Fifteen days. Fourteen bids. One auction that, by every rule of this market, should have failed.
Friday, 14 August 2026. Bidding opened at $1,000,000. The hammer came down at $1,392,000.
Then the phone rang. The Courier Mail wanted to know how.
Here’s exactly what I told them — and what it means if you’re planning to sell, or you’re sitting on a home right now that won’t move.
The Market Every Seller Is Walking Into
You already know what this market feels like.
Auction after auction passing in. Open homes running quiet. Homes that would have sold in a fortnight two years ago still sitting there at week eight.
Buyers aren’t panicked anymore. They’re patient — and a patient buyer is a very different animal to a fearful one.
So sellers do the sensible-looking thing. Drop the reserve. Extend the campaign. Take the early offer, because auction day feels like a risk they can’t take.
I understand all of it. But none of it addresses the actual problem.
The problem isn’t your price. It isn’t your home. It isn’t even the market.
It’s how few buyers ever saw it.
15 Days. 14 Bids. The Auction
Here’s the situation we walked into at 20 Carbora Street, Mansfield.
Nine competing three-bedroom houses in the same suburb.
A market where auctions were passing in week after week.
And a campaign of 15 days — roughly half the standard length.
My sellers needed a short settlement and a fixed date. We didn’t have the luxury of a longer run, so we didn’t take one.
What Happened on the Night
Four buyers registered. Three of them bid.
Bidding opened at $1,000,000.
Fourteen bids later, it sold for $1,392,000.
Three genuine competitors in a market where most homes are struggling to find one.
That’s what a functioning auction looks like. It’s also what most sellers are being told is no longer possible.
That’s the whole game, and it isn’t complicated. Competition drives price. Nothing else does.
The real question is where that competition comes from.
What Really Happens in a Two-Week Auction Campaign
Standard auction campaigns in this market run three to four weeks. We condensed ours into 6 open homes across 15 days.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about those extra weeks: most of that time isn’t marketing your home. It’s the agent going out to look for your buyers.
I didn’t have to look. My buyer network already reaches interstate and overseas, and those buyers were in hand the day the campaign opened — not sourced during it.
Then a combined 24,000+ following across LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram at @henrywongunlocked put the home in front of thousands more. In days, not weeks.
Six opens. Fifteen days. Four registered bidders.
The campaign was short because the reach was already built.
Portals Reach Buyers Who Are Already Looking
This is the shift nobody in the industry wants to talk about.
Every agent lists on the same portals. Every agent pays for the same premium placement. Every agent shows you the same marketing schedule.
Portals are excellent at one job: reaching buyers who are already searching for a three-bedroom house, in your suburb, in your price range, this week.
That’s it. That’s the job they do.
They don’t reach the buyer in Sydney who hasn’t started looking at Brisbane yet.
They don’t reach the buyer in Singapore or Hong Kong who watches the Queensland market casually, waiting for the right home to appear in their feed.
They don’t reach the local family who wasn’t planning to move at all — until they saw the video.
Every agent has a portal listing. Not every agent has an audience.
An audience reaches the buyers who weren’t looking.
More buyers. More competition. And competition is what sets your price on the day.
Why Local Buyers Alone Can’t Create Enough Competition
This is the single most important thing I can tell you.
If your agent’s buyer pool is local, it is finite.
In a soft auction market, that finite pool shrinks further, and it punishes a small buyer pool harder than anything else. People sit on their hands. Some wait for interest rate news. Some wait to sell their own home first. Some are simply in no hurry.
So you arrive at auction day with two registered bidders. Or one. Or none.
And then everyone tells you the market was tough.
The market wasn’t tough. The room was empty.
That’s not a reflection of your home. It’s a reflection of how many buyers ever knew it existed.
The fix isn’t a lower reserve. It isn’t a longer campaign. It isn’t more portal spend.
It’s more buyers in the room.
And here’s the part most sellers never consider: interstate buyers price differently to local buyers. Overseas buyers price differently again.
They’re not comparing your home to the nine other three-bedders down the road. They’re comparing it to Sydney, or Melbourne, or Singapore.
Put one of those buyers next to two motivated locals and you have a genuine contest.
That’s how you get 14 bids in a market where auctions are passing in.
Two Questions to Ask Any Agent Before You Sign
If you’re weighing up selling — or you’ve already been on the market and watched it stall — ask every agent you interview these two questions.
Before you sign an auction agency agreement, they’re the only two that really matter.
1. How do you use social media to attract buyers?
Not “are you on social media”. Everyone is on social media. Ask how they use it.
Ask them to walk you through where the buyers came from on their last three campaigns. Ask which of those buyers weren’t actively looking before the campaign started.
2. How many followers do you have across LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram?
Ask for the combined number. Ask them to open the apps and show you.
You’ll get one of two responses.
Some will explain their process, show you the numbers, and give you specifics.
Others will change the subject back to commission.
The answer tells you everything you need to know before you sign anything.
The Number Wasn’t the Story
$1,392,000 is a good result. But it isn’t the part I remember.
My sellers were the original owners. One family. One house. Since 1980.
Forty-six years at one address.
They’re retiring closer to their own children — so they can do the school pickups for the grandkids.
The buyers? A young family moving out to be closer to commute to the city. The funny thing is, the buyer did not buy for the Mansfield State High catchment.
Two generations swapping places at one front door.
That’s what a well-run campaign actually protects. Not a number on a contract — a family’s next chapter, on the timeline they needed.
What This Means for Your Home
If you take one thing from this, take this.
A stalled campaign is almost never a price problem. It’s a reach problem.
The market is soft. That isn’t within your control.
How many buyers see your home is entirely within your control — because it’s decided the day you choose your agent.
An auction only works when there are enough people in the room to compete for your home. Everything else is detail.
Choose the one with the audience and the network.
Then let competition do the rest.
Thinking of Selling? Or Struggling to Sell Right Now?
If you’re planning a move in the next 12 months, or your auction campaign has stalled and the enquiry has gone quiet — call me.
No pressure and no pitch. Just a straight conversation about where your buyers are and how we reach them.
Henry Wong — 0412 471 588
Link to The Courier Mail: https://www.realestate.com.au/news/auction-clearance-rates-rise-again-after-low-not-seen-since-covid/
