Australia’s property market has turned a corner nationally. The sharpest quarterly value falls since December 2022, listings at their highest level since 2020, and buyers taking their time to decide. Sydney and Melbourne are leading that shift. Southeast Queensland is a different, more nuanced conversation.

National market cools while Southeast Queensland diverges

The Reserve Bank held the cash rate at 4.35% on 11 August, its second straight meeting on hold. Nationally, dwelling values fell 0.7% in July, listings climbed to their highest since 2020, and homes are now taking 44 days to sell on average, up from 27 days previously. Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra are leading the national falls.

Brisbane: a story of resilience, not immunity

Brisbane’s median house price touched a record $1.21 million in the June quarter, capping 13 consecutive quarters of growth and still up 16.4% over the year. But the pace has clearly eased, to its weakest quarterly gain in six years, and the most recent read to the end of July has Queensland values sitting essentially flat over the past three months.

Brisbane units told a similar story, dipping 1.2% for the quarter, their first fall in three years, though still up 15.4% annually. That points to investors becoming choosier, not walking away. Well-located, well-run stock is still moving. Ordinary stock is taking longer and needs sharper pricing to compete.

Call it what it is: a market moving from momentum to selectivity. The fundamentals across all these markets remain the same. Well presented property with considered pricing is achieving strong interest through to sale.

Where Southeast Queensland sits on the property clock

Herron Todd White’s national property clock, which tracks where each location sits in its market cycle, places Brisbane and Ipswich at the point where growth is starting to decline, well ahead of Sydney and Melbourne, which sit further around the clock in an established declining phase. Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, by contrast, are still tracked in the rising market phase.

Read alongside the price data above, the clock supports the same conclusion: Brisbane and Ipswich have moved past their peak momentum and are recalibrating, while the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast still have room to run before they reach the same point in the cycle.

Gold Coast development pipeline building at scale

The Gold Coast development pipeline is running at genuine scale for new builds, with around $9.8 billion in projects earmarked to commence this year across the city, adding roughly 5,890 units and 644 townhouses to supply.

Northern NSW: one region, two markets

Northern NSW continues to defy a single storyline. Tweed’s market still tracks the Gold Coast’s fairly closely, while Byron Bay and the Northern Rivers more broadly attract a distinctly different buyer.

Rents hold while Queensland leads the construction boom

For anyone holding or considering an investment property, this is the part that matters most. Queensland’s rental vacancy rate sits at just 1.0% statewide, and even the Gold Coast’s loosest reading in years is still a tight 1.5%. Rental yields have nudged higher too, up from 3.4% to 3.6% across the combined capitals over the past year.

Supply is finally responding. Queensland now has a record of around 50,000 homes under construction, but completions take time, and that gap is exactly what’s supporting rents in the meantime. Homes under construction today are typically one to three years from a tenant moving in.