The Median Capital-City Home Takes 39 Days to Sell, Up From 23, and Sells 4.4% Under Asking. One Bridging Term on Your Panel Is Six Months

Cotality published its October Monthly Housing Chart Pack on 15 October. Two numbers in it belong on every upgrader file you are writing this month: the median time to sell across the combined capitals is now 39 days, up from 23 a year earlier, and the median capital-city vendor discount has widened to 4.4%, the widest in five years.

Neither number is a market-commentary point. Both are inputs to a calculation you are making on behalf of a client who has to sell one property in order to buy another — and that client is now a larger share of your book than at any point on record. AFG told the market on 13 October that upgraders made up 46% of its residential lodgements in the September quarter, a record, and approached 49% in the month of September alone.

The file risk has moved. Twelve months ago the hard part of an upgrader deal was capacity. It still is. But the sell side has quietly become the part most likely to break the structure you recommended, because almost every assumption on that side of the file — the sale price, the settlement date, the end debt, the bridging term — was set when the capital-city median sale took 23 days.

What the October Chart Pack actually says

Cotality estimates 39,747 homes sold nationally in September, down 20.9% on September last year. Sales across the combined capitals fell 9.1% over the year; regional sales fell 1.6%.

Time on market has stretched almost everywhere. The combined-capitals median is 39 days against 23 a year ago. Brisbane has gone from 17 days to 38. Perth has gone from 11 days to 26 — still the fastest capital, but at more than double its own pace of a year earlier. Canberra is the slowest capital at 50 days.

Discounting has widened with it. The median capital-city vendor discount is 4.4%, which Cotality describes as the highest in five years. Regional Australia sits at 3.9%.

Values are falling into that. National dwelling values fell 1.1% in September, a sixth consecutive monthly decline, leaving them 3.7% lower over the September quarter and 5.2% below the March 2026 peak. Sydney is 8.6% below its February peak. Brisbane and Perth each fell 4.7% over the quarter despite annual growth of 5.9% and 10.1% respectively. Darwin, up 0.5% for the quarter, was the only capital to grow. The four-week average auction clearance rate is 48.3%, down from 64.4% in late February.

Cotality research director Tim Lawless put the buyer side of it plainly: “The bigger issue is that buyers are finding it harder to commit.” On the seller side: “That’s not an encouraging combination for sellers.”

Behind all of it is the cash rate. The RBA’s target has risen four times in 2026 — to 3.85% on 4 February, 4.10% on 18 March, 4.35% on 6 May and 4.60% effective 30 September — with no change at the June and August meetings.

Why this lands on your files now

AFG’s Q1 FY27 index, released on 13 October, shows 36,720 mortgages lodged worth $26.8 billion, down 4.5% on the prior quarter and 12.4% on the year. Inside a shrinking total, the mix has shifted hard toward the client who has to sell. Upgraders were 46% of residential lodgements, a record, and near 49% in September. First home buyers held at 12%. Investors slipped to 32% from 34%. The average loan size rose 4.5% over the year to $730,145, and the average LVR eased to 63.1% from 63.4%.

Read the two releases together and the picture is specific rather than general. Your lodgement mix is tilting toward clients with two transactions to complete, in a market where one of those two transactions now takes roughly 16 days longer in the capitals and lands about 4.4% below where it was first advertised.

The asking price is not the sale price, and that shows up in end debt

On a buy-before-sell structure, the number that matters once the dust settles is end debt: what is left owing after the existing property sells and the net proceeds are applied. End debt is where a 4.4% discount does its damage, and it does it quietly, because the discount is applied to a figure nobody wrote down as an assumption.

Take a client whose existing home is advertised at $1,200,000 with $400,000 still owing. If the file was built on the advertised price, it carries roughly $800,000 of equity before selling and settlement costs. At Cotality’s median capital-city discount of 4.4%, the same property transacts at $1,147,200 — and the equity line is roughly $747,200 before those costs. That is about $52,800 less than the file assumed, and it does not disappear. It becomes $52,800 of additional end debt the client has to service.

The fix is not complicated. Model the sale at a discount to the advertised price, write down the discount you used and why, and run the end-debt servicing on that number. It is also worth saying out loud to the client that the figure you are working from is deliberately not the agent’s quoted range.

A median is not a deadline

Thirty-nine days is a median, which means half of capital-city sales in the three months to September took longer than that. It is also a measure of time on market — the clock starts when the property is listed. It does not include the weeks spent preparing a home for sale, and it does not include the settlement period that follows an accepted offer.

Stack those three stages up and the realistic sell-side timeline on an upgrader file is materially longer than 39 days even in the median case, and considerably longer in Canberra at 50 days or in the slower half of any market. Brisbane and Perth brokers are the ones most exposed to the change, because the pace they built their processes around — 17 days and 11 days respectively — no longer exists.

Where that clock meets your bridging panel

Bridging terms were set in a faster market, and some of them are tight against the current one. The figures below come from the lender policy documents held in the CreditPolicy library and belong to the lender named against each. They are a retrieval sample rather than a survey of the market, and every one of them should be confirmed against the lender’s current policy document or with your BDM before you rely on it for a client.

The point is not that six months is too short. For a well-prepared property in a fast suburb it is ample. The point is that a six-month term, a 39-day median, a slower half of the market and a settlement period are four facts that have to be checked against each other on the specific file in front of you — and the LVR band you land in can itself shorten the term, as Assetline’s rate card shows.

Three structures, three different failure points

Sell first, then buy

The sale price and timing become facts instead of assumptions, which removes the end-debt risk almost entirely. What it introduces is re-entry risk in a market where the client’s purchase budget is being reset by rate movements, plus the temporary-accommodation cost nobody budgets for. With 145,573 properties advertised and clearance rates at 48.3%, though, the fear of not being able to buy back in carries less weight than it did in February.

Buy subject to the sale of the existing property

The cheapest structure if the vendor accepts it. With a combined-capitals median of 39 days and total stock up 19.1%, a vendor has more reason to wait than they did a year ago — but a conditional offer still ranks behind an unconditional one, and the risk is simply that the offer is not accepted.

Bridge it

Removes the timing dependency and replaces it with term risk, peak-debt LVR risk and the cost of capitalised interest. It is the structure most sensitive to everything in the Chart Pack, because it is the only one of the three with a contractual deadline attached to the sale.

None of these is the right answer generically. The useful discipline is that the reasoning for choosing one over the other two should be written down on the file, together with the sale-side numbers you used to get there.

The sale-side worksheet: what to review this week

Pull your live upgrader files and check five things on each.

1. The sale assumption. Is the equity figure derived from an agent’s advertised or appraised price? If so, re-run it with a discount applied and note the discount you used.
2. The end-debt number. Recalculate projected end debt on the discounted sale price, and confirm the client services it on the lender’s assessment settings rather than the current rate.
3. The term. Count the realistic stages — preparation, time on market, settlement — against the bridging term actually approved, and check whether the peak-debt LVR band is capping that term.
4. The valuation gap. With values down 1.1% in September and six consecutive monthly declines, check how long ago the valuation on the outgoing property was done and whether it still supports the peak-debt LVR.
5. The conversation record. Confirm the client has been told, in writing, what sale price and timeline the structure assumes and what happens if either moves.

What the file has to show

This is general information rather than advice on your obligations, and your licensee’s compliance team should be the one to confirm how it applies to your process. But the relevant paragraphs of ASIC’s Regulatory Guide 273, which sets out the best interests duty for mortgage brokers, map onto the sell side of an upgrader file quite directly.

RG 273.31 says you should “make reasonable inquiries about the consumer’s requirements and objectives”. RG 273.48(d) lists “reasonably foreseeable changes to the consumer’s personal circumstances and financial situation” among the matters relevant to the assessment — and on an upgrader file, a sale that takes longer or lands lower than assumed is about as foreseeable a change as exists in the current market. RG 273.160 says “you should keep records of your reasoning behind any recommendation you make”, and RG 273.104(b) says you should “clearly record the recommendations you presented, including any alternatives that are not selected by the consumer”.

Key takeaways

Questions brokers are asking

Sources: Cotality, Monthly Housing Chart Pack — October 2026, published 15 October 2026 (sales volumes, days on market, vendor discounting, listings, values, auction clearance, and the quoted comments from research director Tim Lawless). AFG, Q1 FY27 Mortgage Index, announced to the ASX on 13 October 2026. Reserve Bank of Australia, cash rate target. ASIC Regulatory Guide 273, Mortgage brokers: Best interests duty (June 2020), paragraphs 31, 48(d), 104(b) and 160. Lender bridging parameters from the Assetline Capital, ASCF and Funding policy documents held in the CreditPolicy library.