Brisbane has crossed $1.17 million. What was once a discount market has become a premium one — and the city's structural tailwinds suggest the ceiling isn't in sight yet.
Key Points
- Brisbane's median house price reached $1,171,237 in December 2025, rising 13.3% over the year — one of the highest rates among all capital cities.
- Unit prices surged 19.3% annually to a record $770,471, the fastest growth of any capital city and any property type nationally.
- Brisbane houses have recorded 12 consecutive quarters of growth — the longest uninterrupted upswing in 21 years.
- Supply remains critically constrained, with new dwelling completions well below demand, compounded by sustained interstate migration.
- The 2032 Brisbane Olympics is catalysing major infrastructure investment, underpinning long-term price support across key precincts.
- Domain and PropTrack forecast Brisbane to remain among the top-performing capital cities through 2026, with further price growth expected.
December 2025
12-month high
Fastest of all capitals
Brisbane has been on a remarkable run — and 2026 shows no signs of slowing it down. Once considered an also-ran to Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's third-largest city has not only caught up but overtaken the southern capitals on virtually every measure of property market performance. With a median house price that has now breached $1.17 million, double-digit annual growth, and a unit market recording its fastest price gains in nearly two decades, Brisbane's property story is one of momentum, migration, and mounting demand.
The fundamentals are hard to argue with. Domain's December 2025 House Price Report confirmed Brisbane as leading the national upswing, with houses logging their 12th consecutive quarter of price growth — the longest uninterrupted run in 21 years of data. Units told an even more dramatic story, rising for 19 straight quarters, the longest such streak on record. And unlike previous cycles, this growth is broad-based: driven not by speculation, but by genuine supply-demand imbalance, structural population growth, and the transformative pull of the 2032 Olympics.
Domain forecast — Brisbane leads the pack
Domain's 2026 forecast places Brisbane among the strongest performers of all capital cities, with house prices expected to grow a further 8–12% through the calendar year. PropTrack similarly identified Brisbane as a standout market for 2026, citing persistently tight listings, high population inflows, and a pipeline of Olympic-linked infrastructure that is actively reshaping buyer sentiment across inner and middle-ring suburbs.
While Sydney and Melbourne are forecast to deliver more modest growth — reflecting affordability ceilings, higher vacancy rates, and softer migration — Brisbane is expected to benefit from its comparatively lower entry price point relative to Sydney, its continued magnetism for interstate movers, and a rental market that is keeping investor returns elevated.
A market built on real demand
Brisbane's price growth is not a bubble story. It is the product of years of accumulated under-supply meeting a sustained surge in demand. Queensland recorded the highest net interstate migration of any state in Australia over the 12 months to September 2024, with tens of thousands of Australians relocating from New South Wales and Victoria each year in search of lifestyle, affordability, and economic opportunity. While Sydney's median house price sits at $1.76 million, Brisbane's $1.17 million median represents a 33% discount — a gap that continues to drive relocation decisions, particularly among younger families and remote workers.
The local economy has also played its part. Queensland's unemployment rate has remained among the lowest of any state, wage growth has been solid, and the resources sector has provided a durable economic foundation. Borrowing capacity, having been compressed by the RBA's rate-hiking cycle, has begun to recover as the cash rate moderates — and that recovery is being felt acutely in Brisbane, where buyer demand had been held in check by affordability constraints even as underlying demand intensified.
The unit revolution — affordability drives a new era
If the house market tells a story of sustained momentum, Brisbane's unit market tells one of transformation. The December 2025 quarter saw unit prices rise 8.1% in just three months — the strongest quarterly gain since 2007 — to reach a record median of $770,471. Over the full year, units appreciated by 19.3%, making Brisbane units not only the fastest-growing property type in the city, but the fastest-growing of any dwelling type in any capital city in Australia.
For the fourth consecutive quarter, units outperformed houses on a growth basis. This is a significant structural shift. For years, Brisbane's house market dominated investor and owner-occupier interest. Now, as house prices have cleared $1 million and pushed the threshold of affordability for many buyers, demand is rotating into the unit sector with force. The price gap between houses and units — once a yawning chasm — has narrowed to a 52% premium for houses, a five-year low, as unit values close the gap at pace.
This dynamic is attracting investors back into the Brisbane market in meaningful numbers. With gross rental yields on Brisbane units running between 4.5% and 5.5% in many inner-ring and middle-ring suburbs — well above the returns available in Sydney and Melbourne — the unit market is drawing both local and interstate capital. Vacancy rates across Greater Brisbane remain below 1.5%, keeping rental income reliable and downward pressure on yields minimal.
Supply crunch — the market's defining constraint
Queensland added an estimated 120,000 new residents in the year to September 2024. New dwelling completions, however, have consistently fallen 20–25% below what would be required to house that population growth at current household sizes. The result is a structural deficit that even a significant acceleration in construction approvals cannot quickly resolve, given the 18–24 month lag between approval and completion in the current building environment.
Compounding this is the cost and availability of construction labour and materials, which have constrained builder capacity across South East Queensland. Many projects greenlit during the 2021–2022 planning surge have been delayed or repriced, reducing effective supply further. The Palaszczuk and Crisafulli governments have both identified housing supply as a priority issue, but policy responses — including rezoning and increased social housing investment — are expected to take several years to materially move the needle on available stock.
For buyers and investors, this supply constraint acts as a durable floor under prices. Listings remain well below long-run averages, time-on-market is short, and clearance rates — while not tracked with the same rigour as Melbourne and Sydney — point to consistently strong absorption of available stock.
The Olympics effect — infrastructure as a price catalyst
No analysis of Brisbane's property market in 2026 is complete without acknowledging the gravitational pull of the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. With six years to go, the transformative effect of Olympic-scale infrastructure investment is already being capitalised into land values across key precincts. The Cross River Rail — due for completion ahead of the Games — is reshaping accessibility and desirability for suburbs along its corridor. The Brisbane Arena, Athletes' Village at Woolloongabba, and planned upgrades to the Gabba precinct are triggering uplift in surrounding suburbs that, in some cases, run ahead of the broader market.
Suburbs such as Woolloongabba, Kangaroo Point, Hamilton, and Bowen Hills are benefiting from the dual tailwinds of general market strength and Olympics-linked precinct investment. PropTrack data suggests that properties within 2 kilometres of confirmed Olympic venue or infrastructure sites have outperformed broader Brisbane market growth by 2–4 percentage points over the past 24 months.
The long lead time to 2032 also provides a sustained narrative for investor confidence — a horizon over which supply is expected to remain constrained, population continues to grow, and infrastructure continues to improve. For long-term property holders, this represents an unusually clear value proposition.
What to expect through 2026
The consensus view among major forecasters is that Brisbane will remain one of Australia's top two or three performing property markets through 2026. Domain's forecasts, PropTrack's outlook, and KPMG's capital city projections all point to continued price growth in the 8–12% range for houses, with units potentially exceeding that figure if the current momentum in the sub-$800,000 segment is sustained.
Interest rate relief — with the RBA having commenced its easing cycle — will progressively expand borrowing capacity for buyers who were squeezed out of the market at peak rates. The first cohort of beneficiaries are expected to enter or re-enter the market through the first half of 2026, adding a fresh layer of demand to a market already running at elevated absorption levels.
Risks remain. Construction cost pressures, a potential slowdown in interstate migration if southern labour markets tighten, and any renewed rate volatility could temper the pace of growth. But the structural underpinnings of Brisbane's market — population growth, supply deficit, improving infrastructure, and relative affordability — make a sustained, significant correction unlikely in the near term.
For investors and owner-occupiers alike, Brisbane in 2026 presents a compelling combination of current momentum and long-term structural tailwinds that few other Australian cities can match.
