Brisbane has suffered its worst quarterly house price slump on record – more than $66,000 in just three months – with fears the decline will continue well into next year.
Brisbane is now one of Australia’s worst-performing housing markets, with only Perth experiencing bigger declines amid a broad national property slump. Median house prices in Brisbane are now back to their September 2025 level.
Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell says the Brisbane market has gone from “100 to zero” – a real shift in a market that had soared by two-thirds in the past five years.
While it’s theoretically a paper loss, $66,000 could buy more than a new Tesla or even cover a year’s fees at an expensive private school.
“It was Australia’s standout housing market, but now it has moved decisively into a decline,” says Powell, who added the September quarter loss ended 14 quarters of growth for the Brisbane market.
“We’ve seen extraordinary growth for a number of years, but that capacity to pay for a home just hasn’t kept pace with price growth.
“Affordability for Brisbane has finally caught up.”
Jordan Navybox, head of buyers’ agent Cohen Handler in Queensland, says the Brisbane market was hit as investors sold out after the federal budget tax reforms.
“The most affected are properties between $800,000 and $1.5 million where there are a lot of investors,” says Navybox.
“We’ve seen properties that were previously priced around $1 million receiving a 10 to 20 per cent discount from where they were trading back in February.
“The government has taken away most of the incentives for investors and because they’d seen such incredible gains over the last three years they’ve decided to take that money off the table.”
Navybox says that in contrast to the investor market, owner-occupier housing is proving more resilient, particularly at the premium end of the market.
“Most sellers above $3 million are not under financial stress and they perceive now as a bad time to sell,” he says.
Domain’s Powell says buyers in Brisbane’s mortgage belt suburbs appear to be taking a cautious approach to taking on more debt.
105 Andrew Avenue, Tarragindi QLD 4121
Other big drops were recorded in Sunnybank, where prices fell 7.3 per cent, or $95,500, and Chermside, where they fell 5.1 per cent, cutting $71,000 off median house prices.
“In suburbs that commonly have prices of around $1.2 million to $1.5 million, the buyers are family-upgraders, perhaps with larger mortgages and borrowing-capacity constraints,” Powell says.
By contrast, prestige pockets appear to be holding up better, with New Farm, Ascot, Hamilton and Fig Tree Pocket still showing roughly 20 per cent annual growth.
Tarragindi sales agent Osman Thomas, of Atlas Real Estate , says there are buyers in suburbs such as Tarragindi, but many are holding off to see if prices decline further.
“We had 50 groups of people coming through for an open house at Tarragindi on the weekend so there are buyers who are interested,” says Thomas.
Herron Todd White chief economist Cameron Kusher says Brisbane is yet to reach the bottom of the downturn.
Kusher expects prices to keep falling in the December quarter and through at least the first two quarters of 2027, though possibly at a slower rate.
“Brisbane’s just had phenomenal growth over the last six years, and it’s become very unaffordable on the back of that,” says Kusher.
“Interest rates had already increased three times this year, and then we got a fourth increase at the end of the September quarter.
“That’s really thinned out buyers, as have the tax changes that we saw from the federal government earlier in the year in the budget.
“There are a lot fewer buyers, and not just investors.”
He says Brisbane’s record quarterly decline follows large falls in Sydney for most of the year and in Melbourne over several years.
McGrath Paddington agent Alex Jordan says house prices have declined about 10 per cent from their peak earlier this year as consumer confidence took a hit along with lending capacity.
“If a home was selling for $2 million in January, February or March this year, now it would be about $1.8 million,” says Jordan.
He says Brisbane has gone through a correction phase but will ultimately come out well.
“If you look at corrections in the market in Brisbane since the 1970s, the average decline timeframe is between 12 and 14 months, and typically we don’t see much greater than a 15 per cent drop, give or take, from peak to trough,” he says.
Glen Norris is an experienced journalist and editor with a career spanning four decades across Asia, Australia and Europe. His roles have included stints at Bloomberg News and Asian Wall Street Journal.
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