The official numbers on auction clearance rates take a while to catch up with what’s actually happening on the ground. By the time a trend shows up in the weekly stats, the people running campaigns every weekend have usually felt it coming for weeks.
That’s the read coming out of Apollo Auctions right now, according to Greg Brydon, the firm’s GM and 2026 Australasian Auctioneer of the Year.
“Across Apollo Auctions, we’re seeing increased buyer activity, stronger engagement through campaigns and buyers who are prepared to compete when the right property is presented to the market,” Boyd says.
It’s not a return to boom conditions, and Brydon isn’t pretending otherwise. Conditions remain measured – but he argues that’s precisely the environment in which a well-run auction campaign proves its worth.
“While conditions remain measured, that’s exactly where the auction process can be at its most valuable,” he says.
Across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Brydon describes buyers as active but far from indiscriminate. “Buyers are active — but they’re also informed, selective and increasingly price-conscious,” he says. “A well-run auction campaign creates urgency, provides transparency and, importantly, brings buyers and sellers together to establish where the market genuinely sits.”
That last point matters more than it might first appear. In a market where buyers and sellers can easily hold different ideas about what a property is worth, an auction remains one of the few processes that forces both sides toward a shared, transparent answer. Success shouldn’t be measured by whether the home sells ‘under the hammer,’ but by whether the buyer & seller are closer together.
If there’s a genuine constraint on the market right now, in Brydon’s view, it isn’t buyer appetite — it’s stock.
“As we move deeper into spring, we expect selling activity to increase and more vendors to take advantage of the buyers already searching for their next property,” he says.
For agents, that’s the opportunity. More buyers actively looking, combined with more spring listings, means more conversations, more competition at auction, and ultimately more transactions. “The market doesn’t need to be booming for auctions to work,” Brydon says. “In many ways, a market like this is exactly when a structured, competitive auction campaign can deliver its greatest value.”
His message to agents heading into the next few months is straightforward: the buyers are already there. “Spring is here, buyers are looking — now we need the properties to meet them.”
If buyer activity is genuinely building and the constraint is stock rather than demand, the practical question for agents is whether they’re set up to run auction campaigns that actually convert that activity into results.
CPT’s next auction training runs 16–18 November — for agents wanting to sharpen their auction process – reach out to our team today