Auction market weakest in 30 years — Alan Weiss on brand vs independent agents

When the phone doesn’t ring anymore, what is the brand name actually doing?

Sydney’s auction market is the weakest a veteran auctioneer has seen in thirty years — exactly the conditions in which vendors instinctively reach for a name they recognise. That instinct belongs to an industry that no longer exists.

Sydney’s auction market is now the weakest a veteran auctioneer has seen in thirty years — two weekends running with zero registered bidders, a level of quiet he says he last saw in 1991. It’s exactly the kind of market where vendors instinctively reach for the name they recognise. That instinct is a hangover from an industry that no longer exists.

I started in this business when the brand name genuinely did the work. It was the reason the phone rang — because of the letterbox drop, the print ad, the office window on the high street. Buyer awareness was manufactured by reach, and reach was expensive, and only a handful of names could afford to manufacture it at scale. In that world, choosing the biggest name was a rational shortcut.

That world is gone. Buyers today live on two portals and social media advertising, full stop. They set alerts, they get notified the moment something new is listed, and from there they shop on address, photographs, floor plan, price guide and terms — not on which name is above the door. The agency logo doesn’t appear anywhere in that decision.

Buyers don’t shop the brand. They shop the address, the photos and the price guide — and every agent reaches them through the identical two portals.

Underneath, the businesses have converged too. A genuinely independent agent today is commonly running a remote-first operation, supported by the same category of back-end platform — trust accounting, campaign production — that used to be the exclusive infrastructure of a large office. The perception of a big office as a bigger machine doesn’t hold up once you look at how the work actually gets done. Every agent, independent or franchised, is commissioning the same photographers, copywriters, floor plan artists and stylists — and styling itself is increasingly done digitally rather than physically, which narrows the gap further still. The selling method on the table is the same menu for everyone — private treaty, auction, expression of interest — and most agencies bring in a third-party auctioneer on the day regardless of what’s on their sign.

Nothing about the property changes depending on who’s selling it. The address doesn’t change. The photographs don’t change. The floor plan doesn’t change. What’s changed is the operating model the industry built over the last decade — a volume model, more listings, more throughput — and that model doesn’t survive a market this thin. The agent who’s useful to you now isn’t running volume. They’re operating as an adviser: a specialist making a call on your specific property, in this specific market, unpressured by a franchise’s need to keep the numbers up.

In a market this thin, the agent who serves you isn’t the one running volume. It’s the one who can afford to advise you properly on one property at a time.

None of this is an argument against any individual franchise — plenty of excellent agents work inside them, and a well-run network still offers real training and support. It’s an argument against choosing on the name alone, in a market where the name no longer does what it once did. The buyer walks in the door regardless of who listed the property. What decides the outcome from there is negotiation, judgement, and the resilience to hold a position when the market is this quiet.

The views expressed in this article are Alan Weiss’s own professional assessment based on current market conditions and publicly available data as cited above. This article is general commentary only and does not constitute financial, legal or investment advice. Readers should seek independent professional advice specific to their circumstances before making property decisions.