Melbourne’s Spring Selling Season 2026: More Stock, But Not a Flood

The short version:

Melbourne should see more properties come to market this spring, but buyers should not expect a flood of new listings. Seller hesitation and incentives for established property investors to keep holding are likely to constrain supply, while Victoria’s new reserve-price rules could make September the strongest auction window before conditions become quieter in October. Many owners who do list will have a genuine reason to sell, potentially creating more realistic price expectations. With some opportunities continuing to trade off-market, buyers should have their finance organised and be ready to act rather than waiting for a surge in listings that may not arrive.

Melbourne is likely to see more homes come to market this spring, as it usually does after winter. But buyers waiting for a flood of new listings may be disappointed.

That was the view our Victorian Managing Director Nicole Jacobs gave realestate.com.au in early August, when she was asked what the spring selling season was likely to look like. She said there would probably be a little more stock on the market, but a huge rush of listings was unlikely.

We wanted to set out the reasoning behind that in more detail than a news article has room for, because the answer changes how you should plan your search over the next few months.

What Nicole Jacobs thinks about this

Two things are keeping owners from committing to a spring campaign. “I think everyone’s going to be waiting for indicators of interest rate rises or not. We also have a state election which sometimes leads to hesitancy, such as waiting to make decisions until that’s all over and done.”

She expects the owners who do list to be the ones who have a reason that will not wait. People relocating for work. Families who have outgrown the house. Nicole also said she has seen several Melbourne homes pulled out of auction campaigns in recent weeks, where the vendor was not prepared to accept what the market was offering on the day.

Why listings are staying low

Three things are working at the same time here, and they all point the same way.

New listings are already below average

Nationally, the number of new listings coming to market is running about 6.2% below the five year average. Total stock is up, but that is mostly properties that have been sitting rather than new owners deciding to sell. Melbourne is doing better than most on this measure. New listings here are up around 9% on last year while total stock is up closer to 6%, which tells you the market is selling through most of what arrives instead of building up a backlog. More choice, without the pile-up you get in a city like Sydney.

Owners are reading the headlines and waiting

Melbourne’s median house value has fallen for five months straight and sits at roughly $970,000, down about 3.6% over the year. Auction clearance was around 54% in early July against 72% at the same point last year. Plenty of owners see numbers like that and decide this is not the year. Every one of them is a property that would have come to market in a calmer period and now will not, which is part of why the stock shortage keeps feeding itself.

Investors who bought before May have a reason to hold

This one gets very little attention and it may be the most important of the three.

Under the changes announced in the May 2026 federal budget, negative gearing on established residential property is being removed from 1 July 2027 for anything bought after 7.30pm on 12 May 2026. Properties held before that point keep the deduction, but only while the owner keeps holding them. Sell, and it is gone for good.

That gives a large number of Melbourne investors a reason to stay put that has nothing to do with what they think prices will do next. They are not waiting for a better market. They are protecting a tax position they cannot get back. Those properties are effectively out of the supply pool for the foreseeable future.

If you own an investment property in Victoria and you are weighing up whether to sell, this is worth talking through with your accountant before you make a decision.

The part that could change the timing

There is one thing that could make spring look busier than expected for a few weeks, and then quieter than expected after that.

From 1 October 2026, Victorian agents will have to publish a property’s reserve price at least seven days before it goes to auction, and the reserve cannot be changed on the day. If the reserve has not been published in time, the property cannot go to auction at all. Private sales are not affected. Victoria is the first state in Australia to bring in a rule like this.

The Real Estate Institute of Victoria has argued against it. Chief executive Toby Balazs has said the rules will lead to fewer auctions, and REIV research found that 94% of the 1,000 Victorian property owners it surveyed would change how they sell if they had to disclose a reserve a week out.

Whether or not you agree with the objection, the likely behaviour is easy enough to work out. Vendors who were already planning an auction, and who would rather not publish a reserve, have an incentive to bring their campaign forward and get it done in September.

We have seen this pattern elsewhere this year. When the capital gains tax changes were announced, new listings jumped 25% in Perth and around 32% in Darwin as sellers moved earlier than they otherwise would have. PropTrack put part of that surge down to owners wanting to transact ahead of the new rules.

So our expectation for Melbourne is a busier than usual September for auction stock, followed by a noticeably thinner October as the campaigns that would have run then have already happened, and as some vendors move across to private sale instead.

What this means if you are buying

If you have been holding off until spring on the basis that there will be far more to choose from, we would suggest planning for something more modest than that.

A few practical points.

• September is likely to be the busiest window for auction stock this side of Christmas. If auctions suit you, be ready to move then rather than in October.
• Have your finance sorted before the stock arrives, not while you are looking at it. Mortgage demand in Victoria was down more than 15% over the year to May, so there are fewer approved buyers in the market than you might assume.
• The owners listing this spring largely have to sell. That usually means more reasonable price expectations than a vendor testing the market for the sake of it.
• A share of Melbourne stock is being sold off-market, without a public campaign, because owners do not want a property sitting on a portal in these conditions. If you are only watching the listing sites, you are not seeing everything that is available.

Waiting for a flood of listings that may not arrive is a strategy with a cost attached. Our Melbourne buyer’s advocates can keep a search running across listed, pre-market and privately offered properties while you get everything else in place, which is usually the better use of the next two months.

We will check this in November

This is a prediction, and it is being published in August so it can be judged properly later.

We will come back to it in November and set out what actually happened to Melbourne listing volumes across September and October, whether the pull forward ahead of the reserve rules showed up in the numbers, and where we got it wrong. If the rush of listings does arrive, we would rather say so than quietly move on.

If you are planning a purchase over the next few months, get in touch with our Melbourne team or start with a property buyer’s brief so we can work out what suits your situation.

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