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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Queensland's biggest home builders got bigger last financial year. The Housing Industry Association's annual Housing 100 ranking, published for Queensland on Thursday 24 September, shows the State's 20 largest builders delivered 14,918 homes in 2025-26, up 35.8 per cent on the year before.
Their combined share of the market rose from 31 per cent to 34 per cent, the association says.
Source: Housing Industry Association, Housing 100 report for 2025-26, Queensland release of 24 September 2026.
Who leads the ranking
The Housing 100 ranks builders by the number of homes they start in a financial year, counting houses and apartments together. Hutchies holds first place in Queensland with 2,205 dwellings commenced, 846 more than a year earlier. That is an increase of about 62 per cent on the roughly 1,360 it started in 2024-25.
| Rank | Builder | Note from the report |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hutchies | 2,205 starts, up 846 |
| 2 | Sumitomo Forestry Australia | Includes Henley, trading as Plantation, and Metricon |
| 3 | Meriton Apartments | Second last year |
| 4 | McNab Group | New to the top five |
| 5 | Homecorp Constructions | New to the top five |
| 6 | Coral Homes | Slipped to sixth |
Source: Housing Industry Association, 24 September 2026. The release gives a starts figure for the first-ranked builder only.
One company accounts for a large part of the movement. Hutchies' 2,205 starts are close to 15 per cent of everything the top 20 began, and its 846 additional starts are roughly a fifth of the group's whole increase for the year. The 35.8 per cent rise implies the top 20 started about 11,000 homes in 2024-25, some 3,900 fewer than in 2025-26.
The second-ranked name is new to the list for a different reason. Sumitomo Forestry Australia appears, the association says, following the group's acquisition of two of last year's top five Queensland builders. Its position is the sum of volume house-building brands that were previously ranked separately, so it reflects a change of ownership as much as a change in output.
That reshuffle opened places further down. McNab Group and Homecorp Constructions moved into the top five at fourth and fifth, and Coral Homes is sixth. Meriton Apartments, second last year, is third.
Related readApartments and townhouses lead Queensland's 2025-26 approvals growthWhere Queensland's builders sit nationally
The association published the national Housing 100 a day earlier, on 23 September. It counted 70,553 homes started by the hundred largest builders in 2025-26, up 9.4 per cent from 64,481 the year before, and put their share of the Australian new home market at 35 per cent.
Sumitomo Forestry Australia tops the national list as well, with 8,038 starts across its brands, which the national release lists as Henley, Wisdom, Scott Park Group and Metricon. ABN Group is second with 3,764 and NEX Building Group third with 3,585. NEX Building Group is also the second-largest builder in New South Wales, the association's release for that state shows, with 1,742 starts there, nearly all of them detached houses.
Two Queensland names are among the national report's notable movers. Hutchies climbed from 14th to eighth overall, and Homecorp Constructions from 31st to 13th. On the separate ranking of multi-unit builders, Hutchies is third in the country with 1,907 starts, up one place, behind Parkview Constructions on 2,735 and Meriton Apartments on 2,324.
The national figures also show which kind of housing drove the year. Detached house starts by the hundred builders rose 11 per cent to 52,058 and semi-detached starts rose 14 per cent to 7,397, while multi-unit starts rose 1 per cent to 11,098. Houses and semi-detached homes made up about 84 per cent of the list's output.
Queensland's 18,223 homes are 26 per cent of that national total, according to the association. For comparison, the Queensland Government Statistician's Office reported on 1 September that the State accounted for 23.7 per cent of dwellings approved in Australia in July, in trend terms.
Related readQueensland counts a record 50,000 homes under constructionA market concentrating at the top
The figures show a top-heavy industry. Queensland's Housing 100 builders accounted for 18,223 homes. Of those, the largest 20 delivered 14,918, which is about 82 per cent. The other Queensland builders on the list share roughly 3,300 homes between them.
The association says the group was responsible for 41 per cent of all new homes built in the State. The other 59 per cent come from builders too small to make the list. Home building in Queensland is still, by number of homes, mostly the work of small and medium firms, even as the largest companies grow faster than the market.
A rise of 35.8 per cent for the top 20, against a market share gain of three percentage points, implies the market as a whole grew strongly too. If the 20 largest builders held 34 per cent with 14,918 homes, total starts on the association's measure were in the order of 44,000. The same arithmetic for the year before, 31 per cent and about 11,000 homes, gives a market of roughly 35,000. Both are estimates from rounded shares, and the association's release does not state the totals.
New South Wales offers a contrast. The association's release for that state says its top 20 builders started 12,555 homes in 2025-26, unchanged on the year before, while the state's total starts rose 14 per cent to 53,753.
| Measure | Queensland | New South Wales |
|---|---|---|
| Homes started by the top 20 | 14,918 | 12,555 |
| Change on 2024-25 | +35.8% | Flat |
| Market share, 2024-25 | 31% | 27% |
| Market share, 2025-26 | 34% | 23% |
| Largest builder's starts | 2,205 | 2,375 |
Source: Housing Industry Association, Housing 100 state releases for Queensland and New South Wales, September 2026.
Queensland's 20 largest builders therefore started more homes than their counterparts in the more populous state, and gained share while those in New South Wales lost it. The association attributes the New South Wales result partly to the high cost of land in Sydney, which it describes as a handbrake on growth.
Related readQueensland apartment approvals drop from 1,330 to 337 in AugustWhere apartments come in
The ranking counts each apartment as a dwelling, so a builder who starts two large towers can outrank one who starts a thousand houses. The Queensland release does not split starts by type, but two of the State's top three, Hutchies and Meriton Apartments, sit in the national top three for multi-unit starts.
That is a different profile from the national list, where multi-unit starts barely grew. It fits the approvals data for the period. Queensland's approvals have been rising faster than the nation's, with the Statistician's Office reporting trend approvals in July 20.0 per cent above a year earlier, against 11.7 per cent for Australia. Trend approvals of private sector houses in Queensland fell 0.7 per cent in that month, so the momentum was in dwellings other than houses.
It is also a source of volatility. Apartment projects start in large blocks, and a ranking built on one year's starts can move sharply when two or three towers begin or slip into the following year.
The association's caution
The report looks back, and the association's outlook is more guarded. It says market conditions remain challenging after three increases in interest rates, weaker consumer confidence and tax changes in the 2026-27 Federal Budget, and that softening home sales over the past months point to a slight downturn in activity in 2027. It adds that the outlook for Queensland remains relatively positive, with the industry still holding a significant pipeline of work.
The rate setting behind that comment is on the record. The Reserve Bank of Australia left the cash rate at 4.35 per cent at its meeting of 11 August, after three increases earlier in 2026, Savings.com.au reported at the time. The pipeline is visible in approvals: the association said on 1 September that Queensland approvals in the three months to July were 24.0 per cent higher than a year earlier, the strongest result among the mainland states it reports.
Its own sales survey shows the softening. The association's New Home Sales report of 15 September found national sales down for a fourth consecutive month in August, at their lowest level in more than a year. In Queensland, sales in the three months to August were 20.2 per cent lower than in the previous three months, the second-largest fall of the five states surveyed after Victoria's 27.0 per cent.
The national Housing 100 release makes the same point about timing. It says strong sales through late 2025 and early 2026 produced the year's result, and that conditions have deteriorated since. A home sold in one quarter is typically started in a later one, so much of the 2025-26 ranking reflects decisions buyers made before this year's rate rises.
For buyers, a ranking is not a recommendation. It measures volume and nothing else: not quality, price or time taken to build. What it does show is the shape of the industry a Queensland buyer deals with. Twenty very large companies now build a third of the State's new homes, and thousands of smaller ones build most of the rest.
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.
