The market hasn’t fallen 10%. Here’s what the data actually says.

If you’ve spent any time near property news lately, you’ve heard the number. The market is down 10 per cent, or it’s about to fall another 10 per cent, depending on who’s talking. It gets repeated so often it starts to sound like fact. It isn’t.

A national number can’t describe a market of submarkets

Real estate doesn’t move as one market. It moves as hundreds of them, each behaving differently at the same time. Your suburb might be up 10 per cent this year. Your sister’s suburb might be sitting flat. Your uncle’s might genuinely be down 10 per cent. All three of those can be true at once, which is exactly the problem with a single blanket figure. Average them together and you get a number that accurately describes nobody’s street.

Media coverage leans hard on these national averages because they’re simple and they travel well as headlines. A falling clearance rate or a national price movement makes for a clean, alarming line. But it strips out the one thing that actually matters to a buyer or seller: what’s happening in their specific market. A 10 per cent figure applied to a suburb that’s flat, or rising, isn’t just unhelpful. It’s wrong.

The real number is closer to 4 per cent, and it’s still not the whole story

According to Cotality, the actual movement is closer to 4 per cent nationally, not the 10 per cent being thrown around in commentary. Even that figure is a blend, a rollup of submarkets performing, holding, or lagging in different directions. It tells you the market has come back a little. It doesn’t tell you the story is finished, and it certainly doesn’t support the idea that another 10 per cent is still coming.

Waiting for a fall that isn’t coming has a cost

If you’re holding off on a purchase because you’re waiting for the market to drop another 10 per cent, it’s worth asking where that number actually comes from. My read, based on what the data is showing, is that the bottom has already passed. A further rate rise wouldn’t meaningfully drag prices down from here. A change of the Victorian Government in November wouldn’t shift this market before the year is out either, any impact from that would land in 2027, not now.

That leaves six auction weekends before the end of the year. Sit out that window waiting for a correction built on a figure the data doesn’t support, and the more likely outcome isn’t a better price. It’s having missed the window entirely.

The takeaway

Ignore the national number. Ask what’s happening in the specific submarket you’re buying or selling into, and treat any blanket statistic, whether it’s a price movement or a clearance rate, as a headline rather than a guide for your own decision.