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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Almost every Brisbane home resold in the June quarter of 2026 fetched more than its owner had paid for it. Cotality's Pain & Gain report, published on 16 September 2026, puts the share of profit-making resales in Brisbane at 99.8 per cent and the median gain at $525,000, the best result of any capital city.
The report arrives in a market that feels very different from those two numbers. Brisbane values have been falling since their May peak, homes are taking longer to sell and buyers are negotiating harder. Pain & Gain explains why the two pictures sit side by side: what a seller walks away with depends far more on the years since the purchase than on the months before the sale.
Cotality Pain & Gain report, June quarter 2026, published 16 September 2026.
What the report measures
Pain & Gain looks only at resales: homes that sold during the quarter and had sold at least once before. For each one, Cotality compares the new sale price with the previous purchase price. A higher price is a gain, a lower one is a loss, and the report counts how many sales fall on each side and how large the typical gap is.
For the June quarter Cotality analysed more than 94,000 resales across Australia, down from 101,000 in the March quarter. Nationally, 95.4 per cent made a profit, against 96.1 per cent three months earlier. The median gain was $371,000, down from $378,000, and the median loss was $45,000, up from $44,000. Over the same three months, Cotality's national dwelling value index fell 1.5 per cent.
Related readBrisbane's for-sale stock is 70 per cent above this year's lowTwo kinds of sale never enter the count. A newly built home sold for the first time has no earlier price to compare with, and neither does a property whose previous sale is not on record. The report is therefore a picture of established homes changing hands, which is what most Queensland vendors are selling. It also says nothing about owners who tested the market and did not sell: a home withdrawn after a disappointing campaign leaves no trace in Pain & Gain, which records outcomes, not attempts.
The figures are nominal. They are not adjusted for inflation, and they compare two sale prices and nothing else. That limit matters enough to state it clearly.
A gain in this report is not what the seller keeps
Pain & Gain sets one sale price against the previous one. It takes no account of the duty paid on the way in, the agent's commission and marketing on the way out, renovations, loan interest or tax. The money left after a sale is always smaller than the gain reported.
Brisbane leads the capitals again
Brisbane's 99.8 per cent is the highest rate of profitable resales among the capitals, and Cotality notes that the city has held that top ranking since the June quarter of 2024. Adelaide follows at 98.9 per cent with a median gain of $480,400, then Perth at 98.8 per cent and $470,000.
The contrast with the two largest cities is sharp. In Melbourne, 89.0 per cent of resales were profitable, down from 90.7 per cent in the March quarter, and the median gain was $278,000. A Brisbane seller's typical gain was therefore $247,000 larger than a Melbourne seller's, close to double.
| Capital | Profitable resales | Median gain |
|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 99.8% | $525,000 |
| Adelaide | 98.9% | $480,400 |
| Perth | 98.8% | $470,000 |
| Melbourne | 89.0% | $278,000 |
| All capitals combined | 94.1% | $415,000 |
Source: Cotality Pain & Gain report, June quarter 2026. Nominal figures, before all costs.
What sets Brisbane apart is less the quarter itself than the five years before it. Cotality's research head Gerard Burg made the point when the March quarter edition was released on 25 June 2026: strong resale results, he said then, largely reflect value growth built over years rather than current momentum. The national median hold period for a profitable resale in the June quarter was 9.1 years. An owner who bought a Brisbane home nine years ago bought before most of the growth of the years since, and a few months of falling values take only a small bite out of that.
Related readValuers say investors have stepped back from Queensland's sale marketThe gain has stopped growing
The second thing the Brisbane number says is quieter. The median gain is no longer rising. Cotality's March quarter report put it at $525,190. The June quarter figure is $525,000. After a year in which each edition of the report set a higher mark for the city, the line has gone flat.
Source: Cotality Pain & Gain reports for the June 2025 to June 2026 quarters, each figure as first published.
The climb was steep. Cotality reported a median Brisbane gain of $400,000 for the June quarter of 2025 and $444,000 for the September quarter. Its December quarter report gave $500,000 for Greater Brisbane. From the June quarter of 2025 to the June quarter of 2026 the typical gain therefore grew by $125,000, or 31 per cent, and nearly all of that growth came before the end of March.
The timing fits the price indexes. Cotality's August figures, reported by Australian Property Investor on 4 September, show Brisbane dwelling values 2.7 per cent below their May peak, with annual growth slowing to 10.8 per cent. The June quarter straddles that peak: sales struck in April and May caught the top of the market, sales in June came just after it.
Regional Queensland and the Noosa effect
Outside the capitals, Cotality counts 97.5 per cent of resales as profitable in the June quarter, against 94.1 per cent across the capitals combined. Regional sellers were more likely to make a gain, but the gain was smaller: a median $324,500 in the regions against $415,000 in the capitals.
One Queensland council area appears in the national top five. Resales in Noosa returned a median gain of $711,000, behind three Western Australian areas (Chittering at $872,500, Cambridge at $740,000 and Joondalup at $732,500) and Kiama in New South Wales at $725,000. In the March quarter edition, Noosa had ranked first in the country at $729,750. The June figure is $18,750 lower.
Related readHow an asking price is set in Queensland, and what the law says about itA single quarter in a single council area is a small sample, and the mix of homes that happen to sell can move a median on its own. The direction, though, matches the national one: a typical gain slightly smaller than three months earlier.
Houses, units and the ones that lost
Nationally, houses did better than units, as they have for years. Cotality counts 97.8 per cent of house resales as profitable, with a median gain of $435,500, against 90.5 per cent of unit resales and a median gain of $251,000.
Losses are concentrated in a small part of the country. According to the report, Sydney and Melbourne together account for 83.3 per cent of the value of all unit resale losses nationally, and five council areas (Melbourne, Parramatta, Stonnington, Port Phillip and Sydney) account for 39 per cent on their own. None is in Queensland.
For the Brisbane seller, the arithmetic of the 0.2 per cent is simple: roughly one resale in 500 went for less than its previous price. That is a statement about the quarter that has closed, not about any sale still to be made. The owners most exposed to a falling market are those who bought near the top and must sell soon after, and the hold periods in the report show how rarely that happens: the typical loss-making resale nationally had still been held for 8.1 years.
Why the picture is shifting
Mr Burg's reading of the June quarter is that the turn in the housing market has started to reach resale results, though from a very high base. "Profitability is still exceptionally high by historical standards," he said in Cotality's release, before adding that weaker conditions are beginning to flow through.
Related readPool safety certificates when selling a Queensland homeThe channels are visible in Cotality's other publications. Its monthly chart pack of 10 September puts the median vendor discount across the capitals at 4.2 per cent, the widest since January 2023, and total listings nationally 18.1 per cent above their level a year earlier. A vendor discount is the gap between the first advertised price and the price finally accepted. When it widens, the sale price falls relative to expectations, and the gain measured by Pain & Gain shrinks with it.
For someone who bought a Brisbane home in 2017, a discount of a few per cent on a price above a million dollars changes the size of the gain, not its existence. For someone who bought in 2025, the same discount is most of the margin. The report cannot separate the two groups, but its hold periods make clear that the first is much the larger.
What comes next
Pain & Gain is quarterly. Recent editions appeared on 18 December 2025 for the September quarter, on 25 June 2026 for the March quarter and on 16 September for the June quarter. The next edition will cover July to September 2026: the first quarter to fall entirely after Brisbane's May peak, and the first to include sales made while values were falling in every month.
Two figures in it will matter to Queensland sellers. The first is whether Brisbane's median gain, flat between March and June, begins to fall. The second is the share of profitable resales, which sat at 99.8 per cent in both the March and June quarter reports and has almost no room to rise.
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.
