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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Brisbane's residential vacancy rate was 0.9 per cent in July 2026, according to SQM Research's monthly vacancy release dated 13 August. The same release puts the city's combined asking rent, for houses and units together, at $756.11 a week for the week ending 12 August, up 1.0 per cent over the month and 8.3 per cent over twelve months.
SQM counted 3,057 vacant rental homes across Brisbane in July. The rate is the same as in June 2026 and the same as in July 2025, so on this measure the capital has not loosened in a year.
A flat rate while the national count grows
Nationally, SQM's vacancy rate also held at 1.3 per cent, but the number of homes behind it grew. The firm counted 40,771 vacancies in July, up from 39,229 in June, a rise of 1,542. A year earlier the national rate was 1.2 per cent, on 37,863 vacancies, so the count is 2,908 higher than in July 2025, an increase of about 7.7 per cent.
Almost all of the month's additional stock is in the two largest cities. Sydney's count went from 11,957 in June to 12,782 in July and Melbourne's from 8,640 to 9,346, a combined rise of 1,531. Both cities sat at 1.7 per cent in July, and Canberra was the loosest capital at 1.8 per cent. Brisbane belongs to a group of five capitals below 1 per cent, with Perth, Adelaide and Hobart at 0.6 per cent and Darwin, the tightest, at 0.3 per cent.
| City | July 2025 | June 2026 | July 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 0.9% | 0.9% | 0.9% |
| Sydney | 1.5% | 1.6% | 1.7% |
| Melbourne | 1.8% | 1.6% | 1.7% |
| Perth | 0.7% | 0.6% | 0.6% |
| Adelaide | 0.8% | 0.7% | 0.6% |
| Canberra | 1.5% | 1.7% | 1.8% |
| National | 1.2% | 1.3% | 1.3% |
SQM Research, national vacancy rates release, 13 August 2026.
The table shows the capitals drifting apart over twelve months. Sydney and Canberra have each moved up, by 0.2 and 0.3 of a percentage point. Perth and Adelaide have moved down, and Melbourne is slightly lower than a year ago despite rising over the past month. Brisbane is the only city in the table with the same figure in all three columns.
Related readCotality review puts Brisbane's median rent at $734, third among capitalsBrisbane's 3,057 vacant homes are about 7.5 per cent of the national count. Sydney has more than four times as many and Melbourne about three times as many. Among the smaller capitals SQM counted 1,241 in Perth, 1,035 in Adelaide, 1,086 in Canberra, 162 in Hobart and 67 in Darwin.
Brisbane month by month
Read against SQM's earlier releases this year, as tabulated by AdviserVoice each month, the Brisbane series has moved very little. The rate was 0.8 per cent in March and April and has been 0.9 per cent in each month since May.
| Month | Vacancy rate | Vacant homes | Asking rents, annual |
|---|---|---|---|
| March | 0.8% | 2,662 | +6.8% |
| April | 0.8% | 2,900 | +8.1% |
| June | 0.9% | 3,065 | +9.1% |
| July | 0.9% | 3,057 | +8.3% |
SQM Research monthly releases of 15 April, 13 May, 14 July and 13 August 2026. May, also at 0.9%, is not shown.
The count of vacant homes rose by about 400 between March and June, from 2,662 to 3,065, enough to lift the rounded rate by a tenth of a point. Between June and July it fell by eight. In a city where SQM's rate implies a rental stock in the hundreds of thousands, a change of eight homes is no change at all.
The right-hand column is the one that moved in the latest release. Annual growth in Brisbane's combined asking rent climbed from 6.8 per cent in the April release to 9.1 per cent in July's, and has now stepped back to 8.3 per cent. One lower reading does not make a trend, and the monthly change was still a rise of 1.0 per cent, the same as the month before.
What the asking rent figures say
Asking rents are the prices on advertisements, not the rents written into agreements, and they describe homes on the market, a far smaller group than the homes already tenanted. With that limit in mind, SQM's weekly series shows Brisbane's 8.3 per cent annual rise as the strongest among the six largest capitals listed in the release, ahead of Perth at 6.6 per cent, Sydney at 6.3 per cent and Melbourne at 6.0 per cent. Canberra rose 5.4 per cent and Adelaide 3.5 per cent. Darwin and Hobart, at 14.1 per cent and 12.2 per cent, rose faster from much smaller markets.
Related readCPI rents hold at 3.6 per cent as housing leads Brisbane inflationSQM Research weekly rents index, combined dwellings, advertised rents, release of 13 August 2026.
Brisbane now sits third among the capitals shown, $47.64 a week below Perth and $60.91 above Melbourne. The national combined asking rent was $698.45 a week, up 0.2 per cent over the month and 7.2 per cent in a year, and the capital city average was $796.51. Brisbane is therefore $57.66 above the national figure and $40.40 below the capital city average, which Sydney pulls upwards.
An annual rise of 8.3 per cent to $756.11 implies an asking rent of about $698 a year earlier, a difference of roughly $58 a week. That is a calculation from SQM's two published figures, and it applies to advertised homes only.
The month's movements were uneven across the cities. Asking rents fell 0.5 per cent in Sydney, 0.3 per cent in Adelaide and 1.0 per cent in Canberra, and rose 0.9 per cent in Perth and 0.2 per cent in Melbourne. Brisbane's 1.0 per cent was the largest monthly rise among the six cities in the chart.
Within the national figures, houses and units moved apart over the month: SQM reports house asking rents down 0.6 per cent and unit asking rents up 1.3 per cent. Over the year, units are up 7.7 per cent and houses 6.8 per cent. The release summary gives that split for the nation only, not for Brisbane.
The national pace has slowed between releases. A month earlier, in the release of 14 July, SQM had the national combined asking rent at $697.43, up 8.1 per cent over twelve months. The new figure of $698.45 is about a dollar higher and the annual rate is 7.2 per cent.
Related readEnding a tenancy in Queensland: notice periods and grounds for each sideHow SQM arrives at its rate
SQM builds its figure from online rental listings. Its release states that vacancies are listings that have been advertised for three weeks or more, compared with the total number of established rental properties, and the firm presents that approach as more reliable than agency surveys or raw listing counts. A home that is listed and let within a fortnight never enters the count, which is one reason the figure can sit below the rates other providers publish for the same city.
The method also explains what a flat rate does and does not mean. It does not say that few homes are changing hands in Brisbane. It says that few stay advertised for 21 days. A market can have plenty of turnover and a very low rate on this measure if nearly everything that is listed finds a tenant quickly.
The Queensland reading
The release covers capital cities and contains no figures for the Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast or regional Queensland. For those markets the most recent published reading is the Real Estate Institute of Queensland's June quarter report of 30 July, which showed vacancies rising in 27 of the 50 regions it tracks while Brisbane was unchanged. The institute had the Brisbane local government area at 1.0 per cent and Greater Brisbane at 0.8 per cent, either side of SQM's 0.9 per cent, with the Gold Coast at 1.5 per cent and the Sunshine Coast at 0.9 per cent.
Housing costs are also the largest single item in the city's inflation figures. The Queensland Government Statistician's Office, summarising the Australian Bureau of Statistics' June release on 29 July, put Brisbane's annual inflation at 4.0 per cent and the housing group's contribution at 1.58 percentage points. That group covers more than rent, including electricity and the cost of new dwellings, but it places the asking rent figures in a wider setting of rising housing costs.
SQM's own summary is that the steady national rate suggests some stabilisation in availability, that Sydney shows signs of moderation which do not yet amount to a broad easing, and that the rental market remains undersupplied. It expects affordability pressure to stay elevated until the stock of available rentals rises in a more sustained way. That is the firm's expectation, not a measured result.
What the July numbers do establish for Brisbane is narrower: twelve months on, the share of rental homes sitting vacant is the same, and the advertised price of the ones that are available is 8.3 per cent higher. For tenants looking now, that means the same thin choice at a higher price. For owners and property managers, it means a correctly priced home is still letting quickly, in a market where the rate of increase has, for one month at least, stopped accelerating.
What comes next
SQM publishes monthly, around the middle of the month: its June figures appeared on 14 July and its July figures on 13 August, so August's are due in mid-September. That release will show whether the growth in Sydney and Melbourne vacancies continues and whether Brisbane's annual rent growth falls again.
Two Queensland sources follow in October. The Residential Tenancies Authority publishes median rents for the September quarter that month, drawn from new bond lodgements, which record rents actually agreed. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland's September quarter vacancy report will give the next region-by-region view of the state.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
