Cotality review puts Brisbane's median rent at $734, third among capitals

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Brisbane's median dwelling rent stood at $734 a week in the June quarter of 2026, according to the quarterly rental review Cotality published on 9 July. Only Sydney, at $841, and Perth, at $784, were dearer among the capitals the property data firm lists.

Nationally, Cotality has rents up 1.6 per cent over the quarter and 5.9 per cent over the year, a little faster than the 5.7 per cent annual pace recorded in the March quarter. The national median is $705 a week.

The gap to Sydney

Cotality's own headline is about distance: Perth and Brisbane are closing on Sydney. On the June quarter medians, a Brisbane renter pays $107 a week less than a Sydney renter and $50 less than one in Perth. Brisbane sits $29 above the national median.

The chart shows how the order has changed. Melbourne, the second-largest city, is now $93 a week cheaper than Brisbane. At $734 a week, a year of the Brisbane median comes to $38,168.

Darwin is the capital to watch from behind. It sits only $9 a week below Brisbane, and Australian Property Update, reporting the review the same day, says Darwin posted the strongest annual rent growth of any capital. The same report names Brisbane, with Perth and Hobart, among the other capitals to post above-average annual growth. Cotality's published summary does not give the Brisbane percentage for the June quarter.

How the medians moved over a year

The earlier editions of the same review show where each city has come from. Cotality's March quarter review, released in April, and its June quarter 2025 figures, as reported by Broker Daily on 25 July 2025, give the starting points.

Brisbane's median has risen $47 a week in a year, or about 6.8 per cent, and $14 since the March quarter. Sydney's has risen $45 over the year. In dollars, then, the gap between the two cities has barely moved: it was $109 a week in the June quarter of 2025 and is $107 now. As a share, Brisbane has edged closer, from about 86 per cent of the Sydney median to about 87 per cent.

Perth is where the catching up is plain. Its median has risen $63 in a year, and its gap to Sydney has narrowed from $75 to $57 a week. Over the same year Perth has also pulled further ahead of Brisbane, from $34 to $50.

One caution applies to that arithmetic. Cotality's headline growth rates come from its rental value index, which tracks the change in rents across the whole stock of homes. A median is the middle of the homes observed in one period. The two usually travel together, but they are not the same measure, which is why the national median rose about 6 per cent in dollars while the index rose 5.9 per cent.

The March quarter review gave Brisbane's own detail, which the June summary does not repeat. In that quarter the city's rents were 6.7 per cent higher than a year earlier, for houses and for units alike, and 47.6 per cent higher than five years earlier. Houses had a median of $745 a week and units $656.

The year-ago review also shows how far the pace has picked up. In the June quarter of 2025, Broker Daily reported, Cotality had national rents up 3.4 per cent over the year, the smallest annual rise since early 2021, and Brisbane up 3.8 per cent. Brisbane's annual rate had reached 6.7 per cent by the March quarter of 2026, and the national rate is now 5.9 per cent. Rent growth slowed through 2025 and has quickened since.

Outside the capitals, the March quarter review put the combined regional median at $612 a week. Cotality notes that capital city rents grew faster than regional rents in the June quarter.

Very few homes to choose from

The review explains the pace by supply. Cotality puts the national vacancy rate at 1.6 per cent in the June quarter, unchanged from March and below the five-year average of 1.8 per cent. Every capital is under 2 per cent.

Brisbane is, on this measure, at the looser end of a very tight field. Cotality has Sydney and Brisbane at 1.9 per cent, the highest of the capitals, and Adelaide at 1.0 per cent, the lowest. Brisbane's rate was 1.7 per cent in the March quarter review, so it has eased slightly.

The number of homes advertised for rent tells the same story from another side. Cotality counts rental listings 16.7 per cent below their five-year average nationally. The shortfall is deepest in Darwin, at 26.1 per cent, and Sydney, at 24.1 per cent, with Melbourne at 18.4 per cent. Fewer listings mean fewer choices for a household that has to move, and more applicants for each home. A year earlier the national shortfall was 23 per cent, according to Broker Daily's report of the June quarter 2025 review, so the count of advertised homes has recovered a little.

Cotality's reading is that quarterly growth has eased slightly but the shortage has not. Population growth and new households are still outrunning new housing, in its account, and demand is not the part that changed.

Houses, units and five years of increases

The longer view is the heavier one. National rents are 40.6 per cent higher than five years ago, Cotality says, which adds $204 to the weekly median. In the five years before that, from 2016 to 2021, rents rose 12.2 per cent, or $55 a week. The second half of the decade added almost four times as many dollars as the first.

Units have risen faster than houses over that stretch: 46.3 per cent against 38.5 per cent in five years. In the June quarter itself the order was reversed, with house rents up 1.7 per cent and unit rents up 1.2 per cent. Darwin led both, at 4.1 per cent for houses and 2.8 per cent for units. Canberra had the softest quarter for houses, at 0.9 per cent, and Sydney the softest for units, also at 0.9 per cent.

The review gives the share of income this takes. Households were putting about a third of gross income into rent in March 2026, up from about 27 per cent five years earlier, and in some regional areas the share is above 35 per cent. Cotality describes regional markets as running into affordability ceilings.

Among the capitals, the review puts gross yields at 6.1 per cent in Darwin, 4.4 per cent in Hobart, 4.2 per cent in the ACT, 3.9 per cent in Melbourne and 3.3 per cent in Sydney. The pattern is the usual one: the dearer the homes, the lower the yield.

Reading it beside the other reports

This is the second set of rent figures in two days, and the numbers do not match. Domain's report of 8 July put Brisbane's median asking rent at $700 a week for houses and $660 for units. Cotality's $734 is a single figure for all dwellings, above both.

The vacancy rates differ more sharply still: Domain has Brisbane at 0.6 per cent for June, Cotality at 1.9 per cent for the quarter. A review of vacancy measures published by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute in December 2025 describes the difference in method. Domain counts homes advertised on its own site for more than three weeks. Cotality counts homes advertised for at least two weeks, drawn from several listing sources, against its own estimate of the rental stock. A shorter waiting period counts more homes as vacant.

The figures are best read separately, each against its own earlier quarters. Where the two firms agree is on direction and on rank: rents are still rising across the capitals, and Brisbane is now among the dearer ones.

Neither report measures what sitting tenants pay. In Queensland a tenant's rent can rise only once in 12 months, a limit attached to the property under rules the Residential Tenancies Authority dates from 6 June 2024. Advertised rents move first, and existing tenancies follow at their annual review, if the owner chooses to raise the rent at all.

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.

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