Across key Sydney council areas, a private real estate exchange reports that 20.2% of homes sold in 2025 bypassed major portals, only slightly down from 20.5% the year before. This suggests that off-market sales are no longer just a niche tactic for luxury properties but a growing part of the mainstream housing market.
An analysis of roughly 30,000 settled sales in 2025 across areas such as North Sydney, the Inner West, Ku-ring-gai, Woollahra, Randwick, Waverley, Mosman, Northern Beaches, Lane Cove and the City of Sydney found that some regions are quietly leading the way in off-market activity. In North Sydney, about a quarter of sales (25.1%) reportedly happened without a major portal listing. The City of Sydney (22.8%), Ku-ring-gai (22.5%) and the Inner West (21.5%) all sat above the 21% mark. Even in suburbs where off-market sales are less dominant such as Waverley at 10.6%, the share has been rising year on year.
Off-market sales are not just for top tier homes. Across the 10 council areas examined, around 48.5% of houses and 47.2% of units sold off portal were priced below their suburb’s median. This indicates that owners at more everyday price points are choosing to rely on agents’ private databases and email lists rather than pay for a full public campaign on the major sites. This shift is often framed as a response to rising listing fees and escalating marketing budgets, with agencies increasingly using contact lists built from open homes and previous campaigns to quietly match buyers and sellers before a property ever needs a public advertisement.
For the big online real estate platforms, this trend adds to another challenge, concern that generative AI could one day help buyers search directly across individual agency sites without needing to visit a paid classifieds portal at all. This fear has already weighed on listed property-tech groups, with one leading portal owner seeing its share price fall by about a third over the past year and another major operator dropping around 46%. Analysts suggest AI may bring short term efficiency gains for these businesses but also warn that the longer term impact is uncertain, while the sustained rise in off-market deals looks like a sign that sellers and agents are already testing ways to bypass traditional advertising channels.
