# Nearly every Brisbane resale made a profit in the March quarter

Cotality's Pain and Gain report finds 99.8 per cent of Brisbane resales sold above their purchase price, with a median gain of $525,190. Noosa's was higher still.

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Almost every home resold in Brisbane in the first three months of 2026 changed hands for more than its owner had paid: 99.8 per cent of resales made a nominal profit, with a median gain of $525,190, according to the Pain and Gain report for the March quarter that Cotality published on 25 June 2026. No other capital city matched either figure.

The report arrives at an awkward moment for anyone reading it as a guide to selling now. It looks back at sales made between January and March, and Cotality's own researchers say the conditions that produced those results have already changed. It is best read as a record of what years of ownership have been worth to Queensland sellers, and as a reminder of what the figure does and does not include.

<div class="keyfacts">
<div><b>99.8%</b><span>of Brisbane resales made a nominal profit</span></div>
<div><b>$525,190</b><span>median gain on a Brisbane resale</span></div>
<div><b>$729,750</b><span>median gain in Noosa, highest in Australia</span></div>
</div>
<p class="src">Cotality, Pain and Gain report, March quarter 2026, published 25 June 2026.</p>

## What the report measures

Pain and Gain is a quarterly study of resales, meaning homes that sold in the quarter and had also sold at least once before. For each one Cotality compares the latest price with the earlier purchase price. A higher price is counted as a gain and a lower one as a loss. The March quarter edition covers almost 101,000 resales across Australia.

Nationally, 96.0 per cent of those resales made a nominal gain, up from 95.9 per cent in the December quarter of 2025. Trade publication Real Estate Business, reporting the release, described that as the highest share since 2005. The national median gain was $377,000, which Cotality calls a record, and the median loss among the 4.0 per cent of sales that went the other way was unchanged at $45,000.

The word nominal matters. The comparison is between two prices in the dollars of their day. It takes no account of inflation between the two dates, and it is not a statement of what a seller keeps after the costs of buying, owning and selling the home.

## Brisbane leads the capitals

Brisbane's 99.8 per cent leaves room for about one loss-making resale in every 500. Adelaide followed at 99.3 per cent with a median gain of $477,000, and Perth at 98.9 per cent with $475,000. Those three cities are the ones where prices have risen fastest over the past few years, and Cotality links the results to the same causes in each: strong population growth, tight housing supply and sustained buyer demand, with buyers drawn to them as more affordable alternatives to Sydney and Melbourne.

The size of the Brisbane gain stands out as much as its frequency. At $525,190 it was $148,190 above the national median of $377,000, or about 39 per cent higher. For context, Cotality's Home Value Index put Brisbane's median dwelling value at $1,126,149 in May, after annual growth of 19.1 per cent, as reported by Smart Property Investment on 8 June. A median gain of that size against a median value of that size shows how much of the typical Brisbane seller's price is growth accumulated during ownership.

<figure class="fig"><figcaption><b>The median gain on a resale</b><span>March quarter 2026, dollars</span></figcaption>
<div class="scroll"><svg viewBox="0 0 680 242" role="img" aria-label="Bar chart: median nominal gain on a resale in the March quarter of 2026. Noosa 729,750 dollars, Brisbane 525,190 dollars, Adelaide 477,000 dollars, Perth 475,000 dollars, Australia 377,000 dollars.">
<text class="lb" x="176" y="33" text-anchor="end">Noosa</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="14" width="400" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="600" y="33">$729,750</text>
<text class="lb" x="176" y="79" text-anchor="end">Brisbane</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="60" width="288" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="488" y="79">$525,190</text>
<text class="lb" x="176" y="125" text-anchor="end">Adelaide</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="106" width="261" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="461" y="125">$477,000</text>
<text class="lb" x="176" y="171" text-anchor="end">Perth</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="152" width="260" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="460" y="171">$475,000</text>
<text class="lb" x="176" y="217" text-anchor="end">Australia</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="198" width="207" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="407" y="217">$377,000</text>
</svg></div>
<p class="src">Cotality, Pain and Gain report, March quarter 2026. Nominal gain: resale price less the earlier purchase price.</p></figure>

## Noosa tops the country

The largest median gain anywhere in Australia was not in a capital. Noosa, on the Sunshine Coast, recorded a median resale gain of $729,750, the highest of any local government area in the report. That is $204,560 more than Brisbane's median and close to double the national one.

Cotality attributes the Noosa result to strong long-term demand and limited housing supply, the combination that has defined the Sunshine Coast's northern end for years. A small council area with few sales in a quarter can produce a median that moves sharply from one report to the next, so a single quarter's figure is a snapshot. The rest of the national top ten is dominated by Western Australia, which supplied five of the ten areas.

For Queensland readers the Noosa figure is a reminder that the State's resale story is not only a Brisbane one. The report as published by Cotality names Noosa alone among Queensland's regional areas, so it does not allow a comparison between, say, the Gold Coast and Townsville. What it does establish is that the highest typical gain in the country over this quarter was recorded by owners selling in a Queensland coastal shire, not in a Sydney harbourside suburb.

## Houses, units and time

Two patterns in the national figures explain most of the difference between a large gain and a small one, or between a gain and a loss. The first is the type of home.

<figure class="fig"><figcaption><b>Houses against units, nationally</b><span>Resales in the March quarter of 2026</span></figcaption>
<div class="scroll"><table class="tbl">
<thead><tr><th>Type</th><th>Share sold at a gain</th><th>Median gain</th></tr></thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td>Houses</td><td>98.1%</td><td>$440,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>Units</td><td>91.9%</td><td>$256,000</td></tr>
<tr><td>All dwellings</td><td>96.0%</td><td>$377,000</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table></div>
<p class="src">Cotality, Pain and Gain report, March quarter 2026, national figures.</p></figure>

The weakest result in the report is for Melbourne units, where 81.0 per cent of resales made a gain; Cotality says additional supply there has limited capital growth. The report as published does not give a separate house and unit split for Brisbane.

The second pattern is time. Homes that sold at a gain had been held for a median of 9.1 years. Homes that sold at a loss had been held for a median of 4.3 years. The gap of almost five years says something simple about how housing wealth is made: most of it comes from being an owner through a long stretch of growth, not from the timing of the sale itself.

## Why the figure flatters a seller's ledger

A Queensland owner who reads that the median gain was more than half a million dollars should set that number beside the lines the report leaves out.

A seller pays an agent's commission and marketing costs, which in Queensland are negotiated and written into the appointment form, according to the Office of Fair Trading. There are legal fees, the cost of assembling the documents required by the State's seller disclosure scheme, and often the balance of a mortgage to repay. On the way in, years earlier, the same owner paid transfer duty and legal costs on the purchase. None of these appear in a comparison of two prices, and nor does anything spent on renovation in between.

There is also the next purchase. An owner-occupier who sells in Brisbane and buys again in Brisbane is selling and buying in the same market. The gain is real, but most of it is carried straight into the price of the next home. The sellers for whom the full figure is closest to money in hand are those leaving the market or moving to a cheaper one, and investors, whose gain is subject to tax rules that are a subject of their own.

<div class="callout"><span class="mono">Worth knowing</span><h4>A nominal gain is the gap between two prices</h4>
<p>Pain and Gain compares what a home sold for with what it was last bought for. Selling costs, buying costs, renovation spending, inflation and tax are all outside the calculation, so the figure is larger than what a seller keeps.</p>
</div>

## A backward-looking record

Cotality is direct about the limits of its own report. Head of research Gerard Burg said the strong resale results largely reflect value growth built up over years, not current market conditions. The release notes that national home values showed no growth in May and that record profits are unlikely to accelerate further.

Mr Burg went a step further in comments reported by Real Estate Business: "declining values will erode profitability in the coming months."

The timing explains the caution. The sales in the report were negotiated between January and March. Since then SQM Research has counted 16,973 homes for sale in Brisbane in May, 18.5 per cent more than in April, and a 1.0 per cent monthly fall in the city's asking prices. Brisbane values were still rising in May on Cotality's index, by 0.9 per cent, while the national index stalled. A report that measures gains against purchases made, at the median, nine years ago will take a long time to show a softer market: a home bought in 2017 can sell for less than it would have fetched in March and still record a very large gain.

## What comes next

The next edition of Pain and Gain will cover the June quarter and, on the report's quarterly rhythm, is due in about three months. It will be the first to capture sales made after listings began to rise across the capitals. Between now and then the monthly releases carry the fresher signal for sellers: Cotality's Home Value Index at the start of each month, and SQM Research's count of listings and asking prices a few days later.

For most Queensland owners thinking about a sale, the practical message of this report is narrow. Long ownership has left nearly every seller in the State's capital with a price above the one they paid. How much of that gain a household keeps depends on costs the report does not count, and on what it buys next.

> A report built on purchases made nine years ago will keep showing gains long after the market itself has cooled.