A buyers market is a window of opportunity.
Do you have what it takes to make the most of it?
More stock. Longer days on market. More motivated vendors. The conditions favour buyers right now — but only buyers with the right strategy. Everyone else is about to overpay, miss the best opportunities, or miss the window entirely.
Yes, there's more stock. Yes, vendors are motivated. But who's actually selling, and why?
Most buyers read "buyers market" and stop there. More stock. Longer days on market. Softer prices. That's the headline, and it's true. But it tells you nothing about how to act on it.
The buyers who do well in this market aren't the ones who simply wait for a discount. They're the ones who understand why a particular vendor is selling, because that's what actually determines the price and the terms you can secure.
A deceased estate, a forced sale, an investor exiting ahead of tax changes, a vendor who's already bought their next home, a withdrawn listing that's quietly still in play — each of these is a different negotiation. Each one rewards a different strategy. Get this wrong and you'll either overpay or miss out entirely, even in a market that's supposedly in your favour.
Deceased estates, debt, divorce
These vendors have to sell. Certainty, terms and timing matter to them more than price. A short, clean, unconditional offer often outperforms a higher conditional one.
Rational investors
Exiting ahead of tax changes, not under distress. These properties can sit for months. A measured, incremental approach works better than an aggressive first offer.
Opportunistic sellers
Selling at a discount to buy their next property in the same soft market. They're often more flexible on settlement and certainty than on price alone.
Withdrawn vendors
Listed, didn't sell, pulled the listing. Not publicly searchable. This intelligence lives in agent relationships — and a gentle approach can reopen the conversation.
Knowing who's on the other side of the table changes the offer you make. That's the difference between buying well in this market and simply buying.
In a hot market, the strategy is simple. In this market, it's not.
When the market is hot, the playbook is straightforward: find what others can't, act faster than everyone else, offer the best price. Most buyers can follow that, even without help.
A buyers market is more complex. Stock is elevated, which means more time to find the right property but also more ordinary stock to sift through. Vendors are motivated, but motivation looks different from one seller to the next, and the wrong approach can cost you the deal even when the conditions favour you. Without experience, this is where buyers go wrong — missing properties that have quietly come back into play, overpaying because they don't have the full back story, or using the wrong strategy entirely for the type of buyer they're dealing with.
Multiple offers, letting a property pass in deliberately, timed offers, staged offers — these are all live tools in this market, and using the wrong one at the wrong moment is exactly how a genuine opportunity slips away.
The advantages on the table in this market — and how to actually use them
Conditions are genuinely in your favour. Converting that into an outcome requires knowing exactly what's available and how to use it.
Terms that work for the vendor — so they concede on price
We start from understanding the vendor's situation and what they actually need. Then we offer terms that solve their problem: certainty, timing, flexibility. In exchange, they concede on the number that matters most to you — the price.
Tracking the full campaign cycle, not just days on market
A day-on-market count tells you almost nothing on its own. We track every property through its full cycle — pre-listing, the first week of strong interest, the slower second and third weeks, the auction-prep push, post-failed-auction, and withdrawn-but-still-a-seller. Knowing exactly where a vendor sits in that cycle is what shapes the right offer.
Decisive, unconditional offers built on upfront due diligence
We do the due diligence before we make an offer, not after. That means when we move, we move with a clean, unconditional offer, backed by certainty about the property's condition. In this market, that decisiveness is itself a point of leverage with the vendor and their agent.
Passed-in auctions, used strategically
A passed-in property can be a genuine opportunity, but the right move is rarely to bludgeon the agent the same day. Sometimes the better strategy is to let the property pass in deliberately and pick up the negotiation when the timing favours you. We know when to push and when to wait.
Vendor motivation as a precise pricing lever
Once we know where a property sits in its cycle and what's driving the vendor, we can formulate the correct offer strategy — price, terms, and timing built around what will actually get accepted, not a guess based on a headline discount.
The advantage most buyers miss entirely
In this market, off-market opportunities are priced for a quick, quiet sale by realistic vendors, vendors relisting after a failed campaign, vendors who'd rather avoid the cost and exposure of a public marketing campaign, and vendors hoping to sell and upsize into the same soft market. Most buyers never see this layer of the market at all.
The traps that catch buyers even in a soft market
Softer conditions don't remove risk. They change its shape. Here's where buyers lose ground in this market, and how we work to prevent it.
Anchoring to the original asking price instead of true current value. A property that's been discounted from its original listing feels like a bargain, regardless of price point. It may not be.
How We Protect YouThis market moves quickly. We track price movement on a weekly basis, because last month's data is already out of date and doesn't tell you what a property is worth this week.
Buying into a suburb or property type that's soft for structural reasons, not just market conditions. Oversupplied apartment stock in some inner-city pockets, for example, can stay soft long after the broader market recovers.
How We Protect YouWe operate at the street and property-type level, not the suburb level. We know which pockets are temporarily soft and which are facing a longer structural repricing, and we steer you clear of the wrong one.
Assuming every discounted property should be avoided. The opposite mistake is just as costly: walking away from a property with a fixable issue and a genuinely outsized discount, sitting on a good piece of land with good owner-occupier appeal.
How We Protect YouWe read strata reports and building reports from primary documents, not the summary page. Where a defect is real, we make sure the discount reflects three things stacked together — the soft market, the issue itself, and the fact that with buyer competition gone, it's often us or no one. That's where the biggest opportunities sit.
Freezing. Watching the window and waiting for more certainty, while everyone else does the same thing. Collective hesitation is exactly how good buyers watch a window close and look back wondering what happened.
How We Protect YouWe give you a clear decision framework before you need it, so when the right property appears, the answer is yes or no, not "let me think about it for a week." It still takes most buyers months to complete a purchase. Waiting too long to start is its own risk.
Good properties don't get cheaper forever in a buyers market. Smart vendors of genuinely good property tend to sell in good times and hold in soft ones. As more vendors withdraw rather than accept a lower price, the properties that remain on market skew toward the harder-to-place stock. We saw exactly this pattern through 2022 and 2023. The best opportunities are often earliest in the cycle, not latest.
The best opportunities in this market aren't listed at all.
In a competitive market, off-market deals happen because vendors want speed and discretion. In a buyers market, they happen for a different set of reasons, and there are more of them. This is the layer of the market that doesn't show up on Domain or realestate.com.au — and it takes years of agent relationships to reach.
- Withdrawn listings — vendors who pulled their property after a failed campaign but would still sell with the right approach.
- Opportunistic sellers — not listed, but ready to sell quietly if the right terms are presented.
- Realistic and relisting vendors — priced for a quick, quiet outcome rather than a public campaign.
- Privacy-motivated vendors — sellers who'd rather avoid the cost and exposure of marketing altogether.
- Pre-market opportunities — properties we hear about before the vendor has fully committed to a public sale.
When the vendor is anxious, the selling agent works harder against you, not for you.
There's a common misconception about buyers markets: that motivated vendors mean friendlier, more cooperative selling agents. The opposite is closer to the truth. A vendor under pressure leans harder on their agent to achieve the best possible price. The selling agent's duty is to the vendor. It always was. In a soft market, it sharpens.
It's also worth understanding what's driving the agents themselves. Selling agents are transacting less right now, and they still need to make a living. That's why you'll see highly experienced, seven-figure agents standing on the door of an entry-level apartment on a Sunday. That's the level of hustle and survival mode you're up against at the negotiating table today.
You wouldn't enter a complex legal dispute without a solicitor because the other side seemed friendly. A property negotiation is no different.
A buyers agent's only obligation is to you. No referral relationship with the selling agent. No incentive to close quickly. Just one job: find the right property, assess it properly, and pay the right price for it.
Clear process. Fixed fee. No surprises.
Every Unicorn engagement is led personally by Dan Sofo. Not a junior agent, not a coordinator. Dan runs every search, assessment and negotiation himself.
Free 15-minute call with Dan
A direct conversation about your brief, your timeline, and the current state of the market in your target area. No junior agent, no obligation. We'll tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.
Brief and search parameters locked
We define exactly what we're looking for — property type, target suburbs, non-negotiables, and a price ceiling backed by current market analysis, not last quarter's data.
Active search — on and off-market
We work the portals and the agent network at the same time, including expired and withdrawn listings still in play, and opportunistic vendors who'd sell quietly if approached the right way. In this market, that off-market layer is particularly active.
Due diligence, completed upfront
For every shortlisted property: an independent price appraisal, a strata report review from primary documents, and building inspection coordination — all completed before we put an offer forward, not after.
Negotiation, built on intelligence
We bring intel on vendor motivation and campaign history to every offer, so the terms are built around what will actually get accepted. Across our recent purchases, our clients have consistently bought 10–20% below their original expectations.
Exchange and through to settlement
We stay involved through exchange and settlement, coordinating with your solicitor and managing anything that comes up along the way. Our job isn't done when the contract is signed.
Fixed fee, not a percentage. Our fee is agreed upfront and isn't based on the purchase price. That means we have no incentive to push you toward a more expensive property or to close quickly. Our interest and yours are the same — the right property at the right price.
A boutique team. Fully focused on you.
Unicorn Buyers Agents is a small, specialist team of three buyers agents, deliberately so. We are not a franchise, not a volume operation, and not a team where your search gets handed off to a junior. Every client works directly with an experienced agent from brief to keys.
Dan Sofo founded the practice after more than 15 years navigating Sydney property on behalf of buyers. In a market like this one, that experience is the difference between reading the headline and reading the vendor. He leads every buyers market engagement personally, bringing the negotiation experience and agent relationships that come from 250+ purchases.
That depth of relationships is exactly what makes the off-market layer of this market accessible, and exactly what tells us which discount is real and which is a trap.
Don't take our word for it — hear from our clients directly →Buyers Market FAQs
Modern Sydney downturns that combine tax policy shifts with interest rate pressure typically run their course in twelve to fifteen months. The current cycle's peak was around November 2025, which points to a trough somewhere between November 2026 and February 2027. Factoring in the December and January holiday shutdown, that leaves buyers a window of roughly five months, probably less, since sentiment is usually at its weakest right before the market turns.
Conditions favour buyers right now: more stock, longer days on market, and motivated vendors. But a buyers market doesn't guarantee a good outcome on its own. The buyers who do well are the ones who understand why a particular vendor is selling and structure their offer around it, not the ones who simply wait for a lower number.
If anything, more than usual. When vendors are under pressure, selling agents work harder, not softer, to extract the best possible price for their client. A buyers agent's only obligation is to you, with no incentive to close quickly and no referral relationship with the vendor's agent.
Not every discount should be avoided, and not every discount should be trusted. We read strata and building reports from primary documents, not summaries, and we make sure any discount reflects the soft market, the issue itself, and the fact that with less buyer competition, it's often us or no one. That stacking is where the real opportunities sit.
Yes, and there are more reasons for them to exist right now. Withdrawn listings, opportunistic sellers, vendors who'd rather avoid a public campaign, and relisting vendors all create off-market opportunities that never reach Domain or realestate.com.au. Reaching this layer of the market takes years of agent relationships.
Good properties don't stay cheap indefinitely. Vendors of genuinely good property tend to sell in strong conditions and hold in soft ones, and as more vendors withdraw rather than accept a lower price, the stock that remains skews toward harder-to-place properties. We saw this pattern through 2022 and 2023. The best opportunities are often earliest in the cycle, not latest.
This buyers market won't last. Make sure you're one of the ones who used it.
A free 15-minute call with Dan. No junior agent, no sales pitch — an honest conversation about your brief, the current market, and whether Unicorn is the right fit for you.
Suite 1/3b Victoria St, Paddington NSW 2021 · Eastern Suburbs · Inner West · Lower North Shore