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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Cotality's Home Value Index for September 2026, issued on 1 October, puts Brisbane's rental vacancy rate at 2.1 per cent, level with Perth. The national rate reached 2.0 per cent, which the firm says is the highest since January 2025, after a record low of 1.5 per cent in February this year.
The same report shows rent growth slowing. National rents rose 0.3 per cent in September in seasonally adjusted terms, the smallest monthly rise since May 2025, taking the annual change to 5.5 per cent.
Cotality Home Value Index, data to 30 September 2026, released 1 October 2026.
Where Brisbane sits among the capitals
Among the capitals Cotality lists, Hobart has the highest vacancy rate at 3.0 per cent, followed by Sydney at 2.3 per cent and then Brisbane and Perth at 2.1 per cent. Adelaide is the tightest at 1.4 per cent.
All of those sit below the firm's long-run reference point. Cotality puts the average national vacancy rate for the decade before the pandemic at 3.3 per cent, so a national reading of 2.0 per cent is the loosest since January 2025 and still more than a percentage point under that earlier norm.
The movement over the past month was small and in one direction. Cotality's August index had the national rate at 1.9 per cent, Sydney at 2.2 per cent and Adelaide at 1.3 per cent. Each has risen by a tenth of a point. For Brisbane the comparison is with the firm's Rental Review for the June quarter, which had the city at 1.9 per cent, so the rate has risen by 0.2 points over three months.
Related readA 366-apartment build-to-rent tower opens in Fortitude ValleyCotality's explanation for the rise is not new supply from investors. The report says vacancy has risen despite a sharp pullback in investment, and suggests the cause may be a structural change in demand, with renters progressively forming larger households to cope with stretched affordability. It also mentions multi-generational living and tenants looking for smaller homes or homes further out. More people sharing one home means fewer homes are needed for the same number of renters. The firm presents this as a possible explanation, not an established one.
Queensland's own industry body described the same behaviour earlier in the year. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland's March quarter vacancy report, published on 30 April, reported a clear shift towards co-tenancies and multi-generational households as a response to cost. In that reading a higher vacancy rate is not a simple sign of relief: some of the homes that have come free were given up by people who could no longer afford to rent alone.
One city, two very different rates
A reader who follows more than one data provider will notice a gap. SQM Research's most recent release, covering August, has Brisbane's vacancy rate at 0.9 per cent, against 1.0 per cent a year earlier. Cotality's 2.1 per cent for September is more than double that.
The two figures are a month apart, but the month is not what separates them. In its June quarter Rental Review, Cotality had Brisbane at 1.9 per cent when SQM had the city at 0.9 per cent for June, and the Real Estate Institute of Queensland reported 1.0 per cent for the Brisbane local government area for the same quarter.
Related readGold Coast rents hit $950 a week for houses, above every capitalWhy Brisbane can be 0.9 per cent and 2.1 per cent at once
The providers count different things. SQM states that it counts listings advertised for three weeks or more against its estimate of rental stock. Cotality, according to a 2025 review of vacancy measures by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, counts homes advertised for at least two weeks against its own estimate of stock. Each series is best compared with its own history, not with another provider's level.
The gap is not peculiar to Brisbane, and it is not the same size everywhere.
| City | Cotality, September | SQM Research, August | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hobart | 3.0% | 0.6% | 2.4 pts |
| Perth | 2.1% | 0.6% | 1.5 pts |
| Brisbane | 2.1% | 0.9% | 1.2 pts |
| Adelaide | 1.4% | 0.6% | 0.8 pts |
| Sydney | 2.3% | 1.7% | 0.6 pts |
Cotality Home Value Index released 1 October 2026; SQM Research figures for August 2026, as reported by AdviserVoice on 16 September 2026. The two columns cover different months.
Nationally the two firms are 0.7 of a point apart, at 2.0 per cent and 1.3 per cent. The cities also fall in a different order. On Cotality's figures Hobart is the loosest capital and Brisbane and Perth are level. On SQM's, Hobart, Perth and Adelaide share the tightest rate of the five, and Brisbane sits between them and Sydney. The gap is widest for Hobart, the smallest market in the table, and narrowest for Sydney, the largest, which is a reason for caution about any single figure for a small city.
The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute made the general point in the review cited above, published in December 2025. Its report on the vacancy rate measure identified five commercial producers of vacancy rates in Australia, found that different approaches produce different outcomes and that the methods are often opaque, and warned that a rising rate can be read as a market correcting itself when it is in fact underpinned by overcrowding or homelessness. That warning sits close to Cotality's own suggestion about larger households.
What each series says about direction is more useful than the level. On Cotality's measure, vacancy in Brisbane has edged up from 1.9 per cent in the June quarter to 2.1 per cent in September. On SQM's, the rate has held at 0.9 per cent since May and the count of vacant homes in August, 3,090, was about 10 per cent lower than a year before. Both describe a market with less spare stock than the pre-pandemic norm, and they differ on whether it has begun to ease.
Related readRental yields edge up as values fall, with regional Queensland at 4.2%Rents and yields
On rents, the September result continues a gradual slowing. Cotality's national rental index rose 0.4 per cent in both July and August, and annual growth was 5.7 per cent in August against 5.5 per cent now. The firm's September chart pack, which reports figures to the end of August, put annual rent growth at 6.4 per cent in Brisbane and 6.5 per cent in regional Queensland, against 5.7 per cent nationally. Both Queensland figures were above the national rate at that point.
The October report says weekly rents have risen by about $200 across the country over five years, a period it describes as one of unprecedented rental growth that has taken rental affordability to its worst level on record.
A Queensland source published last week gives a local measure of the same rise. The Residential Tenancies Authority's annual report for 2025-26, released on 25 September, puts the state's median weekly rent at $650 at 30 June 2026, up from $600 a year earlier, an increase of $50 or about 8.3 per cent. That median is calculated from bonds lodged for new tenancies, so it reflects agreements that were signed and not advertised prices. The authority received 231,739 new bond lodgements during the year.
For owners, the report's main point is that gross rental yields keep recovering. The national gross yield rose to 3.85 per cent in September, which Cotality says is the highest since August 2019, with capital city yields ranging from 3.4 per cent in Sydney to 6.5 per cent in Darwin. A month earlier the national figure was 3.79 per cent.
Related readHow rental vacancy rates are measured, and why Queensland sources differIn Queensland the yield has moved up a notch in both markets. Cotality's table has Brisbane at 3.5 per cent, against 3.4 per cent in August, and regional Queensland at 4.3 per cent, against 4.2 per cent. The firm's figures by dwelling type show where the higher returns are: 3.4 per cent for Brisbane houses and 4.2 per cent for Brisbane units, and 4.2 per cent for houses and 4.5 per cent for units in the rest of the state.
A gross yield is rent as a share of value before costs, and much of the latest rise comes from the value side. Cotality reports Brisbane dwelling values down 1.5 per cent in September, the sharpest monthly fall among the capitals. Regional Queensland fell 0.9 per cent in the month and 2.5 per cent over the quarter. The firm expects yields to rise further as rents continue to increase and housing values trend lower. That is its expectation, not a result.
Cotality also repeats a caution it made a month ago: opportunities for neutral or positive cash flow remain limited because of holding costs, among which it lists interest, insurance, maintenance and strata fees. The report was released two days after the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.60 per cent on 29 September, a level Cotality describes as the highest in fifteen years, and it notes that less favourable negative gearing and capital gains tax arrangements have already brought a sharp reduction in investor demand.
What the two pictures mean in practice
For tenants, the Cotality figures offer modest encouragement and the SQM figures offer none, and a household looking for a home in Brisbane this month will experience whichever is closer to the truth in its own price range and suburb. Neither series is broken down that finely in the national releases. What both agree on is that advertised and agreed rents are still higher than a year ago, and that the monthly pace has slowed.
For owners and property managers, the common ground is narrower than the headlines suggest but still useful. Rent growth is slowing on Cotality's index, vacancy is rising on one measure and flat on the other, and yields are improving because values are falling. None of that describes a market in which homes are hard to let. It does describe one in which the gap between an asking rent and what applicants can pay has become the limit, a point the REIQ made in July when it reported higher-priced rentals taking longer to find a tenant.
What to watch
Two Queensland-specific releases are due this month. The Residential Tenancies Authority publishes September quarter median rents, drawn from new bond lodgements, in October, and the Real Estate Institute of Queensland's September quarter vacancy report will show whether the loosening it found in 27 of 50 regions in the June quarter has continued. SQM's figures for September, expected around the middle of the month, will add a third reading.
Those reports will also help settle which of the two national pictures fits Queensland better: a market where vacancy is drifting up from very low levels, or one that has stayed put.
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.
