Maybe Melbourne’s property market has turned a corner.

For over two years now, I haven’t been able to write about property market growth in my home state. Victoria’s property performance has been static at best, with small losses incrementally recorded for many of the months during this period. This table below showcases Melbourne’s (and regional Victoria’s) lacklustre performance since consecutive interest rate increases were applied from May 2022.

However, over the few opening weeks of 2025 something in the air has changed. Interest rate cut speculation and pent-up buyer energy over the summer break have delivered a new set of buyers with a very different attitude to 2024’s buyers.

Unlike last year, our auction bidder attendance over the past three weekends has been vibrant. I have not attended an auction with less than three bidders. In fact, one I attended yesterday had seven spirited bidders fighting for the keys at a brick house in Lalor. Sadly we missed out, but not without a fight. Appraised at $735,000 – $750,000, the keys went to a young couple who’s Dad did the bidding for them up to $790,000.

Was my appraisal out of date?

Possibly. For the last year, appraisal data has been much easier for us to digest. Given the market has been so static, we haven’t had to restrict our comparable sales data set to a tight window.

It seems this is changing though.

Speculation about interest rate cuts is high, with this Tuesday’s meeting potentially giving mortgage holders a reprieve. Whether the RBA agree with the markets and the economists or not is yet to be seen, but sentiment is certainly different on the streets.

Listing numbers aren’t at record lows, so we can’t pin down the buyer/seller ratio to stock numbers.

Renewed buyer energy is palpable, and a quick glance at the instagram feed after a busy Saturday is a telling story. Strong results, stories of multiple bidder scenarios, and happy agent and vendor pictures reign in the instagram stories.

Could this be the beginning of a change? Quite possibly.

With all changing markets, buyers have to adjust their approach, their expectations, and sometimes their criteria.

A transitioning market is one of the hardest to adapt to, but tracking the data and watching the results each week certainly gives us some great insight to prepare our clients.