If you are sitting in Sydney, Melbourne or Perth watching the headlines and wondering whether now is the time to make the move to Brisbane, you are not alone. Interstate enquiry into South East Queensland has not slowed down, and the questions we hear at Ideal Buyers Agency are almost always the same. Has the Brisbane property market peaked? Is the next six months a good window to buy? And does the 2032 Olympics actually change anything, or is it just marketing?
Here is the honest version, backed by current data, without the hype.
The national picture: the boom has shifted into a slower, two speed market
After a strong run through 2025, the national market has clearly changed gear in 2026. Cotality data put national dwelling values up 9.9% in the year to February 2026, but the monthly numbers since then tell a different story. National prices were broadly flat in May, and Sydney and Melbourne have both recorded monthly falls.
Two big headwinds arrived close together. The first was interest rates. The RBA lifted the cash rate three times in 2026, in February, March and May, taking it from 3.60% to 4.35%, then held steady at its June meeting to let those rises work through the economy. The average new owner occupier home loan now sits around 6.25%. The second was the May 2026 Federal Budget, which announced the most significant changes to property investment tax settings in almost three decades, limiting negative gearing on established properties and replacing the 50% capital gains tax discount with cost base indexation and a minimum tax on gains, both taking effect from 1 July 2027. Existing investors are largely protected through grandfathering, and new builds are exempt.
The combined effect has been a sharp downgrade in forecasts. CBA now expects national dwelling prices to grow around 3% over the year to December 2026, down from 5%. Westpac IQ expects growth to stall flat on average across the major capitals, with Sydney and Melbourne sliding while Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide keep growing but at a slower pace.
The key word is fragmented. This is no longer a market where everything goes up together. Where you buy, and what you buy, matters far more in 2026 than it did three years ago.
What the next six months actually look like
Nobody can give you a guaranteed forecast, and anyone who pretends otherwise is selling something. But the setup for the second half of 2026 is reasonably clear.
Rates are likely to stay restrictive in the near term. The RBA next meets on 11 August, and the major banks are split. NAB has said the next move is more likely down, though the timing is uncertain. Westpac has not ruled out further rises. Either way, cheap money is not coming back quickly, and borrowing capacity will stay tighter than it was in 2021 and 2022.
Supply stays short. The national housing shortfall is not closing, and Queensland is firmly on the wrong side of that equation.
Demand stays strong in the affordable and mid markets. As houses get pushed out of reach, buyers are shifting to units and townhouses, which is why apartment forecasts are now outpacing house forecasts in several cities.
For Brisbane specifically, that means continued growth is the base case for the next six months, just at a calmer pace than the run we have seen, with units and well located middle ring homes doing much of the heavy lifting.
Where Brisbane and Queensland fit in
Brisbane is no longer the cheap cousin. The median house price now sits around 1.11 million dollars and units around 793,000 dollars, according to Cotality, with combined dwelling values up roughly 15.7% over the year to February 2026. To put the run in perspective, the median was around 550,000 dollars in early 2020. It has roughly doubled in six years.
That kind of growth does not repeat itself in a straight line, and we tell every interstate client the same thing. Adjust your expectations.
The structural case, though, is genuinely strong:
Population growth is leading the country. Greater Brisbane added 58,200 residents in 2024 to 2025, second only to Perth. Of those, 33,900 came from overseas and 11,100 from interstate, and Queensland recorded net interstate migration of 21,595. The Centre for Population expects Greater Brisbane to add around 44,000 more in 2026 to 2027.
Rentals are tight to the point of pain. Vacancy is sitting between 0.6% and 0.9% depending on the source, which is firmly a landlord's market, with rents forecast to rise around 4% for houses and 5% for units in 2026.
Relative value still exists. Even at 1.11 million dollars, Brisbane's median house price is roughly 472,000 dollars cheaper than Sydney. For a family relocating from a more expensive capital, that gap is the whole reason the move makes financial sense.
The forecasts reflect that strength. For 2026, NAB is the most conservative at around 4.6%, with Westpac near 9%, ANZ at 9.7%, KPMG at 10.9% and SQM most bullish at 10 to 15%. The spread is wide, but the direction is unanimous. Up. The catch is 2027, where ANZ expects growth to moderate sharply to around 1.4% as affordability finally bites. That is not a crash. It is a normal cooling phase after an exceptional five years.
The 2032 Olympics: a decade long tailwind, not a 2026 lottery ticket
This is where a lot of interstate buyers get it wrong, so we want to be straight with you.
The Olympics are real, and the money is real. The Games Venue Infrastructure Program is a 7.1 billion dollar commitment split between the federal and Queensland governments, anchored by a proposed Victoria Park stadium near 3.7 billion dollars, a 2.5 billion dollar Brisbane Live arena, 17 new and upgraded venues, the Brisbane Metro and Cross River Rail. Since the hosting announcement in 2021, Brisbane's house price index has already run around 37% above the national average, a bigger spread than Sydney managed before the 2000 Games. CBRE found that across every Olympic host city since 1996, residential prices grew faster in the four years after the Games, averaging 42.5%, than in the four years before, averaging 23.3%.
So the long term picture is strong. But two warnings matter.
First, timing. The Games are still six years away, and infrastructure timelines slip. Cross River Rail is the cautionary tale. It was meant to open in 2026, has been pushed to 2029, and the cost has blown out from 5.4 billion to over 17 billion dollars. If you buy near a project expecting an immediate uplift, factor in the delay.
Second, the Olympics are a tailwind, not an investment thesis on their own. Buying a poor asset in the wrong pocket of Brisbane because it is "near a venue" is how people lose money in a rising market. The Games will accelerate what was already happening in good locations. They will not rescue a bad buy.
Thinking of moving from interstate? Read this honestly
For someone relocating from Sydney, Melbourne, Perth or anywhere else, the Brisbane proposition stacks up on lifestyle and on value. Warmer climate, bayside and river living, a more affordable median than the southern capitals, a city getting a decade of investment, and a rental market so tight that holding while you settle is realistic.
But the margin for error is thinner now than it has been in years. When the median was 550,000 dollars, a mediocre buy still floated up with the tide. At 1.11 million dollars, getting the wrong street, the wrong school catchment, the wrong flood overlay or the wrong building can be the difference between strong returns and dead money.
The risk nobody warns interstate buyers about
The single biggest mistake we see is buying a city you do not know from a thousand kilometres away.
Brisbane is a patchwork of micro markets. Two suburbs that look identical on paper can behave completely differently because of flooding history, school catchments, transport corridors, future infrastructure resumptions, body corporate quality and the simple street by street feel that no online listing captures. Selling agents work for the seller, not for you. In a fast market, the pressure to skip your building and pest inspection or waive due diligence is exactly when the expensive mistakes happen.
This is the entire reason buyer exclusive representation exists.
How to start planning with Ideal Buyers Agency
Ideal Buyers Agency works only for buyers. We do not list or sell property, we take no referral fees, and we charge a flat fee rather than a percentage, so our advice is not skewed by your purchase price. We hold more than 81 five star Google reviews and we cover Brisbane Bayside, the Redlands, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast.
For an interstate buyer or someone planning their move around the Olympic decade, the starting point is a conversation, not a property. We map your goals, your budget and your timeline, then we tell you honestly whether the next six months suits your situation, which markets and property types fit your strategy, and where the genuine value sits once the headline growth has already happened.
If you are weighing up a move to South East Queensland, the smartest first step is to talk to someone whose only job is protecting your side of the deal.
Get in touch with Ideal Buyers Agency and let's build your Brisbane buying plan before the next phase of the market does it for you.
