3 min read

Envelope in the press. Is the way we buy and sell property about to change forever?

Only 1.3% of Australian homes are for sale at any given time. Geoff Lucas joins This Is Property to explore what’s keeping the other 98.7% off the market.

Written by

Envelope

Published on

September 14, 2026

Why are so few Australian homes actually for sale?

Australians are holding onto their homes for longer than ever. The average residential property is now held for 20.8 years, while at any given time only around 1.3% of Australian homes are actually on the market.

So what’s keeping the rest on the sidelines?

Envelope founder and former McGrath and The Agency CEO Geoff Lucas joined John Pidgeon and Rachelle Kroon on This Is Property to unpack what’s happening in the Australian property market and why reducing the friction around selling could unlock more homes for buyers.

The hidden supply sitting outside the property market

When we talk about housing supply, the conversation usually focuses on how many new homes Australia needs to build.

But there’s another kind of supply: the millions of existing homes that simply aren’t available to buyers. Geoff points to the growing length of time Australians hold onto property. An average holding period of 20.8 years means a huge proportion of Australia's housing stock rarely enters the market.

And the decision to sell isn't a small one. For many homeowners, testing the market means committing to an agent, preparing the home, paying thousands of dollars in marketing costs, opening the property to strangers, and publicly setting a price expectation for one of their biggest assets.

That creates friction before a buyer and seller have even found each other.

Could more choice change the market?

The discussion raises an interesting question: what would happen if homeowners could signal they might be willing to sell without formally putting their property on the market?

For buyers, particularly those struggling to find the right home among a limited number of listings, it could dramatically expand the pool of potential properties.

For homeowners, it creates another option between “I'm not selling” and launching a full public sales campaign. And for people looking to upsize, Geoff sees particular opportunity in the current market, where changing conditions can make the gap between selling one property and buying the next more important than the headline price of either home.

A property market worth rethinking

The episode goes beyond where property prices might move next. Geoff, John and Rachelle explore why Australians are holding property for longer, the barriers that stop owners from selling, the opportunity for upsizers and whether changing the mechanics of how buyers and sellers find each other could ultimately create a more fluid property market.

They also explore the role of agents and buyer advocates, how selling costs influence homeowners' decisions, and what a more flexible way of entering the market could look like.

In the living room, the goal is warmth without crowding, a space that looks like it's ready for someone to put their feet up, not a showroom nobody's allowed to touch. Remove personal items and stick to a colour theme.

Buyers stand in the doorway of the main bedroom longer than anywhere else in the house. Strip the bedside tables back to almost nothing, iron the linen, and fold the doona back 30cm so the bed looks like it belongs in a hotel. Clear the floor completely, because floor space is what sells square metres. One colour repeated twice between the cushions and a throw at the foot of the bed is all the styling this room actually needs.

The dining area is where buyers do their most social imagining, picturing dinner parties and Sunday mornings, so the space needs to make that imagining easy. Set the table simply with two to four place settings, nice glasses and a low bunch of flowers. Pull the table away from the wall so it sits in the middle of its space with chairs slightly drawn out, because a table pushed against a wall reads as storage rather than somewhere to gather. A pendant light hung 75 to 90cm above the table surface will do more for how the room feels than almost any other single change you can make.

What Australia's most prolific property stylist says.
‍
Sara Chamberlain has styled close to two thousand homes across Melbourne and has been responsible for over $3.3 billion in real estate presentations. On inspection day, Chamberlain says homes should be flooded with light. Open every blind, turn on every lamp, and use your overhead lights for once. A light-filled room reads as clean and safe to buyers. Anything dim or shadowy makes them wonder what's being hidden. Her advice on furniture scale is counterintuitive for most sellers:
Go bigger, not smaller. A larger rug stretches the perceived size of a room. A generous sofa fills the space the way buyers expect a living area to feel.
‍
She also talks about "repeats" as one of the most powerful tricks in a stylist's toolkit. Using a single colour more than once in a room gives the eye somewhere familiar to land. Timber tones echoed between a coffee table and a picture frame. A warm neutral on a cushion that mirrors the throw on the sofa. These small repetitions are what create a sense of cohesion, and you can do all of it with what you already own.
‍
Steph and Gian, 2023 Block record-holders built their win on Japandi, a style so committed it earned them the nickname "the beige people." Steph's advice to sellers: really embody your style. A home with a clear, consistent aesthetic leaves a stronger impression than one that's been stripped back to nothing.
‍
The Checklist, before potential sellers arrive
‍
Move your lawn
Curb appeal still counts and it's the cheapest fix on this list. Mowing the lawn, trimming overgrown bushes, repainting a tired letterbox and adding a few potted plants near the entry can lift the whole feel of the property for the cost of an afternoon and a trip to the hardware store.
‍
Turn on every light
Open all blinds and turn on every lamp, including overhead lights. This is the one time you use them all at once. Light reads as clean and safe.
‍
Scent scape & keep it fresh
Skip the $500 candle. Open windows the morning before. A neutral, fresh-air scent outperforms any diffuser in how buyers remember a property.
‍
Colour repeats
Pick two tones in the living room and let each appear twice. Timber echoed in a frame, a neutral cushion matched to a throw. That's cohesion without shopping.
‍
Real flowers in older homes
Chamberlain's advice: heritage properties respond better to real flowers than to artificial greenery. A single bunch on a kitchen bench does the work of an entire styled vignette.
‍
Does any of this actually move the price?
‍
The data says yes, consistently. Homes that have been professionally staged in Australia have shown an average price premium that runs into the tens of thousands of dollars, with some properties seeing increases well beyond that. Even DIY decluttering and depersonalising, done properly, has been linked to noticeably higher final sale prices in studies of the US market, with sellers seeing a measurable lift simply from presenting a clean, neutral, move-in-ready space.
The honest takeaway is that most of that lift comes from the free part. Decluttering, depersonalising and a thorough clean do the heavy lifting. The styled cushions and the hired armchair add polish on top, but they're not what makes a buyer fall for a home.
‍
Where Envelope fits into all of this
Here's the part that might change how you think about timing. You don't need any of this finished before you find out whether there's interest in your home.
Envelope lets you claim your property and start a conversation with serious buyers before you've touched a single cushion. There's no open home to prep for, no professional photography deadline, and no pressure to have the place looking magazine-ready on day one. You tell us your number, we connect you with buyers who are genuinely matched and financially ready, and you decide if and when it's worth moving forward.
If a real conversation turns into a real sale, that's when staging earns its place, polishing a home that's already attracted a serious offer. Until then, you get to skip the part where you're spending thousands of dollars and a weekend of stress on a maybe.
‍
Claim your property on Envelope and see what's possible, before you've vacuumed a single throw rug.
‍

Go bigger, not smaller. A larger rug makes a room look larger. A generous sofa fills the space the way buyers expect a living area to feel.

Listen to the Podcast