Brisbane’s housing market has continued to rise in value through November, with the monthly change holding at 0.6% over the past three months, which is half the rate of growth recorded a year ago.
Although values are rising, growth conditions are slowing as affordability constraints bite and listing numbers rise up 5.6% compared with the same time last year.
Brisbane house prices graph
Unit values have been rising at a much faster rate than house values across Brisbane consistently since December last year, rising by a cumulative 18% over the past 12 months, while house values are up a smaller 11%.
Brisbane house prices – what happened in 2023
After booming through 2020 and 2021 with prices rising by as much as 45.3%, Brisbane housing values fell -8.9% from their peak in May 2022 through to the recent trough in January 2023.
But the downturn didn’t last long.
Within 9 months the property prices in Brisbane had recovered to their peak, and now have gained even more ground, as the SQM Research graph below shows.
Brisbane’s property prices are now up 13.1% since January 2023.
Digging deeper into the stats some properties have far outperformed others and freestanding Brisbane houses within 5-7 km of the CBD or in good school catchment zones have grown in value strongly.
It’s really a tale of two cities – while some properties overperform, others underperform.
The worst-performing segments of the market are apartments (particularly high-rise towers and new off-the-plan apartment sales) and properties in blue-collar areas and new housing estates where young families are likely to have overextended themselves financially and many people will be out of work for a while.
It’s likely that some of the high-rise apartment towers in and around Brisbane’s CBD, which were already suffering from the adverse publicity of structural problems prior to COVID-19, will now become the slums of the future as they are shunned by homeowners and investors.
Like after every downturn, moving forward there will be a flight to quality properties and an increased emphasis on liveability.
That explains why we’re seeing robust demand for A-grade homes and investment-grade properties, particularly in lifestyle locations, with many holding their values well.
Brisbane house prices – the longer-term data
CoreLogic’s data shows how Brisbane house prices have rapidly risen and fallen over the longer term, and the extreme dwelling value changes over the past few years in particular.
The Brisbane property market upswing in 2021 was one of the strongest property price growth periods in Australia’s history.
And it was followed by an equally historic drop in prices in the 12 months that followed.
Even today the city sets records for its dwelling values, having recovered to pandemic highs.
Looking further back, over the past 30 years, Brisbane dwelling values have increased by a whopping 340% (5.1% per annum), with the highest rate of growth recorded through the middle decade (2002-2012) when housing values were up 74%.
In comparison, dwelling values increased by 49% between 1992 and 2002, and by 71% over the most recent decade.
House values have increased by more than double the number of unit values across Brisbane, making for the largest 30-year growth differential between houses and units across the capital cities.
Houses recorded a 30-year growth rate of 390%, equating to a dollar value increase of approximately $703,700.
Over the same period, unit values were up 170%, or approximately $317,670.
The highest 30-year growth rate across Brisbane’s SA3 sub-regions was a 613% gain in house values across the Inner East, taking the median value approximately $1,344,120 higher.
