What Brisbane ads say before a price shows up or drops: "Awaiting price guide" is the clearest sign a number is coming

Quick answer first. When a Brisbane ad switches to "Awaiting price guide", a number usually turns up within days. Of 43 ads that had never shown a price, 36 put one up within 30 days (84%), 29 of them within a week, and the typical wait was 2 days. When an ad that already had a price switched to it, 18 of 35 came back lower within a month.

Most other wording tells you a lot less than you would think. 1,495 of 1,978 price cuts (76%, about 3 in 4) came with no change in the words beforehand that I could see. Same words, then a lower number.

Tap to enlarge

About 3 in 4 Brisbane price cuts give no warning in the words

Everybody loves a deal, so the question I wanted answered was simple. Before a price comes down, does the ad say something first? Mostly no. I took every price cut I could follow from 7 July to 11 October 2026, 1,978 cuts across 413 real estate offices, and looked at the steps before the lower number.

That is what I could see. I read most ads every few days, so if a price came off and went back on lower between 2 reads, it looks like a cut with no warning. 43 of the 312 cuts where I did see the price come off first had it off for 5 days or less. If I missed as many again, the no-warning share would be about 73%. Still about 3 in 4.

The old number had typically been up about 15 days since its last change before it came down (half between 9 and 25 days). The 312 that took the price off first had it off for a typical 13 days, usually showing "For Sale" (120) or a submit offers line (118) in the meantime. I wrote up that path on its own in when a Brisbane ad hides its price. That post counted 302 of 1,948. This count takes out a For Sale flicker my own system caused, reads a few more buyer phrases, and takes the starting wording from the ad's own history, so it is 312 of 1,978 here. Same share, near enough.

And the selling lines you would expect are rare. "Motivated seller" or "must be sold" sat right before only 40 cuts (2%). "Price reduced" was written on the cut itself only 62 times (3%). Most ads just change the number and say nothing.

"Awaiting price guide" is the clearest sign a number is coming

Here is one I track, a townhouse, wording exactly as the ad had it. It went up as For Sale. Then it changed to "Awaiting Price Guide". A week later it said "Offers Over $1,150,000". 2 weeks after that, "Offers Over $1,075,000". Then "Under Contract".

Based on our data the wording is a short stop while the price gets changed. It could be what an ad shows when the price is cleared while someone types a new one, or when the agent has been told not to give out a price. Queensland law says an agent cannot give a price guide when the seller has told them not to (Property Occupations Act 2014, section 216(3)), so some of these may be that. My data cannot tell which. Either way, of all the wording I tracked it is the clearest sign a number is coming. 36 of the 43 with no price before put one up within 30 days, against 34% for ads of the same age that changed their words to anything else.

Small numbers, 78 ads. The bucket also takes in "price guide on request" and "enquire for price guide". Keep only the literal "Awaiting price guide" and it is 35 of 40. It also holds when I leave out every wording that was up for less than 3 days, which hits this one hardest because it is so short-lived: 12 of 19 still put a number up.

Two others stand out the other way, towards a buyer. When an ad changes to Contact agent, 108 of 332 found a buyer within 30 days (33%) and only 9% cut. Here is one, a house: By Negotiation, then "$1,400,000 +", then "Guide $1.25m+", then "Contact Agent", and 5 days later "Under Contract". "Offers received" goes the same way, 17 of 39 found a buyer within 30 days, and Open home cancelled 13 of 21. Both small, but they point the same direction.

Ads that start with no price: 43% put one up within 2 months

As we know, a lot of Brisbane ads dont show a price. Of the 3,608 ads I first saw between 7 July and 12 August 2026, 2,061 started with no number at all (57%), which is close to what I found in why Brisbane listings show no price. That post covers what each phrase means. This one is about what happens next. I followed those 2,061 for 60 days from when I first saw them and counted whatever happened first.

The typical wait for the number was 18 days, half came out between 12 and 27 days. So roughly 2 to 3 weekends of open homes, then a price. And the path is short. 793 of the 893 (nearly 9 in 10) had only one wording before the number. The most common by far was For Sale, then Offers over $X (393). Then a submit offers line, then Offers over $X (142), and Expressions of interest or By negotiation, then Offers over $X (66). When the number comes it is Offers over 80% of the time (716 of 893).

Contact agent from day 1 is the stubborn one. Only 43 of 148 (29%) put a number up within 60 days. Another 44 were still up with still no price after 2 months, and 23 ads disappeared with no sale recorded.

Auctions are their own thing. In Queensland an agent cannot give a price guide while a home is going to auction (Property Occupations Act 2014, section 216(2)). So a price can only go up once the auction is off. Either it did not sell on the day or the seller pulled it, and my data cannot tell which. Of the 480 ads that started as auctions, 202 (42%) found a buyer first and 199 (41%) put up a number first.

One table for every kind of wording

Here is the full set. Every ad that changed its price words to the thing on the left between 7 July and 11 September 2026, and what happened in the next 30 days. Each ad counts once per row, and the last 2 rows are the ones to compare against. On a phone, swipe the table sideways.

How to read it. Start at the bottom.

• An ad that changed its words at all cut its price 25% of the time in the next month. Ads whose number had been up just as long and whose words never changed, 25%. So an edit on its own tells you nothing. Found a buyer is the same story, 21% against 22%.
• Which words, mostly doesnt matter either. Submit all offers, For sale, Offers over, adding "motivated seller", adding a closing date for offers, all sit within a few points of that 25%. I really thought motivated seller would be the big one. It isnt, 25 of 95 cut.
• Awaiting price guide is the one that stands out for a number coming, covered above.
• Contact agent, Offers received and Open home cancelled stand out for a buyer turning up. My guess is there is often an offer on the table when the wording changes like that, but that is a guess, the data only shows what happened next.
• Expressions of interest and By negotiation are the slow ones. 9% found a buyer in 30 days and the typical wait to the next change was 30 days.
• Adding "price reduced" was followed by another cut 15 of 44 times. A bit higher than any change, on small numbers.

Tap to enlarge

The 4 most common paths

Put it all together and most ads walk one of a few paths. These are the 3,608 ads I first saw from 7 July to 12 August, in their first 60 days, counting only the ones whose words changed at least once.

• For sale, then a number: 227 ads. 71 of them then found a buyer inside the 60 days.
• A number, then a lower number: 196. 48 then found a buyer.
• For sale, then a number, then a lower number: 105.
• Auction, then a number: 83. 44 then found a buyer. The auction was off, either it did not sell on the day or the seller pulled it.

Tap to enlarge

If you want to see where the cuts are near you, every suburb page shows its own count, like Calamvale above. For how many homes cut each month by council area, see 1 in 5 Ipswich homes cut their price in September.

If you are watching an ad

• It switches to Awaiting price guide: the number is likely days away. Ring the agent now and ask what it will be, dont wait for the ad.
• The price comes off and it says Contact agent: ask straight up if there is an offer on it, and if there is one, whether the next round is best and final.
• It adds "motivated seller": that tells you about as much as any other edit, which is not much.
• An auction ad turns into Offers over: the auction is off. Ask whether it did not sell on the day or the owner pulled it, and who they are dealing with now.
• Dont wait for a warning before a cut. About 3 in 4 cuts came with none that I could see.

How I counted

• Brisbane City Council area, matched from the suburb within postcodes 4000 to 4599. Every property type I track (houses, townhouses, units and land), with builder and house-and-land ads, project ads, ads with no street number and ads that came down as leased left out. 10,846 ads were for sale at some point between 7 July and 11 October 2026.
• I read the price part of the ad as written, and sort it into the kinds of wording in the table. An edit that keeps the same kind of wording, the same dollar figure and the same selling lines does not count as a change. The starting wording comes from the ad's own history, never from what it says today.
• A cut means the ad showed a lower dollar figure than the last one it showed. Cuts over 22% are left out, and so are cuts that went back up within 14 days, ads with 3 or more cuts in a week, and cuts I could not date.
• Found a buyer means the ad said under contract or under offer (or sold, in contract, U/C and the like), or a sale was recorded. Sales take a few weeks to be recorded, so the buyer numbers can firm up a little.
• The 2 comparison rows are matched on how long the ad had been up, and for cuts on how long the number had been up, because a new price gets cut sooner than an old one. The never-changed row is built from 21,362 weekly looks at ads that had not changed, leaving out any week where the ad had already disappeared.
• I read most ads every few days, not every hour, so the days figures are rough by a couple of days, and a wording that comes and goes between 2 reads can be missed. That is why the headline says that I could see, and the bound above puts it at about 73%.
• Some ads went unread for a while before 12 October and I only caught up with them later. I ran everything again leaving those out and nothing moved more than 5 points (Awaiting price guide 34 of 39, Contact agent 33% found a buyer).
• I started saving the ad wording on 4 July, and the first 3 days were catch-up, so I start at 7 July. On 12 October I started reading more ads, so I stopped the day before. Every follow-up ends by 11 October.
• Until early September one of my systems sometimes wrote a plain FOR SALE over the real words in an ad. A For Sale that sits between 2 identical wordings is taken out. Two re-runs test the no-warning share: houses only, it is 72% (893 of 1,241), and with every early FOR SALE taken out it is 76% (1,495 of 1,978). I also re-ran the table with only wordings that stayed up at least 3 days, and leaving out ads that went unread for a while. Those 2 change which wording changes count, not the cuts, so they test the table but not the 3 in 4.
• Where 2 ads take turns on the same home within a few hours, or my system read an ad again that had not changed, those changes are left out, same as on every other count on the site.

Questions people ask

What does "awaiting price guide" mean on a property ad?

It means the ad has no price showing right now. In my Brisbane count it was usually short, and 84% of ads with no earlier price put a number up within 30 days, typically 2 days later. For ads that had a price before, about half (18 of 35) came back lower within a month.

What happens after an ad changes to Contact agent?

In the Brisbane City Council area between 7 July and 11 September 2026, 33% of ads that changed to Contact agent found a buyer within 30 days and 9% cut their price. For what the phrase means, see why Brisbane listings show no price.

Does "motivated seller" mean the price will drop?

Not more than you would expect anyway. 25 of 95 ads that added it cut within 30 days (26%), against 21% for ads whose number had been up just as long and whose words never changed.

How long until an ad with no price shows one?

Of Brisbane ads that started with no price and put one up within 60 days, the typical wait was 18 days, half between 12 and 27 days. 43% put a number up first, 20% found a buyer first, 19% were still up with still no price after 60 days and in 10% the ad disappeared with no sale recorded.