Good morning,

Spring is meant to be the broker's busy season, the weeks when listings surge, buyers compete, and the value you add is getting a client approved and moving before the market runs. This spring arrived the other way around. National home values fell again in August, vendors are holding back rather than listing, and the stock already on the market is piling up because buyers are not clearing it. So the live question is not how to get a client to the front of a queue. The queue has thinned, and the leverage has moved to the buyer.

STANDING POSITIONS

• Timing purchase clients into a buyer's market: opening · listings 24 per cent above a year ago
  
  

• Refinances and top ups priced off a falling valuation: narrowing · values down 0.9 per cent in August
  
  

• Sizing new borrowing to the rate that holds: holding · cash rate 4.35 per cent

SUPPORTING SIGNALS

• National home values fell 0.9 per cent in August, a fifth straight monthly fall that leaves values 3.6 per cent below their March peak, with 93 per cent of capital city suburbs now declining. The valuation behind every deal on your desk is lower than it was a month ago.
  
  

• New listings are running 8.2 per cent below the five year average while advertised stock of about 137,000 sits above it, and buyers now have more choice, more time and more room to negotiate.
  
  

• The Reserve Bank held at 4.35 per cent on 11 August, flagged a further rise if upside risks materialise, and does not expect inflation back to the midpoint of target until late 2027. No cut is coming to lift values or reignite competition.

TODAY'S MOVE
What moved is the supply side of spring. The seasonal restock that usually lifts competition has faded, with new listings tracking below a year ago, yet advertised stock is about 24 per cent above a year ago because buyers are absorbing it slowly, and quarterly sales are down 15.5 per cent on last year. The restock arrived, and the buyer kept control of it.

COST OF WAITING
For a client whose deal is priced off a valuation, the cost of waiting is measured in the valuation itself. Values fell 0.9 per cent nationally in August and 1.4 per cent in Sydney, so on a $1,000,000 property that is about $9,000 of value gone in the month nationally, and about $14,000 in Sydney. Follow it into an LVR: a client owing $800,000 against that property is at 80 per cent today; one month near that pace takes them to roughly 80.7 per cent, and a second month to roughly 81.5 per cent. These figures are illustrative, scaled on round numbers before any one client's actual lender, product or valuation. The point is the direction. The 80 per cent band that prices lenders mortgage insurance and the sharpest rate tiers sits just above a client who is at it today, and a falling market walks the valuation towards that line rather than away from it. The equity a refinance or a top up draws on is the part that thins while the market keeps sliding.

THE READ
The reflex heading into spring is that the market is about to speed up. Listings surge, buyers compete, and your value is getting a client to the front before prices move. On that reading, the client who waits is the client who misses out.

This spring is not behaving that way. Values fell for a fifth straight month, vendors are listing less rather than more, and advertised stock is building because buyers are not clearing it, which is why it is now a buyer's market. The Bank is holding with a bias to raise and sees no return to target for a long time yet, so there is no cut coming to reignite competition. The urgency the season usually supplies is absent, and in its place the buyer has choice, time and the stronger hand at the table.

So the pressure has changed direction. For a purchasing client the leverage is unusually on their side. For a refinancing or topping up client, the valuation their deal is priced off is sliding a little every month the market softens. The client waiting for a spring bounce or a rate cut to rescue a number is waiting on something the data is not offering, while the number moves underneath them. What settles it is not the calendar, but whether buyers start clearing the stock that is piling up.

THE TRIGGER
The marker is the rate of absorption, whether buyers start clearing the advertised stock that is building or it keeps piling up while values slide. It is not a meeting date and not a single print. While new listings stay thin, stock keeps rising and values keep falling, the buyer holds the leverage and the valuation behind every waiting deal keeps thinning. If buyers start absorbing the stock and values steady, the balance tips back towards the vendor. Watch whether the stock clears, not the calendar.

ONE LINE
If this spring is handing your buying clients the upper hand instead of taking it away, which of them is placed to use it while the valuations behind everyone else's deal keep sliding?

Thanks What Matters