Priority Development Areas approved 14,687 homes in 2025-26

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The State agency that runs Queensland's Priority Development Areas says it approved 14,687 homes in those areas in 2025-26. Economic Development Queensland published its results for the financial year on Monday 24 August 2026, describing them as a record and saying both its main housing measures were well above target.

The agency also reports that declarations of new Priority Development Areas during the year facilitated more than 22,000 homes.

Source: Economic Development Queensland, 24 August 2026. All figures are for the 2025-26 financial year.

Two different counts

The two headline numbers measure different steps and should not be added together.

A Priority Development Area is land where the State, through Economic Development Queensland, takes over planning and development assessment from the local council under the Economic Development Act 2012. A declaration draws the boundary and starts the planning. The 22,000 figure counts the homes the areas declared in the year are expected to hold eventually.

An approval is a decision on an actual application, for a subdivision or a building. The 14,687 figure counts homes in applications the agency approved during the year, in areas old and new.

The agency says the volume of development applications it received rose 29 per cent on the previous year and the number of approvals it issued rose 45 per cent. Spread evenly, 14,687 approvals is a little over 1,220 homes a month.

Where the 22,000 comes from

The release does not list the declarations behind its figure, but the agency's own records allow it to be reconstructed. Two Priority Development Areas were declared inside the financial year, both on 30 July 2025: North Harbour at Burpengary East in the City of Moreton Bay, and Mount Peter in the southern growth corridor of Cairns.

The agency's review of the 2025 calendar year, published on 15 December 2025, put North Harbour at 3,700 homes and Mount Peter at 18,500. Together that is 22,200, which matches a figure of more than 22,000.

The table also shows what the figure leaves out. Southern Thornlands was declared in April 2025, in the previous financial year. Halls Creek, south of Caloundra, was declared on 17 July 2026, in the third week of the current one, so its 12,000 homes will count towards the agency's 2026-27 result.

The newest declaration follows the pattern the agency has used elsewhere to get first homes moving before the full plan is settled. The Queensland Government statement on Halls Creek describes more than 1,200 hectares and sets aside an early release area for 1,000 of the 12,000 homes, with public consultation on the development scheme scheduled for later in 2026. At North Harbour, a Government statement of 28 July 2026 said works for the first 249 homes had begun in that area's early release area, just under a year after its declaration.

Mount Peter illustrates how long the road from declaration to housing is. The agency's project page describes 2,650 hectares between Edmonton and Gordonvale, planned for around 18,500 homes and more than 42,000 residents, with $1.05 billion of catalyst infrastructure, seven future state schools and a 22-hectare district sports park. Its development scheme is still being prepared. A declaration in 2025-26 is the start of a program that runs for decades.

Faster decisions

The agency attributes part of the rise in approvals to the way it now handles applications. It says it changed its development assessment process in November 2025, introducing a new online customer portal, enhanced pre-lodgement services and strengthened assessment support. Since then, according to the release, more than 94 per cent of applications have been decided within 40 business days.

The earlier review gives a marker for how far the numbers have moved. In December the agency reported a record 8,003 new homes and lots approved in Priority Development Areas across the 2025 calendar year, a 15 per cent increase on the year before, and said assessment speed had tripled over the previous six months. The financial year figure published this week, 14,687, covers the second half of 2025 and the first half of 2026. The two periods share the second half of 2025, so the difference between them, 6,684, is the amount by which approvals in the first half of 2026 exceeded those in the first half of 2025, provided the two totals were counted on the same basis.

The two figures are also labelled differently. The December review counted "homes and lots", and so did a Queensland Government statement of 27 July 2026 that cited more than 14,600 new homes and lots approved by the agency in the last financial year. This week's release speaks of homes. A lot approved by subdivision and a dwelling approved in an apartment building are both one home in a count of this kind.

What the agency built and sold itself

Economic Development Queensland is also a landowner and developer. On its own land, it reports 1,800 homes contracted and 1,499 homes commenced during the year.

Those are small numbers beside the approvals figure, and they are a different kind of number. A commenced home is under construction. Of everything in the release, the 1,499 commencements are the closest to homes that will exist soon.

The bureau's figures give a sense of proportion. Its Building Activity release of 8 July 2026 counted 10,861 dwellings commenced across Queensland in the March quarter alone, in seasonally adjusted terms. The agency's 1,499 commencements over a full year are a small part of the State's building. Its weight in the housing system lies in what it approves for others to build.

The infrastructure line is the other concrete one. The agency says $568 million of infrastructure was delivered across Priority Development Areas in 2025-26. In these areas, roads, water and sewer networks are funded largely through charges on development and agreements with landowners, so spending tends to follow the pace of lots coming to market. The release names three programs it uses to bring that spending forward: the Infrastructure Activation Fund, the Land Activation Program and the Industrial Land Acceleration Program.

Beyond housing, the release counts $1,153 million of private investment generated through the agency's economic and community development projects, and 2,348 jobs supported by them. The December review had put the equivalent calendar-year figures at $830 million and 1,716 jobs, alongside 324 hectares of commercial and industrial land released.

The release also reports a survey result: trust and recognition among the agency's stakeholders rose to 73.6 per cent from 60 per cent a year earlier.

Reading the results

The figures are the agency's own account of its year, and "record" is its word. The release does not publish the targets it says were exceeded, or the previous year's totals behind the percentage rises.

Some scale can still be supplied from elsewhere. The Queensland Government Statistician's Office, summarising Australian Bureau of Statistics data on 30 July, put Queensland's dwelling approvals for June at 4,314 in trend terms. Twelve months at that rate would be about 51,800 dwellings. With the caution above, the comparison suggests the State-run areas now carry a substantial minority of Queensland's new housing pipeline.

That matches where the growth is. The release highlights Aura at Caloundra South, Ripley Valley and Greater Flagstone, the master-planned communities on the edges of South East Queensland, together with the Maroochydore city centre and renewal areas in Brisbane such as Northshore Hamilton.

The wider data explain why the approvals stage is only part of the story. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council's quarterly report of 21 August found that Queensland's building approvals over the past 12 months were 23 per cent higher than in the 12 months before, while completions were 2 per cent lower. The Council estimates that 35 per cent of Queensland's share of the National Housing Accord target has been approved and 24 per cent built. More approvals inside Priority Development Areas add to the first number. The second depends on builders, trades and finance.

For buyers and residents, the approvals figure is a leading indicator. A home approved in 2025-26 in a Priority Development Area may be a titled lot in a year or two and a finished house some time after that. The commencements and infrastructure figures say more about what will be visible on the ground in the coming months.

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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