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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 builders finished 9,549 homes in the three months to June, according to the Building Activity release the Australian Bureau of Statistics published on Wednesday 7 October. That is 6.5 per cent more than in the March quarter and 20.8 per cent more than in the June quarter of 2025, in seasonally adjusted terms.
Work began on 11,671 homes in the state over the same three months, 22.2 per cent more than a year earlier. Once again more homes were started in Queensland than were completed, and on this count more were started in Queensland than in New South Wales.
Seasonally adjusted, June quarter 2026. Source: ABS, Building Activity, Australia, released 7 October 2026. The difference between starts and completions is this magazine's calculation.
Completions rise for a second quarter
A completion is the last of the counts the ABS keeps on a new home, and the one that matters to a household waiting to move in. Queensland's figure has now risen in each of the last two quarters, from 7,896 in the December quarter of 2025, as published in July, to 8,967 in March and 9,549 in June.
The annual comparison is the stronger one. The 9,549 homes finished in the June quarter are 1,642 more than the 7,907 completed in the same quarter a year earlier. Queensland accounted for 20.2 per cent of the 47,168 homes completed across Australia in the quarter.
Nationally, completions rose 5.8 per cent in the quarter and 15.9 per cent over the year. The lift came mostly from apartments and townhouses. Houses completed across the country edged up 1.4 per cent to 27,039, while other residential completions, the ABS category that takes in units and townhouses, rose 13.9 per cent to 19,018 and were 58.6 per cent above their level of a year earlier. The page the ABS published does not split Queensland's completions by dwelling type; that detail sits in the data downloads.
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Commencements are the count of homes on which building work has begun. Queensland's 11,671 for the June quarter is 2.9 per cent above the March quarter and 2,121 more than the 9,550 started in the June quarter of 2025.
Set beside completions, the figure shows the stock of homes under way still growing. In the June quarter 2,122 more homes were started in Queensland than were finished. Each quarter in which that happens adds to the number of homes under construction, which the Queensland Government put at a record 50,000 in July on the basis of the March quarter data.
A larger pipeline is good news only if it keeps moving. A home that takes longer to build stays in the under-construction count for longer, so a rising total can reflect more activity, slower building, or both. The June quarter's rise in completions points to the first of those, though one quarter does not settle it.
Queensland beside the other large states
The release sets out seasonally adjusted figures for the five largest states. On commencements, Queensland ranks second, behind Victoria and ahead of New South Wales. On completions it ranks third.
| State | Commenced | Completed | Completions, change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Victoria | 16,239 | 14,191 | Down 2.3% |
| Queensland | 11,671 | 9,549 | Up 6.5% |
| New South Wales | 11,252 | 13,332 | Up 29.8% |
| Western Australia | 7,240 | 4,814 | Down 6.3% |
| South Australia | 3,913 | 3,112 | Down 18.8% |
Source: ABS, Building Activity, Australia, June 2026, released 7 October 2026. Percentage changes calculated from the published quarterly figures.
Two things stand out. New South Wales completed far more homes than it started, the opposite of Queensland's position, after a quarter in which its completions jumped by almost 30 per cent. And only two of the five states, Queensland and New South Wales, finished more homes than in the March quarter.
Queensland's 11,671 commencements were 22.4 per cent of the national total of 52,201. Its share of completions, at 20.2 per cent, is smaller, which is what a state with a growing pipeline looks like: its starts today are tomorrow's completions.
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Across Australia, 248,733 homes were under construction at the end of June, in original terms. Of those, 95,447 were new houses and 152,264 were other residential dwellings, the apartments and townhouses that take longest to finish. The ABS page gives that total for the country only, so the comparable June figure for Queensland is not among the headline numbers.
The mix of new starts nationally tilted towards houses in the quarter. Commencements of new private houses rose 11.6 per cent to 31,707, while commencements of other private residential dwellings were all but flat at 19,126. The value of all building work done in the quarter, residential and non-residential together, rose 1.1 per cent to $45.8 billion.
In Queensland, the State's main lever on the early part of the pipeline is the Residential Activation Fund, which pays for the roads, water and sewer connections that new estates need before houses can be built. The Government said in June that the fund had unlocked 98,000 homes and that the 2026-27 Budget would double it to $1 billion. Those homes are capacity, not completions: they appear in the ABS count only once a builder finishes them.
How a home is counted, three times
The three figures most often quoted about new housing measure different moments in the life of the same home, and they come from two different ABS collections.
- ApprovedA building approval is issued. Counted every month in Building Approvals, the earliest signal of future work.
- CommencedBuilding work begins on site. Counted every quarter in the Building Activity survey of builders.
- CompletedThe home can be lived in. Counted in the same quarterly survey, and the figure housing targets are measured against.
The gap between the first count and the last can be long, and it is generally longer for apartment buildings than for houses. That is why the approvals figures and the completions figures can point in different directions in the same month. Queensland's most recent approvals reading was weak: the ABS reported on 1 October that total dwelling approvals in the state fell 22.5 per cent in August, seasonally adjusted, to 3,327, even as private house approvals rose 6.5 per cent to 2,456. The homes completed in the June quarter were approved long before that.
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The national yardstick is the National Housing Accord, under which the Commonwealth, the states and the territories aim to build 1.2 million homes over the five years from 1 July 2024. The June quarter closes the second of those years.
The Urban Development Institute of Australia, which represents the development industry, did the sum on 8 October. It counts 355,820 homes completed nationally in the Accord's first two years, against the 480,000 it says were needed by this point, a gap of about 124,000. On the current trajectory, the institute projects, the gap will reach about 310,000 by the end of the Accord. Its national president, Oscar Stanley, called the latest quarter encouraging. "Australia will need to sustain this momentum to close the gap," he said.
For Queensland, the official scorekeeper is the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. Its August report, which counted completions to the March quarter, found the state had built 24 per cent of its share of the Accord target with 35 per cent of the period gone, and its model put Queensland on course to reach its share in March 2031. The council has not yet published a reading that includes the June quarter.
The State's own goal runs over a longer period: the Queensland Government's target is one million new homes by 2044. Spread evenly, on this magazine's arithmetic, a million homes over two decades is in the order of 50,000 a year, or about 12,500 a quarter. The 9,549 completed in the June quarter is the highest of the last three quarterly figures and still some way under that pace.
Revisions, and what comes next
The Building Activity series is a survey, and its first estimate for any quarter is preliminary. The ABS says the June quarter figures rest on a response rate of about 85 per cent and will be revised as more builders report.
March's figures have already moved
When the March quarter was first published in July, Queensland's commencements were given as 10,861 and its completions as 8,944. The October release now shows 11,342 and 8,967 for the same quarter. A change of a few hundred homes between releases is normal, so small quarterly movements should be read with care.
The revision to March changes one detail of the story. On the first estimate, Queensland's commencements appeared to dip in the March quarter. On the revised figures the dip is smaller, and the June quarter's 11,671 sits close to the 11,711 first published for the December quarter of 2025.
The council's next quarterly report will fold the June quarter into its assessment of each state's progress under the Accord, including the date by which its model expects Queensland to reach its share.
The ABS publishes Building Activity about 14 weeks after each quarter ends, which places the September quarter release in January. Before then, the monthly approvals figures for September and October will show whether August's fall in Queensland unit approvals was a single lumpy month or the start of a thinner pipeline behind the homes now being finished.
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.
