Key Facts:
- OpenCorp founder Cam McLellan has dismissed the 18-year land cycle theory - which predicts an imminent Australian property crash based on a 1933 Chicago study - as a Hollywood idea with no relevance to the Australian market.
- McLellan argues that property markets are driven by supply, demand, affordability, and consumer confidence, none of which operate on a fixed timetable, and that pinning a forecast to 2008 is flawed because Australia did not experience a genuine property crash that year.
- Cotality figures released in September 2026 show national home values fell 0.9 per cent in August, with Sydney down 7.1 per cent from its February peak, though upper and lower quartile markets are moving in opposite directions within the same cities.
- McLellan maintains there is no fundamental problem with the Australian housing market, attributing the current softness to policy uncertainty affecting consumer confidence rather than any cyclical inevitability, with a structural supply shortage set to persist due to land release and construction trade constraints.
- Rather than relying on national timing theories, McLellan advocates identifying undervalued capital city markets and specific growth corridors with limited land supply, rising infrastructure investment, and population growth as the only reliable investment approach.
Melbourne, 3 September 2026 - Talk of an "18-year land cycle" has reignited fears that Australia is due for a major property market reset. But according to OpenCorp founder Cam McLellan, the theory misses a basic fact about how Australian property actually works, and lets the real culprit off the hook.
The 18-year land cycle is a long-running theory in property circles. It argues that markets move through a fairly predictable pattern over roughly 18 years: a period of growth, a mid-cycle wobble, further growth, then a correction, before the cycle starts again. Believers point to past Australian downturns lining up with this pattern and argue the country is now due for the next one.
"The eighteen year cycle is the fifty year storm from Point Break. It's a Hollywood idea. A couple of real events happened to land prices 100 years ago in America, someone drew a line through them afterwards and then sold it as a forecast," OpenCorp CEO Cam McLellan said. "Property markets are run on supply, demand, affordability and consumer confidence. None of those four keep to a timetable."
The theory comes from a Chicago study published in 1933, which claimed to find a roughly 18 year rhythm in American land values. It argues property moves through a set pattern: growth, a mid cycle wobble, more growth, then a crash. Because 2026 is 18 years on from 2008, it is now being used to argue Australia is due.
"That's the whole basis of it. One study of one American city, published in the 1930s," Mr McLellan said. "Trying to pin that on Australia in 2026 doesn't make any sense whatsoever."
"I've got no problem with people studying cycles. The problem is the version doing the rounds right now, which is basically count eighteen years from 2008 and brace for impact," he said. "That's not analysis, that's a calendar."
"This is where the whole thing falls over. They're pinning it on 2008. Australia didn't have a property crash in 2008. We had a wobble and then values went up," Mr McLellan said.
"That was a global financial crisis that started in American housing. It had nothing to do with any cycle here. They've taken a date when American banks blew up, added eighteen, and told Australians to panic. The more you look at it the more ridiculous it gets."
"Every downturn we've had came from something. Rates, credit, unemployment, a shock from offshore. The theory looks at the wreckage afterwards and says the calendar did it," he said.
"I've got a team doing nineteen thousand hours a year on market cycles, research and analytics. Not one of them has ever come back and said the answer is on a calendar," Mr McLellan said. "I've been investing for thirty five years and I've never once made a decision based on a date."
Cotality figures released on 1 September show national home values fell 0.9 per cent in August 2026. Sydney fell 1.4 per cent and is now 7.1 per cent below its February peak, Melbourne and Canberra each fell 1.1 per cent, Brisbane 1.0 per cent, and Adelaide and Perth 0.8 per cent.
"Ask them crash where, exactly, and more to the point, crash how. We've been through the real ones. The GFC had a broken American housing market and a broken banking system underneath it. There was something genuinely wrong," Mr McLellan said. "There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Australian housing market. What's moved is consumer confidence, and that's policy uncertainty, not the market itself."
"The only way we get more supply is major building reform that frees up land and makes it viable to build. And even if a government released more land tomorrow, we haven't got the trades to build on it," Mr McLellan said. "There is no short term fix. This supply and demand problem isn't going away, and confidence always comes back before the shortage does."
"This is not a shot at one party. Every side of politics has had a crack at it and every side has kicked it down the road," he said.
Cotality found upper quartile values fell 3.2 per cent nationally over the three months to July, while lower quartile values rose 0.3 per cent over the same period.
"Inside the same city the top end and the entry level can be moving in opposite directions. A theory built on one national clock cannot explain that," Mr McLellan said.
"Melbourne is the perfect example. The headlines say Melbourne is falling, and citywide it is. But every property we have bought for a client in Melbourne over the past two years has increased in value," Mr McLellan said. "There are markets within markets. You find a capital city market that's undervalued, then you find the growth corridors inside it with limited land supply and infrastructure coming that will bring population. Limited supply plus rising population is demand. That's the work. It has nothing to do with a calendar."
"Everyone wants to buy the bottom. If there are dozens of markets moving at different speeds there are dozens of bottoms, and none of them ring a bell," he said. "Sitting there waiting for a national all clear that doesn't exist isn't being careful. It's just doing nothing with extra steps."
"We've bought thousands of properties for clients across every market, and we've beaten the capital city markets doing it, with figures independently verified," Mr McLellan said. "That wasn't done with a calendar. It was done by measuring supply, demand, affordability and consumer confidence in specific markets within markets. That's the only thing that has ever worked."
