Common questions.
Quick answers about playing — how picks work, what the crowd sees, how scoring resolves, what we do with your account. For the long version of how a week plays out, read /how-it-works; for the maths, /methodology.
The basics
What is Foresyte?
A free weekly prediction game. Each Sunday evening, twenty Sydney auctions land on the picks page. You choose five, type a dollar amount for each, and find out Sunday morning how close you got.
How much does it cost? Will it stay free?
Unconditionally free, forever. No entry fees, no cash prizes, no peer-to-peer wagering, no premium tier on top of the game. We don’t take payment details and we never will.
Why only Sydney? Do I need to live there?
Sydney runs the most concentrated auction market in the country — hundreds of Saturday auctions year-round, often past 1,000 in peak selling season — which makes calibration tractable. You can play from anywhere; lock time always shows in your local timezone next to Sydney’s.
Picking your five
Am I limited to the curated 20?
No. The curated 20 is the default starting view on the picks page — hand-selected each week for a balanced mix of suburbs, prices, guide states, and storyline. Flip a toggle on the filter bar to switch to the full Sydney auction set (hundreds every Saturday, often past 1,000 in peak season) and predict on any of them. All picks score the same way; the curated slate is a recommendation, not a restriction.
Can I change my prediction?
Yes — anytime up to 6:00 am Saturday Sydney time. Picks auto-save on every keystroke. Type a new dollar amount, flip your confidence, or swap one auction for another. The version on the board the moment lock hits is what scores. After lock, your card on /locked is read-only.
What happens if I miss a week?
Nothing punitive. Your tier is based on resolved picks, not weekly participation, so a skipped week neither helps nor hurts. Next week opens 6:00 pm Sunday like clockwork.
What if I only pick three?
The three score normally; the missing two count as zero. You’re always better off picking five — even a rough call on Low confidence is more points than nothing.
Can I research the auctions during the week?
Strongly encouraged. The slate opens Sunday evening so you have six days to walk past, attend opens, read agent notes. The whole point of the calibration tier system is to reward players who put in the work.
The crowd's prediction
Can I see the crowd's prediction before the auction?
No — deliberately. Crowd predictions, the weighted median, the IQR, anyone else’s pick — all of it stays hidden until after the auction has resolved. Foresyte captures predictions continuously from Sunday 6 pm to Saturday 6 am, but never reveals the running aggregate to players before lock.
Why hide it?
Two reasons. (1) The crowd estimate is what we’re trying to buildfrom your honest read — if everyone could see the running median, everyone would just copy it. (2) The skill we’re measuring is your own dollar call, not your ability to read the room. Hiding the crowd preview keeps both clean.
Will I ever see what other players picked?
Aggregates only, post-auction. On /results, a scored card shows the crowd’s weighted median next to your call and the actual sale price, plus an IQR width (how tight the middle 50% of predictions clustered). Per-player predictions stay private — yours and everyone else’s.
How do I find out how I did?
When do scores land?
Sunday 8:00 am Sydney time. You’ll get an email with your week’s total, and the card-by-card recap is on /results. Most picks settle Saturday night when Domain publishes their results page; the rest follow over the next few weeks.
What if my pick passed in?
Resolves against the private sale within 30 days. If it doesn’t sell in that window, the pick voids and you get a bonus pick credited to next week (six picks on the next slate instead of five).
What if the price was withheld?
About 8–15% of Sydney auctions sell with the price withheld at the hammer. Foresyte resolves these against NSW Valuer-General settled-sale data, typically 6–12 weeks later. Voids at 90 days if VG hasn’t published.
What if the auction was cancelled or sold before?
Voided through no fault of yours. Bonus pick credited to next week. Bonus picks compound — a four-voided week credits four bonus picks the following Sunday.
Why does my rank sometimes say ‘provisional’?
Because some of your picks haven’t resolved yet. Final rank settles when all five do — pass-ins fill, withheld prices disclose, voided picks credit forward. Thursday’s ranking is usually the one that sticks.
Scoring and tiers
How is a pick scored, in thirty seconds?
Closer = more points. Within 15% of actual gets you points on a linear curve; beyond 15% gets you zero. Confidence multiplies (Low 0.5×, Med 1.0×, High 1.25×) and no-guide auctions multiply 1.5×. Worked example and the formula are on /methodology.
What's MAPE? What's a calibration tier?
MAPE = mean absolute percentage error. ELI5: average how far off you were each time, in percent. Lower is better. Your trailing 3-month MAPE puts you in a tier — Platinum (<2.5%), Gold (2.5–5%), Silver (5–7.5%), Bronze (7.5–10%), or Unrated (<20 resolved or ≥10% MAPE). Tier sets your weight in the published crowd aggregate. Platinum is deliberately rare — specialist buyer’s-agent territory.
How do I improve my tier?
Three levers. (1) Resolve more picks — you need 20+ to leave Unrated. (2) Calibrate your confidence honestly — High should mean you’ve actually researched it, not that you want it to be right. (3) Build per-LGA expertise: ≥20 resolved at <6% MAPE in a single LGA earns a 1.5× weight on that suburb’s aggregate, even if your overall tier is below Platinum.
Account and privacy
Why a magic-link sign-in instead of a password?
A free game shouldn’t accumulate password-reset support tickets, and magic links sidestep credential-stuffing risk entirely. One email, one click.
Is my data shared?
Auction data is sourced from Domain’s public results page and the NSW Valuer-General feed. Your predictions are stored against your account and never sold or shared at the per-player level. Aggregate, anonymous statistics (post-auction crowd medians) are the only thing that surfaces publicly — and your individual contribution to those aggregates isn’t identifiable.
Can I delete my account?
Yes — Settings → Delete account. Pending picks stay anonymously in the leaderboard field (so they keep scoring against the rest of the week); profile, tier, and per-LGA history are removed. Cannot be undone.
Is this gambling?
No. Foresyte sits outside Australian gambling regulation by construction — no entry fees, no cash prizes, no peer-to-peer wagering, no “shares” in outcomes. The verbs we use here (predict, reckon, call it) reflect that.
If your question isn’t here, the long-form walkthrough on /how-it-works and the maths on /methodology cover almost everything else.