Queensland’s Housing Squeeze: Who Wins, Who Loses, and What History Warns
Queensland’s property market has entered a phase that even seasoned analysts describe as unsustainable great for those already on the ladder, punishing for everyone else. Brisbane’s meteoric rise now places it among the country’s least affordable capitals, while regional centres from Toowoomba to the Granite Belt are being dragged into the same affordability crisis once associated mainly with Sydney and Melbourne.
Behind the headline growth is a deeper story of constrained housing supply, investor-driven demand and policy choices that have allowed rents and prices to outpace wages, reshaping how Queenslanders live, work and plan their futures.
The Evidence: Prices Up, Vacancies Down, Households Squeezed
- In December alone, Brisbane dwelling values jumped 1.6 per cent, adding roughly $16,000 to the average property in a single month and about $131,000 over the past year, with annual growth running at 14.5 per cent.
- Once a mid-pack city on affordability, Brisbane is now edging towards the top tier of unaffordable markets, with unit prices rising fastest as buyers are pushed down the price spectrum.
- Regional Queensland is not a refuge: areas such as the Granite Belt, Toowoomba and the eastern Darling Downs have recorded value jumps between 18 and 20 per cent over 12 months, with some local markets exceeding 20 per cent.
On the rental side, the data points to a structural shortage rather than a temporary blip.
- Brisbane rents climbed about 6.2 per cent over the past year, already above the national average rent rise of 5.2 per cent.
- Vacancy rates across Brisbane sit around 2.1 per cent overall, but closer to 1.4 per cent for apartments levels that analysts say are near record lows and well below the 3–3.5 per cent considered a “healthy” market.
- Statewide, Queensland’s rental vacancy rate has been effectively “gridlocked” at about 1 per cent, with some local government areas reporting vacancies close to zero, leaving tenants with almost no bargaining power.
The social impact is visible in the way people are reorganising their lives. Analysts report rising numbers of group households and multi-generational living arrangements, not through cultural choice but out of economic necessity. For those trying to move out of precarious situations family violence, unstable share houses, or overcrowded conditions the lack of options is closing off escape routes.
Why It’s Happening: A Perfect Storm of Demand and Policy Lag
Multiple forces have converged to push Queensland into this crunch.
- Population growth and interstate migration into south-east Queensland remain high, including inflows chasing lifestyle, relative affordability (compared with Sydney and Melbourne), and major infrastructure spending ahead of the 2032 Olympics.
- New housing supply has lagged demand; industry reports note limited construction activity across both detached housing and units, while higher building costs and builder collapses have slowed project delivery.
- Investors, drawn by strong yields and low vacancy risk, have shifted capital into Brisbane and regional centres, especially into apartments and townhouses, further intensifying competition for the same limited stock.
Policy settings have struggled to keep up.
- Queensland has introduced annual limits on rent increases and tightened some rental law settings, but these measures curb the frequency, not the size, of rent hikes in a market where each vacancy attracts dozens of applicants.
- Social housing demand continues to outstrip supply, with more than 52,000 people on the waitlist as of early 2025, prompting a promised “reset” of eligibility and rent reviews rather than a large-scale expansion of stock.
- The state’s “Homes for Queenslanders” strategy emphasises building more homes faster, supporting renters, and partnering with the community housing sector, but the pipeline will take years to materially expand supply.
In the meantime, the benefits of capital growth flow primarily to existing owners and investors, while renters and first-home hopefuls absorb the costs through rising rents, longer commutes, and reduced housing security.
Lessons from Abroad: When Housing Booms Turn Toxic
Queensland is not the first jurisdiction to ride a housing boom into an affordability crisis. Several international cases offer stark warnings about what happens when runaway prices collide with slow policy responses.
- Ireland, 2000s: In the early 2000s, Ireland experienced one of the most extreme property booms in the developed world, driven by easy credit, speculative building and rapid population growth. When the global financial crisis hit, prices collapsed, but rents later surged as mortgage regulations tightened and new construction stalled, leaving renters facing higher costs in a weaker economy.
- New Zealand, 2000–2020s: New Zealand’s median house price rose more than fourfold between 2000 and 2025, from about NZD 170,000 to around NZD 770,000, as demand far outpaced new construction. Governments eventually responded with macroprudential lending controls, investor taxes and a national housing affordability inquiry, but home ownership rates had already fallen and pressure on the rental and social housing sectors intensified.
- Canada, mid-2010s to early 2020s: Major cities such as Vancouver and Toronto saw double-digit annual price growth, fuelled by domestic and global investment, low interest rates and limited supply in key corridors. Measures like foreign buyer taxes, vacancy taxes and tighter mortgage rules eventually cooled segments of the market, but not before a generation of renters and younger workers were priced out of central neighbourhoods.
These histories show a consistent pattern: once housing is treated primarily as a financial asset rather than essential infrastructure, regulation tends to lag behind market behaviour, and renters bear the longest-lasting consequences. Price corrections, when they come, rarely rewind the full damage done to affordability or to social cohesion.
What Could Change Course: Evidence-Backed Options
Experts and international precedents point to a combination of supply-side and demand-side reforms, coordinated over years rather than electoral cycles.
- Fast-tracking and targeting new supply
- Large-scale construction of social and affordable housing, financed through state borrowing, institutional partnerships and build-to-rent models, could relieve pressure in the lower end of the market and reduce competition for private rentals.
- Planning reforms that prioritise medium-density housing near transport corridors, universities and job clusters would align new supply with the areas of highest demand, echoing successful strategies used in some Canadian and European cities.
- Strengthening renter protections beyond frequency caps
- Extending and enforcing limits not just on how often rents can rise but on the scale of increases in tight markets could prevent opportunistic rent shocks, particularly on vulnerable tenants.
- Expanding minimum standards on energy efficiency, repairs and security of tenure would shift some power back to renters in a market where walking away from a bad tenancy is often not realistic.
- Rebalancing incentives for investors and speculators
- Tax settings that distinguish long-term, tenure-secure investment (for example, genuine build-to-rent with capped increases) from short-term speculative flipping or vacant property holding can steer capital toward adding real supply.
- Targeted vacancy or “empty homes” charges in ultra-tight suburbs, as used in Vancouver and parts of Europe, may push under-used dwellings back into the rental pool.
- Reforming and expanding social housing systems
- Beyond tightening eligibility, scaling up construction and acquisition of social and community housing stock would relieve waitlists and create a buffer against future market shocks.
- Integrating social housing with transport, health and education planning rather than treating it as a residual welfare product mirrors lessons from New Zealand’s national inquiries into housing affordability.
- Data transparency and early-warning systems
- Regular public reporting of local vacancy rates, rental increases and dwelling completions can flag emerging pressure points before they become entrenched crises, as seen in several post-GFC European reforms.
Queensland’s current trajectory is not pre-ordained; international history shows that decisive policy action, especially around supply and renter protections, can bend the curve but delayed responses often lock in a generation of inequality. For now, the state’s rising values and falling vacancies are writing a familiar script: wealth building for some, shrinking choices and rising precarity for many others.
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