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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 has 50,000 homes under construction, the highest number on record, according to a Queensland Government media statement issued on Monday 27 July 2026. The statement, which cites Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for the quarter to March 2026, says the pipeline has grown 25.6 per cent over twelve months, the fastest rate of any state or territory, and that this is the third quarter in a row to set a record.
The same statement names two infrastructure projects in Brisbane, at Bridgeman Downs and Pallara, funded through the Residential Activation Fund.
Queensland Government media statement, 27 July 2026, citing ABS data for the March quarter 2026. The 938 is the sum of the two project figures in the statement.
What "under construction" measures
The count of homes under construction is a stock, not a flow. It is every dwelling that has been started and not yet finished at the end of a quarter. That makes it different from the two numbers quoted more often: approvals, which count permissions, and completions, which count finished homes.
A stock can rise for two quite different reasons. More homes may be starting. Or homes may be taking longer to finish, so that they stay in the count for more quarters. A large pipeline of apartments has the second effect built in, because a tower takes far longer to complete than a house.
The statement does not separate the two. Working back from its own figures, growth of 25.6 per cent to reach 50,000 implies a pipeline of roughly 39,800 a year earlier, or about 10,200 more homes on site than twelve months before. Those are derived figures, and since 50,000 is itself rounded, they should be read as approximate.
Related readQueensland dwelling approvals fall 13.9 per cent in JulyThe record is a State one inside a national one. The bureau's Building Activity release for the March quarter, published on 8 July 2026, counted 243,864 dwellings under construction across Australia, of which 90,972 were new houses and 151,902 were other residential buildings such as apartments and townhouses. On the Government's rounded figure, Queensland holds about one in five of the homes being built in the country.
What the March quarter figures show
The same Building Activity release gives the two flows that feed and drain the pipeline, and for Queensland they point the same way as the record.
In seasonally adjusted terms, 10,861 dwellings were commenced in Queensland in the March quarter. That was fewer than the 11,711 commenced in the December quarter of 2025, and well above the 9,012 commenced in the March quarter of 2025. A summary of the release by the South Australian Department of Treasury and Finance puts those changes at a fall of 7.3 per cent over the quarter and a rise of 20.5 per cent over the year.
Completions in Queensland came to 8,944 dwellings in the March quarter, up from 7,896 in the December quarter. That is an increase of about 13 per cent in three months.
Put side by side, the two numbers explain the growing stock. Queensland started 1,917 more homes in the quarter than it finished. As long as starts run ahead of completions, the number under construction keeps climbing, whatever happens to build times. The March quarter gap is narrower than the one in December, when starts exceeded completions by 3,815, because completions rose while commencements eased.
Related readQueensland has built 24 per cent of its Housing Accord share so farNationally the quarter was softer. The bureau reports 48,012 dwellings commenced across Australia, down 11.2 per cent, with the fall concentrated in other residential building, down 20.7 per cent to 19,116. Completions were almost flat at 43,816, down 0.4 per cent.
The approvals data sit upstream of all of this. Queensland's monthly building approvals have run well above their level of a year earlier through 2026, on the figures the Queensland Government Statistician's Office publishes from the bureau's data: the trend was 13.6 per cent higher in May 2026 than in May 2025, according to the office's brief released on 1 July. More approvals, in time, become more homes on site.
The two Brisbane projects
The local part of the announcement concerns land on opposite sides of the city.
At Bridgeman Downs, on the northern side, $2.5 million goes to sewerage infrastructure on Beams Road, which the statement says unlocks 615 homes. The works are a new sewer pump station, a rising main and a gravity sewer main along the road. At Pallara, in the south-west, $8.4 million goes to a stormwater upgrade linked to 323 homes: a box culvert drainage system along a 350-metre section of Sweets Road. The two grants total $10.9 million.
The statement puts the total for Brisbane across rounds one and two of the fund at 2,223 homes. The first-round part of that figure can be traced to a Queensland Government statement of 12 August 2025, which announced $61.6 million for Brisbane City Council and 1,285 homes at Rochedale.
Related readFewer units approved in May as Queensland houses keep their pace| Project | Announced | Grant | Homes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gardner Road extension, Rochedale | August 2025 | $47 million | 685 |
| Rochedale Road and Ford Road stormwater | August 2025 | $14.7 million | 600 |
| Beams Road sewerage, Bridgeman Downs | July 2026 | $2.5 million | 615 |
| Pallara stormwater upgrade | July 2026 | $8.4 million | 323 |
Queensland Government media statements, 12 August 2025 and 27 July 2026. The four home counts add up to 2,223 and the four grants to about $72.5 million (the two Rochedale amounts are rounded). Home counts are capacity opened by the works.
The pattern in the table is typical of a large city. On infill and fringe sites the main networks already exist, and the missing piece is often one sewer connection, one drainage upgrade or one road link. The Gardner Road extension, a $57.4 million project of which the fund covers $47 million, is the exception in size.
The new Brisbane amounts are small beside the regional grants announced earlier in the month. A statement of 14 July 2026 gave $145 million to Toowoomba Regional Council for a water treatment plant, reservoir and trunk mains tied to at least 17,000 residential lots.
How the fund's tally has grown
The Residential Activation Fund is a $2 billion State program that pays for trunk infrastructure: the water, sewerage, stormwater and transport works that serve many sites at once. The round two guidelines published by the State Development department in February 2026 allow two kinds of applicant, local governments and developers or landowners holding a residential development approval, and require at least 50 per cent of the money to be invested outside South East Queensland.
The Government's running count of homes "unlocked" has moved quickly through winter as round two grants were announced region by region. On 14 June 2026 a statement put the figure at more than 98,000 homes across 98 projects for round one alone, and doubled round two from $500 million to $1 billion. That statement said 209 submissions had been received for the second round, 73 of them from South East Queensland and 136 from regional, rural and remote areas. By 12 July, with $146 million announced for Gold Coast projects linked to 18,900 homes, the tally had passed 100,000. The statement of 27 July puts it at more than 140,000.
Related readHousing infrastructure fund's second round is doubled to $1 billionHomes unlocked and homes under construction are different counts
The 50,000 are dwellings already being built, counted by the ABS. The 938 at Bridgeman Downs and Pallara, and the 140,000 statewide, are homes that funded infrastructure makes possible in future. That second kind of figure describes capacity and carries no start date.
The guidelines do set a clock for the infrastructure itself. A funded construction project is expected to start within 12 months of its announcement and to be completed within three years. On that rule the Beams Road and Sweets Road works would be finished by mid-2029 at the latest. When the homes that depend on them follow is a matter for the landowners and builders.
The other tallies in the statement
The statement updates several more of the Government's running totals. It says Economic Development Queensland approved more than 14,600 new homes and lots in the last financial year. That agency assesses development inside Priority Development Areas, including Halls Creek on the Sunshine Coast, which was declared on 17 July 2026 with a projected 12,000 homes.
The longer commitments are unchanged: $2 billion in joint State and Commonwealth funding to unlock 51,000 homes, 20,000 of them for first home buyers; the $30,000 First Home Owner Grant; up to 2,000 places in the Boost to Buy shared equity scheme, half reserved for regional Queensland; and a target of one million homes by 2044, including 53,500 social and community homes.
Industry bodies quoted in the statement welcomed the figures. Master Builders said the Government had recognised the scale of the housing challenge, and two development companies with projects tied to the Brisbane works described trunk infrastructure as the step that turns development-ready land into homes.
What the record does and does not say
A record number of homes under way is good news for supply, and for the builders and trades doing the work. It also describes an industry working at or near its capacity. Every one of those 50,000 homes needs labour and materials until it is finished, and new starts compete with them for the same crews.
The figure that matters most to buyers and renters is the one that comes last: completions. The March quarter offered an encouraging sign on that front, with Queensland completions higher than in December. One quarter is a short run, and quarterly building figures are revised.
The next reading is already scheduled. The bureau lists its Building Activity release for the June quarter 2026 for 7 October 2026. It will show whether Queensland's commencements held above 10,000 for a further quarter, whether completions kept rising, and whether the count of homes under construction set a fourth record in a row.
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.
