When markets thrive, honesty is easy; it is in the lean seasons that character is tested. Brisbane's auction clearance rate has fallen from 51 percent to 22 percent in a single year, and with that collapse comes a familiar human temptation — to manufacture the appearance of demand where little genuinely exists. Buyer's agent Glenn Price observes that underquoting, phantom bidders, and AI-altered photographs are the instruments of a market under pressure, tools that have always existed but surface most visibly when desperation outpaces integrity.