The vendors wanted $4.2 million. That was the number when the house first came to market earlier this year. Then the weeks went by, and then a month.
“Because the property sat on the market for more than 30 days, buyers started to assume there was something wrong with it,” says Jacob Butler, founder and CEO of Brisbane buyers agency Hunter Gather. “In reality, the thing that was wrong was the price.”
He calls it psychological depreciation. Every week a listing sits, buyers quietly mark it down in their heads. Unless the vendor gets in front of that, the price chases the market down.
Hunter Gather’s client bought the house for $3.5 million. The vendors signed, because they were already committed to a purchase of their own: close to $7 million, on bridging finance. Taking $700,000 less on the way out is easier to swallow when the home you’re moving into has come down too.
That, Butler says, is the shape of the Brisbane market right now. Values are 5.4 per cent below their May peak, according to Cotality. Butler reckons some types of property are closer to eight to 10 per cent off in practice. The Reserve Bank has lifted the cash rate four times this year, to 4.60 per cent. Investors have largely stepped back since the federal Budget. And the best value isn’t where most people would look for it.
“Where we’re seeing the biggest gains at the moment is for people purchasing above the $2.5 million price range,” he says.
The reason is simple: at that level, the people selling are mostly doing the same thing as the people buying.
“Vendors will take less now, so long as they’re also getting a good price on what they’re buying,” Butler says. “When people are upsizing, there’s even more upside on the thing they’re purchasing.”
The finances help too. At the higher end, he says, many of Hunter Gather’s buyers are borrowing 40 or 50 per cent of the purchase price, not 80 or 90. “They’re in a position to weather market conditions like this. They can take advantage of the situation and get great buys, but they don’t need to put themselves up against a wall and tear up money to make something happen.”
The squeeze sits further down. Butler expects homes between $1.5 million and $2.5 million to have the slowest run: the townhouse-to-house move, the first aspirational step up. “It’s the bit people can’t afford to make the next jump into, where the money gets really, really tight.”
A softer market isn’t a clearance, and Butler says it often. More property is listed than this time last year, but less of it is selling. That tells you plenty of vendors still haven’t caught up with the market.
“We say there are three things certain in life: death, taxes and vendors that want too much,” he says. “Just because it’s on the market doesn’t mean it’s a good buy. The motivation has to be there from the vendor for the discount to happen.”
So most of the work is finding out why someone is selling. It might be bridging finance, a deadline, or a purchase already locked in. “Something has to be going on behind the scenes that’s causing them to want to tear up money,” he says. “Because if you don’t have to, why would you?”
It cuts the other way too. Plenty of buyers now assume every home will sell at a deep discount. Butler has watched his own clients learn this the hard way: told a home will sell for $2.5 million, they want to offer $2.4 million, and then it goes to someone else for $2.55 million. “And they’re like, ‘But I would have paid that.’”
One home Hunter Gather looked at for a client shows how quickly the order of play can go wrong. Agents told the owner she could expect $4 million to $5 million. On that advice, she bought off the plan for $3 million, unconditionally. Then rates rose again. A contract at $3.5 million fell over when the buyer asked for $150,000 off, and the home now looks like selling for around $3.1 million. After stamp duty and agent fees, the cash she was counting on is gone.
Butler’s view: if you genuinely believe prices will be lower in six months, sell now. “Lock it in at today’s prices, have the cash in the bank and be ready to go.” A long settlement buys you time to shop, and right now vendors value that kind of flexibility highly. Families with young kids who don’t want to move twice may weigh it differently. “Really, it’s about comfort.”
And if your home doesn’t fetch what you hoped? If you don’t have to sell, don’t. Butler has clients who bought, took their old home to market, saw offers well under the bank’s valuation and simply leased it out for a year instead.
He’d say the opposite in a rising market. In 2021 he watched sellers get priced out within weeks of signing.
“Nobody ever knows where the bottom is,” Butler says. “You generally don’t know you’ve gone past it until three or six months later. I’ve seen enough cycles, and the people who try to pick the bottom always miss it. Always.”
Rates make it a double whammy. Hunter Gather’s rough rule is that every 0.25 per cent rise takes about 2.2 per cent off what a buyer can borrow. That’s the same on every loan, but the dollars grow with the price.
| Borrowing capacity today | After one 0.25% rise | After two |
|---|---|---|
| $1,000,000 | $21,000 less | $42,000 less |
| $2,000,000 | $43,000 less | $84,000 less |
| $3,000,000 | $64,000 less | $126,000 less |
He suggests one exercise to anyone sitting on the fence. List every home that sold in the past 12 months, within your budget or a little over it. Then ask whether you would have bought any of them. His $3.5 million buyer did exactly that, a past client he has now helped into three homes. “They even added a million dollars to what they’d spend, and he still couldn’t find anything better,” Butler says. “That gave him the mental clarity to close the door and pull the trigger.”
At $3 million and above, Butler’s pick is homes built in the past year or so. Developers bought those sites two years ago and locked in their build costs. They can sell for less than they hoped and still make it work.
What comes next won’t be as kind. Brisbane is less than six years out from the Olympics, and the good trades are being pulled onto hotels and infrastructure. “Concreters, tilers, plumbers. They’ll be able to command whatever price they want,” he says. “If you’re trying to build a home in two or three years’ time, good luck.”
It’s also why he thinks premium homes will be the first to recover. If it would cost $4 million to buy the land and build the house again, and you can buy it for $3.5 million today, the gap tends to close quickly once confidence returns.
Butler says the fee is easier to justify in this market, not harder. In a rising market the job is timing. He remembers a 2021 purchase for a client who has since come back to him. “I said to him, we’re basically paying tomorrow’s price today.” The home had a two-month settlement, and by the time it settled the client was about $60,000 ahead on where the value sat. The vendor even asked whether the sale could be undone.
Today the edge is different: more room to negotiate, and terms that count. Most off-market homes are overpriced at the moment, he says, but a motivated vendor will still deal. “If we can offer them a really long settlement, that’s super appealing at the moment.”
Butler asks every caller the same question first, and it’s one he brought over from his years in real estate sales: why now?
“That’s not to say now’s a bad time to buy. I actually think it’s a great time to buy,” he says. “But I want to understand their motivation.”
Most of the Hunter Gather team sold homes before they bought them for clients. Butler says that is the edge: knowing what an agent is telling a vendor, and what’s going through the vendor’s head. “Unless you’ve sat across the table from a vendor during a campaign and had those deeper conversations, it’s really hard to understand what’s happening on the other side of the fence.”
His advice to anyone who has been putting off the move is short. “If you have the capacity to upsize, and you’ve only held off because you’re unsure whether now is the right time: now is the right time. There’s good value out there if you know how to find it.”
Thinking about trading up? Hunter Gather’s buyers agents start every conversation with the same question. Book a call with our team.
This article is general information only and isn’t financial, legal or tax advice. Market figures are as at 23 October 2026.
Sources: Cotality Home Value Index, October 2026 (Brisbane 5.4% below its May peak). Reserve Bank of Australia, Monetary Policy Decision, 29 September 2026 (cash rate 4.60%, the fourth increase of 2026).