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Kooky
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About Kooky and Shaka →A household buying a median-priced Brisbane house needed more than $17,000 extra in annual income in May than it did in January. That is the finding of Cotality's Monthly Housing Chart Pack for June, published on 18 June 2026.
The figure translates five months of rising values and three interest rate rises into the terms that matter at a loan interview: how much a household has to earn before a lender will write the mortgage.
Cotality, Monthly Housing Chart Pack, June 2026, published 18 June 2026. Change in minimum annual household income, January to May 2026.
What Cotality measured
The chart pack is a monthly set of charts that Cotality builds from its daily home value index, with sales, listings, rents and selling conditions for the capitals and the regions. The June edition adds an estimate of the minimum household income needed to service a mortgage on a home at a given price point, and tracks how that minimum has moved since the start of the year.
Two things push the minimum up: the value of the home, and the interest rate on the loan. Since January both have risen in Brisbane.
On values, Cotality's Home Value Index, published on 1 June, put the median Brisbane house at $1,232,690 in May. House values rose 0.8 per cent in the month, 3.3 per cent in three months and 18.6 per cent over the year. On rates, the Reserve Bank raised the cash rate by a quarter of a percentage point in February, March and May, from 3.60 to 4.35 per cent, and left it there in a unanimous decision on 16 June.
The summary of the chart pack does not set out the deposit, loan term or assessment rate behind the calculation, and it gives the change in the income needed, not the income itself. The dollar amounts are therefore best read as a consistent yardstick applied to every city, not as the exact figure a given lender would use.
Related readBrisbane's median now sits $147,302 below Sydney's, REIQ points outHow a rate rise moves the repayment
The chart pack combines the two effects. A simple worked example separates out the second one, the interest rate, to show its scale. It is an illustration, not Cotality's calculation, and its assumptions are these: a buyer pays the May median of $1,232,690 for a Brisbane house with a 20 per cent deposit, borrows the remaining $986,152 over 30 years on principal and interest, and the loan rate moves from 6.00 to 6.75 per cent, the same three quarters of a point by which the cash rate has risen.
| Loan rate | Monthly repayment | Repayments over a year |
|---|---|---|
| 6.00% | $5,912 | $70,950 |
| 6.25% | $6,072 | $72,863 |
| 6.50% | $6,233 | $74,798 |
| 6.75% | $6,396 | $76,754 |
Illustrative figures. Assumes a purchase at Cotality's May 2026 median Brisbane house value with a 20% deposit. The rates are examples, not quoted market rates.
In this example each quarter-point adds a little over $160 to the monthly repayment, and the full three quarters of a point adds $484 a month, or $5,804 a year. That is paid from income after tax, which is why the pre-tax income a lender needs to see rises by considerably more than the repayment does.
The example holds the price still. In practice the median house was also more expensive in May than in January, so the loan itself was larger. Cotality's figure of more than $17,000 captures both movements together.
Cheaper houses are not spared
The pressure reaches the lower end of the market too. Cotality reports that the minimum income needed for a lower quartile house, the price point below which a quarter of homes sit, rose by $14,500 between January and May in both Brisbane and Perth.
Perth is the closest comparison. A median house buyer there needed an extra $16,500 over the same period, slightly less than in Brisbane. Cotality's May index put the median Perth house at $1,097,164, which is $135,526 below Brisbane's, but Perth house values rose faster over the three months to May, by 4.7 per cent against 3.3 per cent. A cheaper home with faster growth produces a similar increase in the income required.
Related readBrisbane values fall 2.7 per cent in three months as annual growth slowsWages have not kept up with either. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported on 13 May that its Wage Price Index rose 3.3 per cent nationally over the year to the March quarter, and 3.4 per cent in Queensland. Cotality does not publish the income level behind its calculation, so the two cannot be compared precisely, but the difference in pace is plain: wages are rising by a little over 3 per cent a year, while the income this yardstick asks for rose by more than $17,000 in five months.
The contrast with the south is sharp. The chart pack says a household buying a median house in Sydney now needs about $70,000 more in annual income than one buying the equivalent home in Melbourne. Cotality's May medians explain why: $1,579,396 for a Sydney house against $958,361 in Melbourne, a difference of $621,035.
Falling values have not helped buyers there as much as might be expected. Sydney values are 2.1 per cent below their November 2025 peak and Melbourne's are 3.2 per cent below a high reached in March 2022, yet Cotality writes that rate rises have completely offset the benefit of those price falls for mortgage serviceability.
Brisbane units close in on Sydney
The most striking line concerns units. According to Cotality, the minimum household income needed to buy a median unit in Sydney is now just over $2,000 higher than in Brisbane. For practical purposes the two cities ask the same of a unit buyer.
The values behind that are almost level. Cotality's May index gives a median unit value of $904,326 in Sydney and $884,881 in Brisbane, a gap of $19,445. A year of very different growth closed it: Sydney unit values rose 2.4 per cent over twelve months and Brisbane's 21.8 per cent. In May alone, Sydney units slipped 0.3 per cent while Brisbane units rose 1.3 per cent.
Related readCash rate stays on hold in August as the Board flags falling pricesAt the entry level Brisbane has gone further. The chart pack says intense competition for affordable housing has made Brisbane's lower quartile units the most expensive entry-level apartments in the country.
Lower quartile means the cheaper quarter of the market
The lower quartile value is the point below which 25% of homes sit. It is the usual marker for entry-level property. Cotality's finding is that this marker is now higher for Brisbane units than for units in any other capital, Sydney included.
Units have been the fallback for buyers priced out of houses, and the fallback has become expensive in its own right. For investors the arithmetic has tightened as well: Cotality puts the gross rental yield on Brisbane units at 3.9 per cent and on houses at 3.1 per cent, with investor mortgage rates around 6.3 per cent.
What it means for the market
Income thresholds matter for prices because they set the size of the pool of buyers. Each rise in the minimum income removes some households from the group able to bid at a given price, and those households either look at cheaper homes, look further out, or wait.
This is one mechanism behind the slowdown that the published indexes are starting to record. Cotality's national index was flat in May, and its report described growth in the rising capitals, Brisbane included, as losing momentum. The gap between the fastest and slowest capitals has widened to 25 percentage points, the chart pack notes, with Perth up 25.8 per cent over the year and Melbourne up 0.5 per cent.
The supply side has not yet turned. Nationally, Cotality counted 33,914 new listings over the four weeks to 14 June, 4.9 per cent below the five-year average. Total listings, at 129,010, were 1.7 per cent higher than a year earlier but still 6.5 per cent below the five-year average. Sellers are conceding a little more to get a sale: the median vendor discount across the combined capitals has risen to 3.3 per cent.
Lending is expected to cool from here. The Commonwealth Bank said on 4 June that it expects new lending to investors to fall to around half its late 2025 level over 2026, and national prices to be flat for the year. The Reserve Bank, for its part, said on 16 June that credit remains readily available and that it would raise the cash rate further if required.
None of this says where Brisbane prices go next. An income threshold falls again if rates fall, if incomes rise, or if values ease. What the June chart pack records is the position after five months in which values and rates rose together: a median Brisbane house now asks for a noticeably higher household income than it did at the start of the year, and a Brisbane unit asks for almost as much as one in Sydney. Cotality's index for June, due on 1 July, will show whether values have kept adding to that requirement.
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.
