Brisbane has been due for a correction for about three years now. The prediction makes intuitive sense. Prices moved fast, affordability stretched, and at some point gravity should reassert itself. But the correction hasn’t come, and there’s a structural reason for that.

A couple, usually time-poor and usually smart, spends six months looking for a home on their own. They go to open homes on Saturdays. They miss out at auctions. They make offers that go nowhere. They keep getting told a property sold before it hit the market and wonder how that keeps happening.