Gold Coast rents hit $950 a week for houses, above every capital

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Kooky

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The Gold Coast is now the most expensive place in Australia to rent a home, the ABC reported on 9 July 2026. Domain's figures for the June quarter put the city's median asking rent at $950 a week for houses and $850 a week for units, with a combined median of $900, a record.

Both medians are above Sydney's. Domain's June quarter report, released a day earlier, has Sydney at $850 for houses and $780 for units. The Gold Coast is $100 a week higher for houses and $70 higher for units, and $250 a week above Brisbane's house median of $700.

Two measures, close together

A second data provider gives a similar picture. PropTrack, the research arm of REA Group, puts the Gold Coast's median asking rent at $890 a week, up 2.5 per cent in the three months to June, according to the ABC's report.

Domain's combined $900 and PropTrack's $890 come from different sets of advertisements and different methods. They differ by $10. Read together, they place the typical advertised Gold Coast rental at about $900 a week, or roughly $46,800 over 52 weeks.

That two firms working from separate listings arrive within about 1 per cent of each other is worth noting. Rent figures from different providers often disagree by much more, as the Brisbane numbers published in the same week showed: Domain put Brisbane houses at $700 and units at $660, while Cotality's review of 9 July gave a single Brisbane median of $734 for all dwellings.

From Pimpama to Broadbeach Waters

A city-wide median hides a wide spread, and the ABC's report lists the suburbs at each end.

The dearest suburb for houses costs about twice the most affordable one: $1,500 a week in Broadbeach Waters against $743 in Pimpama, a difference of $757. For units, the range runs from $1,100 in Main Beach to $650 in Nerang, a difference of $450. After Broadbeach Waters, the ABC's list of the dearest suburbs for houses runs through Clear Island Waters, Bundall, Tallebudgera and Benowa.

Three details stand out. Labrador appears on both affordable lists, at $775 for houses and $700 for units. Benowa appears on both expensive lists. And even the most affordable Gold Coast suburb for houses, at $743 a week, is above Brisbane's city-wide house median.

The geography is consistent. The affordable houses are in the north, at Pimpama and Willow Vale, and inland. The expensive units are on or near the beach, from Main Beach south to Currumbin. Domain's explanation for the unit figures, as the ABC reports it, is that units are all about location: they are concentrated in prime coastal and central areas, which lifts their median.

The ABC also reports the REIQ's observation that the northern end of the city recorded the largest percentage rent growth over the 12 months to June while remaining its most affordable part. The report does not give the percentages suburb by suburb. Domain adds that the Gold Coast is not a single market: it has a wide spectrum of price points, and in some suburbs rents have flattened or slipped slightly even as the city-wide median rose.

How it compares with the capitals

Domain's June quarter report covers the eight capitals, and setting the Gold Coast's house median beside them shows the size of the gap.

The Gold Coast leads Sydney by about 12 per cent and Brisbane by about 36 per cent. Sydney's own figure is fresh from a $50 jump in a single quarter, according to Domain's report, so the Gold Coast is ahead of a city whose rents have just risen sharply.

For units the lead is narrower in dollars but the order is the same. The Gold Coast's $850 is ahead of Sydney's $780, Perth's $700 and Brisbane's $660. A Gold Coast unit, at the median, costs $190 a week more than a Brisbane one.

Few homes, and the wrong mix

The reasons given are about supply. Domain's explanation, as the ABC reports it, is that there is not enough rental stock, that there have been three interest rate rises this year, and that conditions still favour landlords, which allows higher costs to be passed on in rents.

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland adds a point about what is being built. In the ABC's report, the institute calls the result unsurprising but significant, and says a disproportionate share of new Gold Coast construction is at the luxury end, which leaves a gap in affordable new homes and pushes demand onto established housing.

The vacancy rate fits that account. The ABC cites an REIQ rate of 1.1 per cent for the Gold Coast, which is the figure in the institute's report for the March quarter of 2026, published on 30 April. The institute regards 2.6 to 3.5 per cent as the healthy range, where tenants have more room to choose and rents steady. At 1.1 per cent, roughly one rental home in ninety is empty and available.

The institute's earlier quarterly releases show how little that number has moved. The Gold Coast was at 1.3 per cent in the June quarter of 2025, 1.0 per cent in the September quarter, and 1.1 per cent in the December quarter and again in the March quarter of 2026. Four readings in a row sit between 1.0 and 1.3 per cent, at most half the bottom of the healthy range.

Vacancy alone does not explain the price, though. In the same March quarter report the REIQ had the Sunshine Coast at 0.7 per cent, Logan at 0.8 per cent, the Brisbane council area at 1.0 per cent and Queensland as a whole at 0.9 per cent. The Gold Coast is slightly less tight than its neighbours and far more expensive than all of them. The difference lies in what is for rent and where, which is the institute's point about the mix of new building.

A ranking that has been building

The Gold Coast did not take the top place this week. Domain's report for the March quarter, published on 23 April, already described the city as the most expensive in the country to rent in. What the June quarter adds is a record and a wider margin over Sydney for houses.

The wider market helps explain why the lead has held. Domain's June quarter report describes rents accelerating again in some capitals, Brisbane among them for houses, while affordability holds others back. Brisbane's unit median did not move in the quarter. Cotality's review of 9 July says regional markets across the country are running into affordability ceilings, with households in some regional areas putting more than 35 per cent of gross income into rent.

Neither firm's published summary measures Gold Coast rents against Gold Coast incomes. That is the comparison that decides whether a rent can be paid, and it is the one figure this week's reports leave out.

What the ranking does and does not say

"Most expensive" describes advertised rents for homes on the market in one quarter. It does not describe what every Gold Coast tenant pays.

The comparison with Sydney also needs care. The Gold Coast is one council area with a large share of coastal, high-amenity housing. Greater Sydney's median takes in a much larger and more varied city, including distant suburbs where rents are far lower than at its centre.

Still, the result marks a change for Queensland. A household moving to the Gold Coast for work now meets asking rents above those of the country's largest city on Domain's medians, and well above those of its own state capital.

For owners and property managers, the figures show strong demand across the price range, from Nerang to Main Beach. They also show its limit. Domain notes that some Gold Coast suburbs have already gone flat, and its Brisbane result the same week had unit rents unchanged for the quarter, a sign that asking rents can reach a point where they stop rising.

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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