What Days on Market actually measures
Days on Market — usually abbreviated DOM — is the number of days between a property being listed for sale and the day it goes under contract. It’s tracked at the suburb level as a median or average, which smooths out individual outliers.
If the median DOM in a suburb is 14 days, half the listings sold faster, half took longer. That single number tells you more about current market conditions than almost any other metric.
What “tight” and “loose” DOM look like
As a rough guide for Australian capital city suburbs:
- Under 20 days — extremely tight. Buyers are competing, offers are above asking, sellers have leverage. Classic signs of a hot market.
- 20–35 days — healthy, balanced. Typical of a well-functioning suburb in normal conditions.
- 35–60 days — softening. Buyers have time to think. Negotiation leverage is shifting.
- 60+ days — oversupplied. Sellers are cutting prices or pulling listings. A buyer’s market.
These bands shift slightly between cities. Perth in early 2026 has been running unusually tight across many suburbs — some inner-ring suburbs have sat under 10 days for months.
How DOM interacts with other metrics
DOM doesn’t live in isolation. It’s most useful when read alongside:
- Vendor Discounting — if DOM is long and discounting is high, sellers are capitulating.
- Vacancy Rate — tight rentals plus tight sales usually means the suburb is genuinely undersupplied, not just temporarily fashionable.
- Demand-Supply Ratio — confirms whether the tight DOM is a demand surge or a supply drought.
A suburb with DOM of 12 days, vacancy at 0.8%, and a D/S ratio above 1.3 is almost certainly in an early growth phase.
Why Perth’s DOM matters for east coast investors
Historically, Perth DOM ran 30–60 days — a normal market. Through 2024 and 2025, the median collapsed to under 20 days in many suburbs as interstate investors pushed into the market. By early 2026, some City of Wanneroo and City of Swan suburbs have been clearing in under 10 days.
For an investor based in Sydney or Melbourne looking at a Perth suburb, a DOM number is a real-time pulse check. Data from CoreLogic is 1–2 weeks delayed, so it tells you where the market has been — not where it is this exact moment. Always pair the DOM number with current REIWA listing counts to get a live read.
What DOM can’t tell you
DOM measures speed of sale, not quality of buyer. A suburb can have tight DOM because:
- Genuine demand outstrips supply (good for investors)
- Sellers are pricing aggressively low to move stock (neutral)
- A single developer dumped cheap stock and it cleared fast (misleading)
That’s why TopBurb pairs DOM with Vendor Discounting, Auction Clearance Rates, and List-to-Sale price ratios — all three together paint the accurate picture.