Evolving buyer behaviour: how property buyers research now.
Buyer behaviour, for a property developer, builder or specialist firm, means where a buyer looks, on what device, how often, and what they need to see before they will identify themselves to a business. It is measured here from public Australian research with dates on it, not from any client’s data.
Almost everyone is online, and almost everyone is on a phone
In 2025, 99.7 per cent of Australian adults used a device to go online, and 97 per cent used a mobile phone to do it, up from 95 per cent in 2024. Of those who used a mobile phone to go online, 91 per cent did so multiple times a day in the six months to June 2025.
Two things follow for a property marketer. The first is that there is no offline audience left to reach differently. The second, and the one that changes more work, is that research now happens in short bursts across a day rather than in one sitting at a desk.
A page that requires a long uninterrupted read to make its case is being read in four-minute pieces, on a phone, between other things. That is a structural requirement, not a design preference.
What people use the internet for is information
Accessing news and information online rose to 94 per cent of Australian adults in 2025, up from 91 per cent in 2024. Using an app to access a government service rose to 75 per cent over the same period, and video conferencing or calling to 58 per cent.
For a firm selling something expensive, that is the whole opportunity and the whole threat in one number. The buyer is already in the habit of looking things up. They will look up the firm, the project, the suburb, the builder, the body corporate and the name of the person who called them.
The question is only whether what they find was written by the firm or by somebody else. Nothing about the buyer’s habit needs changing. What needs to exist is something worth finding.
The research happens across four screens
Australian adults used an average of 4.1 different types of device to go online in 2025, up from 3.7 in 2024, and 40 per cent used five or more, up from 30 per cent.
A single buyer is therefore several sessions, on several devices, over weeks. Analytics that counts a first visit on a phone and a return visit on a laptop as two people will report a shallow, high-volume audience where there is actually a small, deeply engaged one.
The habit is not confined to younger buyers either. Among Australians aged 75 and over, 88 per cent used a mobile phone to go online in 2025, against 18 per cent in 2017. A downsizer audience is a mobile audience.
The buyer is older, and has been saving longer
The number of years needed to save a home deposit rose from 9.0 in 2015 to 11.2 in 2025, and a record 33.1 per cent of median income was needed to service the median rent in 2025.
The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council reports that home ownership among households aged 25 to 34 fell from 61 per cent in 1981 to 43 per cent in 2021. The first purchase is happening later, after a longer period of rental cost pressure, and in most cases with more scrutiny attached to it.
A buyer who has taken eleven years to reach a deposit is not going to be moved by a deadline. They are going to be moved, if at all, by evidence that the firm will still be standing and still be honest in three years.
Where the money actually went
Regional dwelling prices rose 11.7 per cent over the year to March 2026 while capital city prices rose 9.3 per cent. Over the same year the value of lower-priced dwellings rose 12.8 per cent and higher-priced dwellings rose 6.6 per cent.
Demand moved toward the more affordable end and toward the regions, which is where the buyer described above can act. A campaign still aimed at the top of the market in a capital city is aimed at the slowest-moving part of it.
First home buyers are worth watching separately. The number of new owner occupier first home buyer loan commitments fell 2.9 per cent in the June quarter 2026 while their value rose 0.2 per cent: fewer buyers, each borrowing slightly more.
What this does to an enquiry form
The enquiry is now the end of a private process, not the start of a conversation. That reverses the usual design of a form and everything behind it.
If the buyer has done eleven sessions of research before making contact, the form should ask what they still do not know rather than what they want. The follow-up should assume they have already read the material a first call usually delivers. The sales conversation should start at the first genuine question, not at the introduction.
The corollary is uncomfortable: a firm that measures only enquiries is measuring the last five per cent of the process. What it needs to know is whether it was present in the other ninety-five, which is a different measurement problem and a different practice.
The measurement problem it creates
Research spread over four devices and several weeks defeats most of the reporting a firm relies on. Last-click attribution will credit whatever the buyer touched at the end, usually a branded search or a direct visit, and will leave the work that did the persuading uncredited.
The consequence is predictable and expensive: the budget moves toward the channel that closes and away from the work that made closing possible, and enquiry quality falls a quarter or two later for reasons nobody can trace.
The workable answer is not a better attribution model. It is to ask the buyer, at the enquiry, how they came to know the firm, and to treat that answer as evidence beside the analytics rather than beneath it.
What this does not say
The research quoted here measures how Australians use the internet. It does not measure how they choose a property, a builder or an agent, and nothing above should be read as if it did. No free Australian source publishes a dated figure for that, so none is claimed.
Nor does any of it rest on a client’s campaign data. Where this practice does hold a client export, it is used for that client and does not become a public statistic. That is a standing rule rather than a preference.
What to read next
This is the second of three forces. The surface the research happens on is the third: the shifting digital landscape and where buyers look now.
For the dates behind the shift in attention, read what changed in property marketing, and when. The thesis holding the set together is trust-led marketing for an evolving era.
The practice that makes the material a buyer finds is content and creative.
Every figure on this page, and where it came from
Each source below was fetched and read on 19 September 2026. Every figure in the text carries the source’s own as-at date in the sentence it appears in. Nothing here was bought, and no figure on this page comes from a client’s data.
| Source | Publisher | Published |
|---|---|---|
| Communications and media in Australia: How we use the internet | Australian Communications and Media Authority | February 2026 |
| State of the Housing System 2026 | National Housing Supply and Affordability Council | 30 Apr 2026 |
| Lending Indicators, June quarter 2026 | Australian Bureau of Statistics | 14 Aug 2026 |
Get in touchDavid Collins writes the Field Notes. To put this note against your own numbers, get in touch.
This note sits in the Field Notes, under trust-led marketing. The market it is written for is property investment marketing.