Halfway through the year and worth taking stock properly. Three rate hikes, taking us back to the 2023 peak. A new all-time high median, up nearly twenty percent annually at one point. Vacancy finally showing genuine, if modest, signs of loosening after four years near record lows.
In a lot of ways this year has been last year's story running in reverse, rates climbing instead of falling, growth still strong but the easy pent-up-demand burst of 2025 clearly behind us now. The one constant across both years, across honestly all four years I've been documenting this market, is that the population and supply imbalance underneath everything hasn't meaningfully resolved.
Second half of the year, I'm watching the insolvency data I flagged back in March and the completion numbers that are supposed to start flowing from late this year. Those two data points, more than the next RBA decision, are what I actually think determines the shape of 2027.