Home hunters are battling for fewer properties as the traditional spring market heats up.
A survey by RP Data shows that the number of properties listed for sale in all capital cities, excluding Perth, is 11.6 per cent lower than in September 2013.
The fall was driven by double-digit drops in the number of listings in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
However, the number of properties for sale in Darwin is up by 20 per cent.
Just over 37,000 new properties were advertised for sale across the country, excluding Western Australia, in the four weeks to September 21, down by 1.2 per cent on a year ago.
"New listing numbers are slowly trending higher as we enter spring," RP Data.
RP Data said it had to exclude Western Australia from its latest survey because of problems accessing data from that state.