no reassessment during the IO period — explicitly pitched at investors managing cash flow after the budget's negative-gearing and CGT changes. It joins a small group of 40-year lenders (Great Southern Bank, MA Money, Liberty, Pepper Money, RACQ) but is the first bank to combine the term with a decade of interest-only for investors. Weeks earlier, Westpac moved to 95% LVR investor lending (5% deposit with LMI, P&I), extended maximum interest-only terms on investment loans from 10 to 15 years, and stopped requiring verification of rates, insurance and body-corporate costs for servicing — after reporting investor loan applications down about 20% in a month, a mood its consumer-banking head called concern rather than crisis.

Read the pattern honestly: the banking system is redesigning investor credit to restore the cash flow that three rate hikes and the tax reform removed, because investor lending is the banks' growth engine and they will compete to keep it turning. That is genuine holding-power relief — a 10-year IO term materially changes the arithmetic of holding a neutral-geared property through a downturn. It is not a reason to stretch: serviceability is still assessed near 9.4%, the 3% APRA buffer is unchanged, and a 40-year term means slower equity build and more lifetime interest. Use the new products to strengthen a hold strategy or refinance cash flow, not to buy capacity the assessment rate says you don't have.

The practical positions stand: this is the top of the cycle, not the start of the descent; the roughly $36,000 of borrowing power the 2026 hikes stripped from an average earner stays stripped; stress-test at the full buffer and underwrite on today's capacity.

July's rent data landed this week and the direction hasn't changed: asking rents rose in five of eight capitals for houses through mid-winter — normally the rental market's quietest stretch. Canberra led the month for houses (+2.1% to $745), Melbourne (+1.6% to $620), Brisbane (+1.3% to $709) and Adelaide (+1.1% to $663) followed, while Sydney edged up 0.3% to a national-high $878. Darwin is the country's fastest rental market over the year — houses +13.3% ($850), units +18.2% — and Sydney units jumped 3.4% in a single month to $845, taking annual unit-rent growth to 12.7%.

The unit story deserves the emphasis: in Sydney, Darwin and Perth, unit rents are growing faster than house rents — the same affordability logic driving the sales market operates in rentals, with tenants trading down to the cheaper dwelling type and pushing its price up faster. For investors, this is the yield case for mid-priced units compounding from the income side while their capital values outperform premium houses on the sales side.

Vacancy stands at June's national read of 1.3% — Sydney (1.6%) and Canberra (1.7%) the loosest capitals, Perth the tightest at 0.6% — with SQM's July print due mid-August. The supply outlook does the forward work: the investor exit now underway (Westpac's own applications data has investor lending down ~20% month-on-month) means fewer new rentals entering the pool later, exactly as new-home sales by volume builders keep sliding. Rents rising through a price downturn is the arithmetic of improving entry yields — combined-capital gross yields have already rebuilt to 3.50% from December's 3.34% low, and every month of falling prices against rising rents extends that. Occupancy security remains intact everywhere; rent-growth assumptions should still respect tenant-income ceilings in the slow-lane capitals (Adelaide +3.5%, Melbourne +5.1% annually). (Vacancy: SQM, June; asking rents: July capital-city report.)

Where prices are still rising — the 22 regions bucking the downturn

July delivered the steepest national monthly fall since December 2022, and the instinct is to read the whole map red. It isn't. PropTrack's SA4-level data shows about a quarter of Australia's 88 SA4 regions posted flat or rising house values over the three months to July — and roughly half did for units. Some rose sharply.

The house risers (3 months to July, PropTrack)

Queensland Outback +3.0% ($315k median, +11.9% annual) — the nation's cheapest SA4 and its strongest quarter, with buyers migrating from the east coast for $400-600K established homes. SA Outback +2.9% ($390k, +17.6%), Barossa–Yorke–Mid North +2.6% ($515k, +12.0%), SA South East +2.1% ($616k, +11.6%) — South Australia owns four of the top ten. Far West & Orana NSW +1.9% ($367k, +16.2%), Launceston & North East +1.4% ($636k, +15.1%), WA Outback North +1.3% ($679k, +13.8%), New England & North West +0.9% ($533k, +14.3%). Twenty-two regions in all held or gained, rounded out by the likes of Richmond–Tweed (+0.8%, $1.12m), Darwin (+0.8%), Adelaide South (+0.6%, $1.02m), inner Perth (+0.9%, $2.32m) and inner-city Brisbane (+0.2%, $1.98m).

The unit risers are even broader

New England & North West +6.2% in three months ($417k, +27.8% annual — the national standout, led by Armidale and Tamworth), Riverina +5.0% ($474k), Mackay–Isaac–Whitsunday +4.7% ($429k, +22.6%), Shepparton +4.2% ($405k), Launceston +3.5% ($542k, +16.6%), Murray +3.2% ($391k). Coastal Queensland keeps running — Cairns +1.4%, Townsville +1.2% (+19.2% annual) — and the list reaches into the capitals at the affordable end: Adelaide South (+1.3%) and North (+1.2%), Central Coast (+1.2%), Sydney Ryde (+0.5%) and South West (+0.5%), Melbourne Inner (+0.4%) and West (+0.1%), Geelong +1.8%.

The pattern is affordability — our analysis

Line the risers up and the common thread is unmissable: nearly all are markets with medians between $315,000 and $650,000 and rental yields well above capital-city averages. Regional Australia is up 8% over the past year against 2.5% for the combined capitals. This is what a borrowing-capacity-constrained market does. Three rate hikes removed roughly $36,000 of borrowing capacity from an average earner — which bites hard at a $1.2 million price point and barely at all where the median is $400,000 and rent covers most of the mortgage. More expensive areas fall harder in high-rate environments; affordable, high-yield areas keep absorbing demand, including demand displaced down-market from the capitals. It is the same logic holding up Melton, St Marys and Melbourne's west inside the falling capitals — the affordable end leads everywhere.

The exceptions prove the rule: only four million-dollar-plus regions rose over the quarter (inner Perth, Richmond–Tweed, Adelaide South, inner-city Brisbane), and the consensus expectation is that they fade rather than spread as the broader slowdown catches them.

The SMSF wrinkle — Monday is the test

Part of the regional bid is about to be withdrawn. Agents in the strongest markets tell the same story: a flurry of self-managed super fund purchases racing the residential borrowing ban that commences about 10 August, layered on mum-and-dad investors chasing sub-$800K stock with 5-6% yields. In Launceston, agents report the recent surge was substantially SMSF-driven — and that some regular investors are deliberately waiting until after the deadline to buy, expecting less competition. In Tamworth, SMSF and family investors have driven everything under $800K. This quarter's regional prints are therefore partly a pull-forward: demand borrowed from September. The markets still rising after Monday are the ones whose fundamentals — yield, affordability, employment depth — were doing the work all along.

What to do with it

1. Stop using the national index as a market-level signal. A quarter of the country never got the downturn memo. The falls concentrate in premium capital-city segments; the rises concentrate where yield and affordability live. Neither the doom headline nor the resilience list describes your target suburb — its own data does.

2. Underwrite the resilient end on yield, not on last quarter's growth. Some of that growth was the SMSF pull-forward, and the post-ban data will separate momentum from fundamentals. A Tamworth unit at a 6% yield survives that test on income alone; a market that only works if the quarterly print repeats does not.

3. Respect the thin-market caveat. Outback SA4s are enormous areas with small sales counts — quarterly medians there are directional, not precise, and single-employer or commodity risk can reprice a thin market as fast as it rose. Entry price and yield are the margin of safety, not the trend line.

4. Watch Tuesday, then watch September's regional prints. A hold on 11 August confirms the plateau that makes the yield arithmetic work. The first clean post-LRBA month of regional data tells you which of the 22 regions were fundamentals and which were the deadline.