Coledale's Investors Are Already Gone. The Rule Change Doesn't Start For Another Year. — Week Ending 19 July 2026

Illawarra Monday Market Pulse | week Ending 19 July 2026

The negative gearing changes don't actually bite until July 2027 - investors lose the ability to negatively gear anything except new builds. That's twelve months away.

Nobody in Coledale got the memo because the market up there is already behaving as if the rule is live.

Pat Furci, the builder-developer behind two new duplexes on Cliff Street, told the Mercury last month he's already rethinking his build mix.

Right now he's building premium - $2.6 million and high-$2 million price guides, lift access, private alfresco, the kind of product that's built to sell to a downsizer, not rent to a tenant.

But he's flagged that, in the future, he'll shift toward stocks an investor can actually buy and hold, because that's where the new rules point the money.

A builder is repricing his entire pipeline off a policy that hasn't started yet. That's not caution. That's front-running.

Zoom out, and it's not just Coledale. Cotality's own research director said advertised stock across the region is running 11.5% above the decade average for this time of year, and

Sydney's clearance rate has now sat under 50% for six straight weeks-— 47.4% as of last weekend, down from 69% at the same point last year. Investors are pulling back everywhere ahead of the CGT and negative gearing changes, and that's opening real space for owner-occupiers in a market that's spent three years punishing anyone without investor-level cash.

Here's the part I'd push back on if I were reading this as a buyer: it's not a blanket green light. Premium coastal stock like Coledale's duplexes plays by different rules to a three-bedroom brick veneer in Bulli or Woonona.

The gap that's actually opening - where investor competition has genuinely thinned - is the $700K to $1.3 million band across the corridor.

That's where you'll feel the difference. Above $2 million, buyers are still buyers, and Coledale will keep selling to people who were never going to negotiate hard anyway.

The Numbers

• NSW clearance rate: 47 (week ending 18 July) - sub-50% for six straight weeks running

• Illawarra advertised stock: 11.5% above the decade average - more choice, less urgency for buyers.

• Coledale duplex price guides: $2.6M and high-$2Ms - premium coastal still selling despite investor pullback

The One Action

If you're buying to live in it - not to negatively gear it - anywhere in the $700K–$1.3 million range across the corridor, push harder on days-on-market right now. Vendors who priced expecting the multiple-offer scenarios of six months ago are still recalibrating, and investors who'd normally be bidding against you are sitting on their hands until the July 2027 rules are locked in. That gap narrows the moment the RBA starts cutting - don't wait for 11 August to find out if it does.