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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Gross rental yields are rising across Australia because rents are still climbing while home values fall, according to Cotality's Home Value Index for August 2026, released on 1 September. The report puts the national gross yield at 3.79 per cent, which Cotality says is the highest since September 2019. Brisbane's is 3.4 per cent and regional Queensland's is 4.2 per cent.
The same report records a national rental vacancy rate of 1.9 per cent in August, the highest on Cotality's measure since January 2025 and up from a record low of 1.5 per cent in February.
Cotality Home Value Index, results for August 2026, released 1 September 2026.
Where Queensland sits on yield
A gross rental yield is a year's rent expressed as a share of the home's value, before any costs. It moves when either side of that fraction moves. Over the past few months both have moved in the direction that lifts it.
| Market | Gross yield | Median dwelling value | Value change, quarter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brisbane | 3.4% | $1,080,142 | -2.7% |
| Regional Queensland | 4.2% | $844,803 | -1.3% |
| Combined capitals | 3.6% | $990,394 | -3.7% |
| Combined regional | 4.3% | $764,020 | -1.2% |
| National | 3.8% | $912,885 | -3.1% |
Cotality Home Value Index, results for August 2026. Yields rounded to one decimal place in Cotality's table.
Brisbane sits below the combined capitals figure, and regional Queensland just below the combined regional figure. The spread across the capitals is wide. Cotality's table has Darwin at 6.3 per cent, Hobart at 4.4 per cent, Canberra at 4.3 per cent, Melbourne at 4.0 per cent, Perth at 3.9 per cent and Adelaide at 3.6 per cent. Only Sydney, at 3.3 per cent, is lower than Brisbane.
Among the regional markets, Queensland's 4.2 per cent is close to regional New South Wales at 4.1 per cent and regional Victoria at 4.3 per cent, and well below regional Western Australia at 5.1 per cent.
The gap between Brisbane and the rest of the state comes mostly from the value side. As a rough illustration from the rounded figures in the table, 3.4 per cent of Brisbane's median value is about $36,700 a year, or about $706 a week, and 4.2 per cent of the regional Queensland median is about $35,500 a year, or about $682 a week. Those are arithmetic on Cotality's published yields and medians, not the firm's own rent estimates, but they show the shape of it: rent of a similar order on a home that costs about $235,000 less.
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On the value side, Cotality reports Brisbane dwelling values down 1.0 per cent in August and 2.7 per cent over the quarter, though still 10.8 per cent higher than a year earlier. Regional Queensland fell 0.5 per cent in the month and 1.3 per cent over the quarter, and was 9.1 per cent higher over the year.
The national index fell 0.9 per cent in August, its fifth monthly fall in a row, and stands 3.1 per cent lower over the quarter. Sydney, down 1.4 per cent in the month, and Melbourne, down 1.1 per cent, are both lower than a year ago, by 4.6 and 4.7 per cent. Queensland is in a different position: values are falling month to month from a level that is still about a tenth above last August's.
On the rent side, the firm's national rental index rose 0.4 per cent in August, seasonally adjusted, the same as in July. Rents are up 5.7 per cent over twelve months, which Cotality says adds about $38 to the national median weekly rent.
The effect of the value side can be shown with a simple case. Take a home yielding 3.4 per cent. If its rent stays exactly the same and its value falls by 2.7 per cent, the quarterly fall Cotality records for Brisbane, the yield becomes about 3.5 per cent, because the same rent is now divided by a smaller number. Nothing about the tenancy has changed.
A higher yield is not the same as a higher rent
A yield can rise with no change in rent at all, if the value of the home falls. In August both happened together: rents rose a little and values fell, so the ratio moved more than either part alone.
That is also why the national yield has reached a seven-year high without a matching surge in rents. The last time Cotality's national figure was this high, in September 2019, was before the pandemic. Five consecutive monthly falls in values, with rents still rising, have brought the figure back to that level.
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A gross yield leaves out everything an owner pays to hold a property: interest, rates, insurance, maintenance, management and any vacant weeks. Cotality's commentary makes the point directly, saying gross yields across the larger capitals remain well below the level needed for most investors to reach a neutral cash flow position, and that yields would need to rise substantially before rental income offsets holding costs while interest rates stay elevated.
The firm also notes that property tax changes announced in the federal budget on 12 May are likely to lead investors to place more weight on higher-yielding markets than before. That is an expectation about behaviour, not a measured shift, and the August figures do not test it.
The index is built for comparison, not for a single property. According to Cotality's method note, its yields are derived from its rental index and from dwelling values estimated by a hedonic regression model, which uses recent sales together with the attributes of each home, such as bedrooms, bathrooms, land area and location. The result is an estimate across all dwellings in a market, including the many that are owner-occupied and have never been let. An individual home's yield depends on its own rent and its own price.
The sales market those values come from has been thin. Cotality reports that capital city listings were 24 per cent higher than a year ago in August and 8 per cent above the five-year average, while its estimate of sales over the quarter was 15.5 per cent lower than a year earlier. It names Brisbane, Perth and Sydney as the capitals with the largest declines in transaction activity. More homes for sale and fewer buyers is the setting in which values have been slipping and yields rising.
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For tenants, the more relevant line in the report is the vacancy rate. Cotality says vacancy has mostly held below 2 per cent nationally since early 2022, against an average of 3.3 per cent in the decade before the pandemic. At 1.9 per cent the August reading is the highest since January 2025 and still well short of that earlier norm.
Among the mainland capitals, Cotality reports Sydney with the highest rate at 2.2 per cent and Adelaide with the lowest at 1.3 per cent. The report's commentary does not quote an August rate for Brisbane. In its Rental Review for the June quarter, the firm put Brisbane at 1.9 per cent.
Cotality's rate is not calculated the way the Real Estate Institute of Queensland's or SQM Research's is, and for Brisbane it has been reading higher. SQM's figure for the city in July was 0.9 per cent, and its national figure was 1.3 per cent against Cotality's 1.9 per cent. The measures agree on direction more often than on level: SQM's national count of vacant homes also rose in July, and the REIQ found more vacancies in 27 of 50 Queensland regions in the June quarter.
Over five years, the report says, national rents have risen 39 per cent, leaving tenants paying around $200 a week more than in 2021. Perth has had the largest five-year increase among the capitals, at 56 per cent, or about $283 a week. Cotality adds that record rental unaffordability may limit how much further rents can rise from here. That, too, is the firm's view of what may happen.
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For owners, the August figures describe a return that is improving on paper while the asset is losing a little value. A Brisbane owner who bought more than a year ago is still ahead on price, given the 10.8 per cent annual rise. An owner who bought in the past few months is looking at a small fall in value and a yield that Cotality says does not cover typical holding costs at current interest rates.
For property managers, a rising vacancy rate on one measure and a flat one on another point to the same practical conclusion. Most homes are still letting, and the REIQ's June quarter release reported that some higher-priced rentals were taking longer to find a tenant.
For tenants, a higher yield brings no relief in itself. The rent is the same; only the value under it has moved. The lines that matter to a household are the 0.4 per cent monthly rise and the vacancy rate, and both say the market is a little less tight than at the start of the year without being loose.
The figures Cotality has measured are a market in which rents are still rising, a little more stock is available than in the summer, and the return on a rental home is improving mainly because prices have come down.
What comes next
Cotality publishes its index at the start of each month, so results for September are due at the start of October. That release will show whether Brisbane's quarterly fall in values continues and whether the national yield moves past 3.79 per cent.
For Queensland rents specifically, the Residential Tenancies Authority publishes September quarter medians in October, calculated from new bond lodgements. Those figures record rents that were agreed, by suburb and local government area, and they are the nearest thing to a check on what the national indexes imply for the state.
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.
