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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →The capital city rental markets are separating. SQM Research's vacancy figures for August 2026, reported by AdviserVoice on 16 September, show Sydney's vacancies up 26 per cent on a year earlier and Canberra's up 29 per cent, while Brisbane's count of vacant homes is about 10 per cent lower than in August 2025 and its rate is unchanged over the month at 0.9 per cent.
SQM counted 3,090 vacant rental homes in Brisbane in August. Its national rate was 1.3 per cent for a third consecutive month, on 41,039 vacancies.
SQM Research, vacancy rates for August 2026 and asking rents for the week ending 4 September 2026.
Two groups of capitals
On SQM's numbers the eight capitals now fall into two groups. Sydney at 1.7 per cent, Melbourne at 1.8 per cent and Canberra at 2.1 per cent have rates above the national figure. Canberra's moved from 1.8 per cent to 2.1 per cent in a single month, and from 1.6 per cent a year ago.
The other five are all under 1 per cent. Brisbane is at 0.9 per cent, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart at 0.6 per cent, and Darwin at 0.4 per cent. For Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide the August 2026 rate is lower than the August 2025 rate, the opposite of what has happened in Sydney and Canberra.
| City | August 2025 | August 2026 | Vacant homes, change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canberra | 1.6% | 2.1% | +29% |
| Sydney | 1.4% | 1.7% | +26% |
| Melbourne | 1.8% | 1.8% | About level |
| Brisbane | 1.0% | 0.9% | -10% |
| Perth | 0.7% | 0.6% | -14% |
| Adelaide | 0.8% | 0.6% | -19% |
SQM Research figures for August 2026, as reported by AdviserVoice on 16 September 2026.
Nationally the count is 3,300 higher than the 37,739 SQM recorded for August 2025, a rise of 8.7 per cent, and the rate has gone from 1.2 per cent to 1.3 per cent. The table shows where that rise sits. It is concentrated in two cities, and three of the other large capitals have fewer vacant homes than a year ago.
Related readEnding a tenancy in Queensland: notice periods and grounds for each sideFor Brisbane the comparison can be checked against SQM's own release of September 2025, which put the city at 1.0 per cent on 3,423 vacancies for August of that year. The latest count of 3,090 is 333 lower, a fall of 9.7 per cent. In a year in which the national pool of vacant rentals grew, Brisbane's shrank.
The count behind the rates
The count of homes makes the difference in scale plain. Greater Sydney had roughly four times as many vacant rentals as Brisbane in August, and Melbourne about three times as many.
SQM Research, as reported by AdviserVoice on 16 September 2026. Listings advertised for three weeks or more.
Canberra's bar is short and its rate is the highest in the country, which shows how the two measures differ. A rate is a count divided by the size of the rental stock. Canberra's 1,264 vacant homes are a larger share of a small market than Sydney's 12,821 are of a very large one. Canberra now has more vacant rentals than Perth or Adelaide, cities several times its size.
Brisbane's count rose by 33 homes from the 3,057 SQM reported for July, too small a change to move the rate. The national count rose by 268 over the same month, from 40,771. The largest rises were in Melbourne, up 188 from 9,346, and Canberra, up 178 from 1,086, while Sydney's count barely moved, up 39 from 12,782. Perth fell by 49, from 1,241, and Adelaide by 16, from 1,035.
Across SQM's releases this year, Brisbane has moved within a narrow band. The firm had the city at 0.8 per cent in March and April, on 2,662 and 2,900 vacancies, and at 0.9 per cent in June, July and August, on 3,065, 3,057 and 3,090. The count rose by about 400 between March and June and has since been flat.
Related readA 366-apartment build-to-rent tower opens in Fortitude ValleyAsking rents level off
The second half of the release concerns advertised rents, and here the monthly movement has slowed. SQM's national combined asking rent was $701.53 a week for the week ending 4 September, which the firm describes as flat over the month and 7.3 per cent higher over the year. House asking rents slipped 0.1 per cent nationally over the month and unit rents rose 0.2 per cent. The capital city average was $793.76 a week, down from $796.51 in the previous release.
Brisbane's combined asking rent was $756.15 a week, up 0.5 per cent over the month and 7.7 per cent over twelve months. A month earlier the firm's release had the city at $756.11 with annual growth of 8.3 per cent, so the weekly figure has barely shifted between the two publications and the annual rate has come down by 0.6 of a percentage point. The two releases measure their monthly changes from different weeks, which is why a figure can be almost unchanged between them and still show a monthly rise.
The slowing is in the combined figure. SQM reports that asking rents for Brisbane houses were 9.0 per cent higher than a year earlier, above the 7.7 per cent for houses and units together. Perth shows the same pattern, with house rents up 9.5 per cent against 7.1 per cent combined.
Elsewhere the direction was mixed. Sydney's asking rent fell 0.6 per cent over the month to $909.53 and Canberra's fell 1.6 per cent to $687.88, the two cities where vacancies have grown most. Melbourne slipped 0.1 per cent to $695.18. Perth rose 0.2 per cent to $801.73 and Adelaide 0.4 per cent to $644.04. Among the smaller capitals, Darwin fell 2.4 per cent over the month to $720.65 and Hobart rose 0.3 per cent to $607.37.
Related readGold Coast rents hit $950 a week for houses, above every capitalThose movements have changed the gaps between cities. Brisbane's asking rent is now $45.58 a week below Perth's and $60.97 above Melbourne's. Its lead over Canberra has widened from about $51 in the August release to about $68, almost entirely because Canberra's figure fell.
What SQM says it is watching
SQM's commentary, as reported, treats the annual growth figures as a record of increases that have already happened and have, in some cities, stopped. It describes Sydney, where house asking rents fell over the month, as the clearest case of a capital whose rental market has turned.
The firm's test is seasonal. Asking rents normally firm from October into the summer leasing season, when more tenants move. If that does not happen in the larger capitals this year, SQM says, the upswing in rents in those cities is over. It expects the national vacancy rate to drift towards 1.4 to 1.5 per cent by December. That is a forecast, and the firm's own, not a result.
Other measures published over the past three weeks point the same way on the order of the cities, if not on the levels. Cotality's index for August, released on 1 September, had Sydney with the highest vacancy rate among the mainland capitals, at 2.2 per cent, and a national rate of 1.9 per cent, its highest since January 2025. Cotality counts vacancies differently and its figures run higher than SQM's. The Australian Bureau of Statistics, which measures rents being paid across all tenancies and not advertised rents, reported on 26 August that CPI rents were 3.6 per cent higher over the year to July, unchanged for a third month.
Related readRental yields edge up as values fall, with regional Queensland at 4.2%The reading for Queensland renters and owners
Asking rents describe advertised homes only. They are not the rents in existing agreements, and they do not show what a property finally let for. Within that limit, the August figures suggest that the loosening seen in the two south-eastern capitals has not reached Brisbane, where there is less stock on the market than a year ago and advertised prices are still rising, though more slowly than in July.
For a tenant looking in Brisbane, the practical meaning is that the choice of homes is no wider than it was last spring and the advertised price is higher, with houses rising faster than units. For an owner or a property manager, a home priced in line with the market is still unlikely to sit for three weeks, which is the point at which SQM would count it as vacant. The monthly rent figures do suggest that the room to lift an asking price is narrower than it was in the middle of the year.
The SQM series covers capital cities. For the rest of Queensland, the latest reading remains the Real Estate Institute of Queensland's June quarter report, in which the Gold Coast recorded 1.5 per cent and the Sunshine Coast 0.9 per cent, and in which 27 of 50 regions had more vacancies than three months before. On that evidence parts of regional Queensland had begun to ease while the capital had not.
What comes next
SQM's September figures are due in mid-October, at the point where its seasonal test begins. The institute's September quarter report is the next to give a region-by-region view of the state, and the Residential Tenancies Authority's September quarter median rents, drawn from new bond lodgements, are scheduled for October. Together they will show whether Brisbane enters the busiest leasing months with the same thin stock it has carried through winter.
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.
