# Investors now account for more than 40% of Brisbane home lending

Domain puts investors above 40 per cent of Brisbane lending, against a ten-year average of 32, as APRA's March quarter figures show investor loans growing as a share of bank books.

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Investors account for more than 40 per cent of home lending in Brisbane, well above the average of the past decade, according to Domain's Forecast Report 2027, published on 25 June. Four days later, on 29 June, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority released its March quarter statistics for banks, which show investment loans taking a larger share of the national mortgage book than a year earlier.

Read together, the two releases describe a city whose housing market leans more heavily on investors than it has for years, at the moment the tax rules for those investors have been rewritten. Parliament passed the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax on 25 June, the same day Domain's report came out.

Both sets of figures describe the period before the Budget's effects could show up in lending data. They are best read as the starting line.

<div class="keyfacts">
<div><b>31.0%</b><span>investment share of bank home loans outstanding</span></div>
<div><b>$182.1bn</b><span>new home loans funded in the March quarter</span></div>
<div><b>6.4%</b><span>of new loans at six times income or more</span></div>
</div>
<p class="src">APRA, quarterly authorised deposit-taking institution statistics for the March quarter 2026, released 29 June 2026. National figures.</p>

## Brisbane's lending mix

Mortgage Professional Australia, reporting on the Domain document on 27 June, quoted the company's chief of research and economics, Dr Nicola Powell: "Investor lending in Brisbane has climbed above 40%, well ahead of the decade average of 32%."

First-home buyers, by contrast, account for 16 per cent of lending in the city, on the same account. The remainder is made up of owner-occupiers who are not buying for the first time: people upgrading, downsizing or moving.

<figure class="fig"><figcaption><b>Who is borrowing to buy in Brisbane</b><span>Share of home lending, per cent</span></figcaption>
<div class="scroll"><svg viewBox="0 0 680 196" role="img" aria-label="Bar chart: investors make up just over 40 per cent of Brisbane lending against a decade average of 32 per cent; first-home buyers make up 16 per cent; the national investor share was 40.3 per cent in the March quarter of 2026.">
<text class="lb" x="176" y="33" text-anchor="end">Brisbane investors</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="14" width="160" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="360" y="33">above 40%</text>
<text class="lb" x="176" y="79" text-anchor="end">Their decade average</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="60" width="128" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="328" y="79">32%</text>
<text class="lb" x="176" y="125" text-anchor="end">Brisbane first buyers</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="106" width="64" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="264" y="125">16%</text>
<text class="lb" x="176" y="171" text-anchor="end">Investors, nationally</text><rect class="bar" x="190" y="152" width="161" height="28" rx="4"/><text class="lb" x="361" y="171">40.3%</text>
</svg></div>
<p class="src">Domain Forecast Report 2027, as reported by Mortgage Professional Australia on 27 June 2026. The national figure is for the March quarter of 2026. The Brisbane investor bar is drawn at 40.</p></figure>

The national share, 40.3 per cent in the March quarter of 2026, is the highest since December 2016, the same report says. Brisbane is therefore not an outlier in level. What sets it apart is the distance from its own history: eight percentage points or more above its ten-year average.

The article carried a second local reading. Brisbane's rental vacancy rate was 0.6 per cent on Domain's latest rental report, and Moody's affordability measure put mortgage repayments in Brisbane at 31.7 per cent of average monthly disposable income in March 2026.

## What the bank regulator's figures add

APRA's quarterly release counts what banks, building societies and credit unions actually hold. At the end of March 2026, residential mortgage credit outstanding stood at $2,512.7 billion, 6.9 per cent more than a year earlier.

Within that book, loans to owner-occupiers made up 67.0 per cent, down 0.69 of a percentage point over the year. Investment loans made up 31.0 per cent, up 0.61 of a point. Applied to the total, those shares put roughly $1,683 billion with owner-occupiers and about $779 billion with investors. The shift is small in any one year because the stock of loans is so large and turns over slowly, but its direction matches the flow figures: investors have been taking out new loans faster than owner-occupiers.

The same release shows how busy the March quarter was. Lenders funded $182.1 billion in new home loans, 17.7 per cent more than in the same quarter a year before. And borrowers were stretching further: 6.4 per cent of new loans went to borrowers whose debt was six times their income or more, a share that rose by 1.12 percentage points over the year.

Against that, the measures of stress improved. Non-performing loans were 0.99 per cent of the book, down from 1.08 per cent a year earlier, and loans between 30 and 89 days overdue were 0.49 per cent, down from 0.60 per cent. About 16.7 per cent of credit outstanding was at a loan-to-valuation ratio of 80 per cent or more, little changed.

APRA's figures are national. The regulator does not publish them by state, so they cannot be set directly beside Domain's Brisbane share. They do confirm that the rise in investor borrowing was broad enough to move the composition of the entire banking system's mortgage book.

## Why Brisbane units draw investors

The Domain report explains the attraction in terms of income. The Australian Associated Press, reporting the forecasts on 25 June, said the company sees strong investor activity, population growth and tight rental markets behind Brisbane's unit prices, with rents more likely to cover an owner's costs there than in dearer cities.

The yield figures are consistent with that. Cotality's home value index for May put the gross rental yield on Brisbane units at 3.9 per cent, against 3.1 per cent for houses, and the median unit value at $884,881 after a rise of 21.8 per cent in twelve months. A higher yield on a lower price means a smaller gap between rent and interest for a buyer who borrows.

Domain expects that to continue. Its forecast for the 2026-27 financial year is a rise of 5 to 9 per cent in Brisbane's median unit price, which AAP reported would take it as high as $893,000, above the $855,000 it expects in Sydney. Dr Powell described the prospect to AAP in these words: "This is just an example of the shift in the affordability hierarchy across our capital cities."

Not everyone quoted shares the confidence. Mortgage Professional Australia reported that AMP's chief economist, Shane Oliver, warned that slower migration and stretched affordability would temper Brisbane's growth, and that Ray White's chief economist, Nerida Conisbee, pointed to building costs, saying: "Costs are rising up to four per cent per annum".

## The gap investors would leave

The point Domain draws from the lending mix is about dependence. With first-home buyers at 16 per cent of lending, Dr Powell told Mortgage Professional Australia, there are not enough of them to fill the gap if investors retreat.

That matters because the new tax law is aimed squarely at one kind of investor purchase. From 1 July 2027, a buyer of an established home will be able to deduct a rental loss only against rental income, while buyers of new builds keep the full deduction against their other earnings. Much of Brisbane's unit stock is established. An investor comparing an existing apartment with one bought off the plan now faces different tax treatment for the same rent.

Domain's own expectation is more measured than a retreat. The report says that as unit prices ease and yields improve, some yield-focused investors could be drawn back into the market. In other words, the company sees a price at which investment in established units makes sense on income alone.

There were signs of hesitation before the law passed. Mortgage Professional Australia reported on 12 May that investors made 22 per cent of offers on listings handled by the south-east Queensland agency Image Property between January and April, down from 28 per cent in the second half of 2025, across more than 5,000 offers. Cotality, in its May index, said it expected a material pullback in investor demand.

Existing owners reacted too, in a different way. Broker News reported on 25 May that Ray White AKG, a Brisbane agency group, recorded a 150 per cent rise in investor appraisal requests in a single week after the Budget, as landlords checked their rents and their numbers. An appraisal is not a sale, and the report does not say how many of those owners went on to list. It does show that the people who already hold Brisbane's rental stock began recalculating as soon as the measures were announced, even though homes owned on Budget night keep their existing tax treatment.

## Reading the two sources with care

Three cautions apply before these numbers are used to describe the months ahead.

The first is timing. APRA's data ends on 31 March, six weeks before the Budget. Domain's national share is for the same quarter. Neither can show what investors have done since 12 May.

The second is definition. A share of lending is not a share of purchases. Investors borrow differently from owner-occupiers, and cash buyers do not appear at all. A lending share above 40 per cent does not mean that four in ten Brisbane homes are being bought by investors. APRA's statistics, for their part, cover authorised deposit-taking institutions only, so loans written by lenders outside that group are not in the totals quoted here.

The third is that a high share can fall for two reasons: because investors borrow less, or because other buyers borrow more. With interest rates higher than at the start of the year, both groups are constrained.

The first official lending figures to cover the weeks after the Budget will be those for the June quarter, which have not yet been published. Until then, the picture is of a Brisbane market that entered the new tax regime with investors holding a share of lending well above its ten-year average.