Australian property is in a downturn. Cotality's Home Value Index fell 1.2% in October, the seventh consecutive monthly decline, and national values are now 6.7% below their March peak. That's about $63,400 off the value of the median Australian dwelling. Brisbane and Perth are now falling fastest, with Brisbane down 2.0% in October alone.
For agents, the numbers that matter most are the activity numbers. Capital city homes are taking a median 39 days to sell, up from 23 days a year ago, and national sales volumes are running roughly 23% below last year.
It's tempting to read that as a reason to sit tight and wait it out. The agents who come out of a downturn with the biggest market share do the opposite. They stop waiting for the phone to ring and start working out who is ready to sell before anyone else does. This article covers how to do exactly that, using tools already built into MantisProperty.
What's actually slowing the market
Two forces are working together.
The bigger one is interest rates.
The RBA has lifted the cash rate five times in 2026, most recently on 3 November to 4.85%, the highest level since November 2008, and Cotality research director Tim Lawless has said rising rates are the dominant influence on prices. Higher repayments reduce borrowing capacity, and that reduces what buyers can pay.
The second is the change to investor tax settings announced in the May federal budget, which is now law. For established residential property bought after 7:30pm AEST on 12 May 2026, negative gearing will no longer be available from 1 July 2027. New builds keep it, and properties already held at the cut-off are grandfathered. From the same date, the 50% capital gains tax discount is replaced with cost base indexation and a 30% minimum tax rate, applying only to gains that accrue after 1 July 2027.
The result is fewer investors at open homes. Lawless has noted that investors are much less active than they were, particularly in the middle and lower end of the market where they used to compete hardest. The government expects a net 75,000 homes to move from investors to owner-occupiers over the next decade.
Whatever your view of the policy, the practical effect for agents is the same: a different buyer mix, fewer transactions and more competition for every listing.
What a slower market means for your business
In a rising market, listings come to you. Buyers are plentiful, campaigns are short and almost every agent looks good. A slower market exposes the difference between agents who wait and agents who work.
Here's what changes:
- Fewer listings to fight over. Owners who don't have to sell hold off, so the listings that do come up are contested by every agent in the suburb.
- Fewer buyers per listing. Each genuine buyer is worth more, and losing track of one can cost you a sale.
- Longer campaigns. More days on market means more vendor contact, more reporting and more expectation management.
- A shifting buyer pool. With fewer investors competing, owner-occupiers and first home buyers make up a bigger share of the market.
Downturns also end. Lawless has suggested the market may settle around the middle of 2027, leaving buyers with better affordability and less competition from investors. The agents who kept their database warm through the slow months will be the ones holding the listings when confidence returns.
1. Find the sellers already in your database
Most agencies are sitting on their next listings without knowing it. The past buyer who keeps opening your sales emails. The owner who clicked a property value link twice this month. The contact who came back for a second look at a house in their own street. On its own, each of these is easy to miss. Together, they're a strong sign that someone is getting ready to move.
MantisProperty's seller and buyer signals bring that activity together automatically. MantisProperty watches email opens and clicks, enquiries, open home visits, appraisal requests and property value checks across your whole database, then flags contacts as hot or warm sellers and buyers. Every reason is listed on the contact's Activity tab, so you know exactly why someone has been flagged before you pick up the phone.
Owners who are watching sales in their own suburb stand out, and that is often the earliest sign of all. Because you can search by Seller Interest or Buyer Interest, you can build a targeted audience for your next campaign in seconds, rather than emailing your entire database and hoping for the best.
When listings are scarce, the agent who saw it coming wins the appraisal.
2. Start every day with the right calls
Prospecting discipline is what separates agents who grow in a downturn from those who shrink. The problem is rarely effort. It's knowing which of several thousand contacts deserves a call this morning.
Who to call today solves that. Each morning, every agent gets a short list of the contacts most worth phoning under Leads > Call Lists, with the reason written in plain words: asked for an appraisal, clicked the property value link, came back to a second open home. There's no guessing and no awkward cold opening, because you already know why you're calling.
Logging the outcome takes one click: Spoke, No answer or Left message. You can snooze a contact for a week or create a follow-up task without leaving the list. Anyone phoned in the last week, or marked Do Not Call, stays off the list automatically, so you protect your relationships instead of burning through your database.
The list sits on your dashboard and in the Mantis Sales app, so you can work through it between appointments, not just at your desk. See how call lists work in more detail.
3. Be first when someone puts their hand up
In a competitive listing market, the first agent to have a real conversation with a vendor has a big advantage. That conversation is often won or lost within hours, not days.
When a contact clicks your appraisal or property value link, MantisProperty pushes them to their agent within the hour as a possible seller. You don't have to wait for a weekly report or remember to check a dashboard. The alert arrives while the owner is still thinking about it, which is exactly when a call is most welcome.
Combine this with appraisals management in MantisProperty and the gap between an owner's first click and a booked appraisal gets much shorter.
4. Stay in front of every owner while values move
When prices are moving, owners want to know what's happening in their own street. Most will hear about the downturn through national headlines that may not reflect their suburb at all. The agent who gives them accurate local numbers every month becomes the agent they trust.
MantisProperty's monthly suburb market updates do this without you writing a word. Each owner receives an update on their own suburb covering the median price, 12 month change, number of sales, rent, a five year trend and your recent sales and listings in the area. The figures come from your agency's Pricefinder or Cotality account, and you can review and approve each month's updates before they go out, or set them to send automatically.
Honest numbers in a soft market build credibility that lasts well beyond the downturn. They also generate signals. Owners who open and click their update show up as likely sellers, and appraisal and property value buttons are built into every update, ready for the moment an owner wants to know where they stand.
5. Work every genuine buyer
Fewer buyers means every serious one matters more, and the buyer mix is changing. With fewer investors bidding, owner-occupiers and first home buyers make up a larger share of every open home.
The same signals that identify sellers also identify buyers. Contacts who come back for a second inspection, click on your property alerts or keep enquiring are flagged as hot or warm buyers, so you can focus your follow-up on people who are genuinely in the market. Searching by Buyer Interest lets you match those buyers to new listings quickly, which helps shorten campaigns and keeps vendors on side through a slower sale.
6. For principals: see where the next listings are coming from
In a tight market, principals need to know whether the team is doing the activity that produces listings, not just counting the listings that arrive.
The Engagement report, under Reports > Engagement Report, shows the share of your database that's engaging and how that's trending, hot and warm sellers and buyers by agent, email open and click rates, and how well each agent is following through on their call list.
Every Monday morning, the weekly opportunity report emails your chosen staff the contacts most likely to sell and buy, the week's new appraisal requests and how each agent followed up. It's accountability without micromanagement, and a clear view of next quarter's pipeline. Find out more about reporting in MantisProperty.
Keep your costs lean
Slower markets put pressure on every line of the budget, and software is often one of the first costs agencies look at cutting. With MantisProperty, you don't have to choose between saving money and keeping the tools that win listings.
MantisProperty Sales is $245 a month and MantisProperty Full Office is $299 a month, including GST. Every plan includes a master user plus 10 additional users, with no setup fee and no lock-in contract. If you're paying more for a CRM that doesn't tell you who to call, switching to MantisProperty is simpler than you might think. Compare all plans.
The agents who come out ahead
Downturns don't reward the busiest agents. They reward the most focused ones: the agents who know which owners are getting ready to sell, call them first, stay in front of them every month and never let a genuine buyer go cold.
MantisProperty does the watching for you, so you can spend your time on the conversations that turn into listings.
Start your free 14-day trial with both apps included and no credit card required, or book a demo and we'll show you how seller and buyer signals can work for your agency.