Cotality's national Home Value Index fell 1.2% in October 2026, the seventh consecutive monthly decline. The property data firm published the October reading on 2 November. The national index now sits 6.7% below its March 2026 peak, a drop Cotality puts at about A$63,400 in the value of the median Australian dwelling. The national median dwelling value is A$884,855.

Cotality says the speed of the decline is tracking at the fastest pace seen over the past forty years. Its combined capitals index is down 8.1% in seven months. Over the same number of months, Cotality says capital-city values fell 7.0% in the 2022-23 downturn, while the 2017-19 downturn, which remains the largest peak-to-trough fall on its record at 8.2%, had recorded only a 1.2% fall at the equivalent stage.

Brisbane and Perth have overtaken Sydney on the monthly pace. Dwelling values fell 2.0% in Brisbane and 1.7% in Perth in October, leaving those cities 6.1% and 5.7% lower over the rolling quarter. Sydney was third, down 1.6% over the month and 4.7% over the quarter. Cotality's Sydney median dwelling value is A$1,178,959, 10.1% below its February 2026 peak and 1.5% below October 2021 levels. On an annual basis Sydney is down 9.4%.

Among the other capitals in Cotality's table, Melbourne fell 0.8% to a median of A$773,027. Hobart rose 0.5% to A$743,854, and Darwin rose 0.6% to A$641,873. Cotality's modelled sales estimate for the past three months is 23% lower than a year earlier and 18% below its previous five-year average, with Sydney and Brisbane sales down 30% and 29% respectively. Vendor discounting across the combined capitals is 4.7%, the largest since May 2019 on Cotality's series, and the median time on market is 39 days, the highest since August 2020.

A separate Sydney reading from Domain, the Australian property listings and data company, already showed the September-quarter capital-city decline in our 22 October brief. Domain's own Sydney follow-up on that House Price Report adds suburb detail that sits beside Cotality's October city figures rather than replacing them. Domain says the September-quarter price decline is not isolated to prestige markets. Across Greater Sydney, 132 property markets, including 78 house markets and 54 unit markets, recorded a drop in median prices over the 12 months to September. Marsfield, in the Ryde-Hunters Hill area, had the steepest year-on-year house-price fall of any Sydney suburb on Domain's report, down 22%, or about A$418,000, to a median of A$1,485,000. Domain puts the Ryde-Hunters Hill statistical area's overall median house price 8% lower in the September quarter.

Cotality's Home Value Index is a hedonic measure of dwelling values, not a simple median of the month's sales, and Cotality revises its series each month for the prior twelve months. Domain's capital-city figures are stratified medians. The two series can therefore differ on the same city. Cotality's September reading, covered in James Okonkwo's 2 October brief, had already put national values into a sixth monthly fall before this October print.

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Sources

Sources read 2 November 2026.