In this article
Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Queensland approved 3,948 dwellings in April 2026 in trend terms, 23.3 per cent more than in April 2025, according to the Queensland Government Statistician's Office summary of Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on 2 June. The same summary puts the national annual rise at 9.8 per cent, so the state is growing at more than twice the national pace.
The monthly movement was small and slightly downward. The Queensland trend estimate was 0.3 per cent lower than in March, while the national trend was unchanged at 0.0 per cent.
Queensland Government Statistician's Office, Building Approvals April 2026, from ABS Building Approvals released 2 June 2026. Trend estimates.
Two ways of reading one month
The ABS publishes each month's approvals in more than one form, and the forms can point in different directions.
The seasonally adjusted series removes the usual calendar pattern but keeps the lumps. One large apartment project approved in a given month can move it noticeably. On that measure, the ABS media release of 2 June reports 16,710 dwellings approved across Australia in April, down 3.4 per cent on March, with Queensland at 3,946. That gives Queensland 23.6 per cent of the national seasonally adjusted total.
The trend series smooths those lumps to show direction, and it is the one the Statistician's Office leads with. The two Queensland numbers, 3,946 seasonally adjusted and 3,948 trend, happen to sit almost on top of each other this month, which is not always the case. They even disagree on the sign of the monthly change: the ABS puts the seasonally adjusted Queensland total 0.3 per cent higher than March, and the trend 0.3 per cent lower. Both movements are close to nothing.
Related readHousing infrastructure fund's second round is doubled to $1 billionNationally, the ABS says April's seasonally adjusted total was still 10.2 per cent higher than in April 2025, despite the monthly dip. The national trend estimate stood at 17,363 dwellings.
How Queensland compares with the other states
The monthly fall in the national figure did not come from Queensland. The ABS state figures show the largest declines in New South Wales and Western Australia, a smaller one in Victoria, and rises in Queensland and South Australia.
| State | All dwellings | Monthly change | Private houses |
|---|---|---|---|
| New South Wales | 4,030 | -9.5% | 2,025 |
| Victoria | 4,911 | -3.9% | 2,906 |
| Queensland | 3,946 | +0.3% | 2,303 |
| South Australia | 1,317 | +4.3% | 896 |
| Western Australia | 1,984 | -7.4% | 1,607 |
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Building Approvals, April 2026, released 2 June 2026. Seasonally adjusted.
One line of that table stands out. Queensland approved more private sector houses in April than New South Wales did, on a smaller total. The same is true on the trend measure, where the ABS has Queensland at 2,269 houses and New South Wales at 2,164. Victoria leads both counts.
Westpac's economics team, in a note published on the day of the release, read the national result as approvals returning towards the average monthly rate of 2025. It attributed the monthly decline mainly to New South Wales and Western Australia and described Victoria and Queensland as broadly flat.
Houses hold steady
Detached houses were the steady part of the Queensland result. The Statistician's Office reports 2,269 private sector houses approved in April in trend terms, up 0.7 per cent on the month. That is 22.2 per cent of all private house approvals in Australia.
The ABS seasonally adjusted figure for Queensland private houses is close to it, at 2,303, a rise of 0.9 per cent. Nationally, private sector houses came to 10,088, down 1.0 per cent, which Westpac noted was the first fall in six months. Private dwellings other than houses, the category that takes in apartments and townhouses, came to 6,403, down 3.6 per cent.
Related readSouthern Thornlands plan for 8,000 homes goes out for public commentOver twelve months the national order is reversed. The ABS reports private houses 7.0 per cent higher than in April 2025 and private dwellings other than houses 20.5 per cent higher. Units have done more of the year's growing, and more of the month's falling.
Subtracting houses from the total gives a rough view of everything else in Queensland. On the seasonally adjusted figures that remainder is 1,643 dwellings in April. It takes in apartments, townhouses and the small number of public sector dwellings, and it is a subtraction from the published totals, not a series the ABS summary publishes for the state.
House approvals tend to move gently because they are thousands of separate decisions by households and builders. Apartment approvals arrive in blocks of dozens or hundreds, which is why the national monthly total can fall while the trend barely moves.
The value of the work approved
The dollar figures tell a similar story. The trend value of residential building approved in Queensland rose 4.4 per cent in April to $2,905.2 million, the Statistician's Office reports, against a 1.5 per cent national rise to $10,614.0 million. On those two figures, Queensland accounts for 27.4 per cent of the value of residential work approved nationally, a larger share than its 22.7 per cent of dwelling numbers.
A value share above a volume share means the average approved job in Queensland is worth more than the national average. The summary does not say why, and the mix of houses, units and alterations all feeds into the figure. The ABS methodology adds two points worth knowing: the value is the estimated cost of the building work when completed, including site preparation, and it leaves out the price of the land.
Related readStockland named first partner in the State's new developer programNon-residential building moved in opposite directions. The Statistician's Office puts the trend value of non-residential approvals in Queensland at $1,237.8 million, up 2.2 per cent, while the national figure fell 1.5 per cent to $7,342.5 million. The seasonally adjusted national series, which is far more volatile, rose 29.4 per cent in the month to $7.75 billion, according to the ABS.
From 27.5 per cent to 23.3 per cent
The annual growth rate is high, and it is a little lower than it was. A month earlier, the Statistician's Office summary for March, drawn from ABS figures released on 4 May, had Queensland's trend approvals 27.5 per cent above March 2025, with the national rise at 13.1 per cent. April's 23.3 per cent and 9.8 per cent are both a step down from that, with the gap between Queensland and the nation about the same.
The March and April summaries cannot be chained together exactly. The March summary gave a trend estimate of 3,975 dwellings, and April's 3,948 is described as 0.3 per cent lower than the previous month, which implies a March figure that has since been revised. That is how trend estimates work. The ABS recalculates them each month as new data arrive, and its methodology notes that revisions to the underlying counts usually reach back 12 to 18 months, as certifiers correct records and late approvals are added.
Borrowing costs are part of the backdrop. The Reserve Bank raised the cash rate target from 4.10 per cent to 4.35 per cent on 5 May, as summarised by the Western Australian Treasury Corporation in its update that day. Westpac's note of 2 June said it expected approvals to soften further, pointing to higher interest rates and rising building costs. That is a bank's expectation, and April's figures neither confirm nor contradict it.
What an approval is, and is not
A building approval is permission to build. It is counted when a certifier or council signs off the building work, which usually comes after any planning approval and after the buyer or developer has committed to a design. The ABS compiles the series from local government authorities and other certifying authorities, and counts residential jobs valued at $10,000 or more.
An approved home is not a started home
Projects can be approved and then wait for finance, presales, trades or infrastructure. The ABS tracks commencements and completions separately, each quarter, in its Building Activity publication.
The latest Building Activity release, for the December quarter of 2025 and published on 8 April, shows the distance between the stages. It records 11,460 dwellings commenced in Queensland in that quarter, up from 10,971 in the September quarter, and 7,872 completed, down from 8,263. Nationally, 236,858 dwellings were under construction at the end of the quarter.
Set against that, April's trend of 3,948 approvals a month would come to about 11,800 over three months, which is three times 3,948 and no more than an illustration. Approvals and commencements are running at a similar quarterly rate. Completions, the homes people can move into, are running well below both.
April's release therefore says two things with reasonable confidence. The pipeline of permitted homes in Queensland is clearly larger than it was a year ago, on both the dwelling count and the value of work. And the month-to-month movement is small enough that one release should not be read as a turn in either direction.
The next monthly figures, for May, are due from the ABS at the start of July.
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.
