# A 366-apartment build-to-rent tower opens in Fortitude Valley
WeAreLiving Brunswick opened in Brisbane on 3 June with 366 rental apartments, about 40 per cent of them at discounted rents backed by a Queensland Government subsidy.
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A 27-storey build-to-rent tower opened in Fortitude Valley on 3 June 2026, adding 366 rental apartments to inner Brisbane. The owners, the investment manager Barings and the superannuation fund Aware Super, announced the opening the same day and said about 40 per cent of the homes are offered at discounted rents with the support of a Queensland Government subsidy.
The building is called WeAreLiving Brunswick. It stands on Brunswick Street, about two kilometres from the city centre according to Aware Super, and holds studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, furnished or unfurnished. The fund's announcement places it beside the Valley Metro redevelopment, which it values at $500 million.
366apartments over 27 storeys
40%of homes at discounted rents, approximately
$480weekly starting rent, discounted homes
Barings and Aware Super announcements, 3 June 2026.
## What the building offers
Build-to-rent means a whole building designed, owned and managed to be rented, apartment by apartment, by a single owner. Nothing in it is sold to individual investors. The owner's income is the rent, so the model depends on tenants staying.
That shows in the terms. Aware Super says leases of up to three years are available, management is on site, and residents share 1,800 square metres of common facilities reserved for them. The trade publication BTR News, reporting the opening on 3 June, lists a rooftop pool and dog park, a co-working space, a fitness centre, a treatment room, dining and entertaining areas, and a room for cinema, podcasts and karaoke. It adds two services that ordinary apartment blocks seldom have: a program of social events for residents and optional apartment cleaning.
The tower is all-electric and carries a 7.5-star NatHERS energy rating, both announcements say. NatHERS is the national scheme that rates the thermal performance of a home's design out of ten stars. The building was developed by Frasers Property Australia, designed by Cox Architecture and built by Hutchinson Builders, then acquired by Barings and Aware Super.
For a tenant, the practical differences from a conventional rental are few but real. There is one landlord for the whole building and one on-site team to deal with, and the owner has no reason to sell an individual apartment or move into it. The tenancy itself is an ordinary Queensland tenancy: the bond is lodged with the Residential Tenancies Authority and the same Act applies as in any other rented home.
## The rents, market and discounted
The owners published their asking rents. Market-rate apartments run from $645 a week for an unfurnished studio to $1,050 a week for an unfurnished two-bedroom home. Discounted homes start at $480 a week.
On those figures, the cheapest discounted home is $165 a week below the cheapest market-rate studio, a gap of roughly 26 per cent. That is close to the discount described when the project was first announced: Elite Agent reported on 8 October 2020 that the subsidised apartments in the Fortitude Valley and Newstead pilot buildings would be let at 25 per cent below market rent.
The announcements of 3 June do not give a single discount rate for the whole building, and they do not set out who qualifies for the discounted homes or how they are allocated. The Queensland Government's statement of 3 October 2020 said the affordable apartments in the pilot were intended for key workers such as nurses, teachers and police. Whether that description still governs allocation in 2026 is a matter for the operator's own eligibility conditions.
Two rent levels
Market and discounted homes sit in the same tower
About 40 per cent of the 366 apartments are let below market rent with a Queensland Government subsidy, according to the owners. The rest are let at market rent. Residents of both share the same building and facilities.
Aware Super describes the project as part of Queensland's Build-to-Rent Pilot Project, the state program behind the subsidy.
## Six years from announcement to opening
The pilot is older than the building. Queensland Treasury's page on the project shows that the state first asked developers and investors to register their interest by 23 January 2019. The design was simple: developments would be built on privately owned land at the cost and risk of the successful proponent, and the government would pay a subsidy to secure a share of affordable homes inside each one.
Two developers were named in a government statement of 3 October 2020: Frasers Property Australia for a site at Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, and Mirvac for a site in Newstead. Together the two projects were to hold about 750 apartments, up to 240 of them at discounted rent, and construction was expected to begin in mid-2021.
How the Fortitude Valley project reached its opening
October 2020The Queensland Government names Frasers Property Australia and Mirvac for the pilot, with about 750 apartments between two sites.
March 2022Ground is broken in Fortitude Valley on 366 apartments, about 145 at discounted rent. Tenants are expected in 2024.
June 2026The tower opens as WeAreLiving Brunswick, owned by Barings and Aware Super.
The plan grew a little along the way. Elite Agent's 2020 report described 354 apartments on the Fortitude Valley site, 144 of them subsidised. By the government's statement of 28 March 2022, when work began under the name Brunswick & Co, the count was 366 apartments with approximately 145 at discounted rent. One hundred and forty-five of 366 is 39.6 per cent, which matches the "approximately 40 per cent" in this week's announcements.
The timetable slipped more than the numbers did. Work that was expected to start in mid-2021 started in March 2022, and the first residents, expected in 2024, are arriving in 2026. The 2022 statement said the site would support 290 construction jobs and described the building as the second of the pilot under construction, after Mirvac's Newstead project, which began in August 2021.
## Where it sits in the Brisbane rental market
Three hundred and sixty-six homes is a visible addition for one suburb and a small one for a city. The Residential Tenancies Authority, which holds every rental bond in Queensland, reported about 631,800 bonds in its care in its 2024-25 annual report. The new tower is about 0.06 per cent of that statewide total.
The homes arrive in a market with very little spare stock. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland's vacancy report for the March quarter of 2026, published on 30 April, put the vacancy rate at 1.1 per cent for inner Brisbane and 1.0 per cent for the Brisbane council area. The institute regards 2.6 to 3.5 per cent as a healthy range.
On price, the nearest citywide yardstick is Cotality's quarterly rental review for the March quarter, which put the median rent for a Brisbane unit at $656 a week, 6.7 per cent higher than a year earlier. That median covers units of every size and age across the whole city, so it is a reference point and not a like-for-like comparison. Against it, the tower's cheapest market-rate studio, at $645, sits $11 below, and its discounted homes start $176 below.
The RTA's annual report put Queensland's median weekly rent at $600 for 2024-25, up 3.4 per cent on the year before, across houses, units and townhouses statewide. The discounted homes start below that figure, and the market-rate homes start above it.
Scale matters for another reason. According to the RTA's report, 87.8 per cent of Queensland rentals are managed by agents and property managers on behalf of individual owners. A tower with one institutional owner and its own on-site team is a different arrangement, and still a rare one in Queensland. It does not replace the work of property managers across the rest of the market; it adds a second model beside it.
## A national portfolio
The Fortitude Valley tower is one of several. Barings and Aware Super say their WeAreLiving pipeline now exceeds 2,000 build-to-rent homes across New South Wales, Queensland, the ACT and Victoria.
Build Australia, reporting the opening on 3 June, lists the others. A 292-home building opened in Preston, in Melbourne, in April 2026. Projects of 135 apartments in Zetland, in Sydney's inner south, and 433 apartments at Albert Park in Melbourne, under the name WeAreLiving Queens, are still to come, according to the two owners' announcements.
Those four buildings account for 1,226 homes, a little over 60 per cent of a 2,000-home pipeline. The Brisbane tower, at 366, is the second largest of the four after Albert Park.
The owners are a superannuation fund and a global investment manager, which is typical of the sector. Rent collected over decades suits investors with long horizons, and a fund's members are, in effect, the landlord. For Queensland, the opening delivers the second of the two projects named for the state pilot in October 2020.
For Brisbane renters, the practical news is narrower: a large block of new rentals near the city, a published price list, longer leases on offer, and a share of homes priced below the rest. How quickly the building fills, and at what rents, is not something the owners have reported yet.