Queensland is the only state where property confidence stays positive

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Kooky

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Queensland is the only market in Australia where the property industry still feels more confident than not. The Property Council of Australia published the September quarter results of its industry sentiment survey, run with the construction software company Procore, on 6 October 2026. Queensland scored 110 index points, where 100 is neutral. The national figure fell to 85, the lowest since September 2020.

The result is a relative one. Queensland's own reading has fallen for three quarters in a row, and the survey shows the people who build, manage and sell property in the state expecting weaker house prices, dearer money and tighter lending over the next twelve months. What sets Queensland apart is that it has further to fall before optimists are outnumbered.

Procore and Property Council Industry Sentiment Survey, September quarter 2026. A score of 100 is neutral.

Where each state sits

The survey chartbook sets the six markets it covers side by side. Queensland, at 110, is the only one above the neutral line. Western Australia and South Australia, which were both comfortably positive three months earlier, have slipped just under it. New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory sit well below.

The movement since June matters as much as the level. According to the chartbook, South Australia dropped from 120 to 94 in a single quarter and Western Australia from 112 to 95. The Australian Capital Territory fell from 85 to 56. New South Wales eased from 89 to 84, its fourth quarterly fall in a row according to the Property Council's New South Wales division. Victoria was the only market to improve, from 67 to 73, and it remains the second lowest.

Queensland lost ten points, from 120 to 110. That is a smaller fall than in South Australia, Western Australia or the Territory, and it is why the state now stands alone above 100.

Three falls in a row for Queensland

Queensland's lead looks different when it is set against its own recent past. In the December quarter of 2025 the state recorded 143 points, a result the Property Council described at the time as one of the highest in the survey's history, exceeded only by two quarters in 2021. Nine months later the index is 33 points lower.

The table shows two things at once. Confidence has fallen everywhere, and it has fallen faster outside Queensland, so the state's lead over the national figure roughly doubled between September 2025 and June 2026 before narrowing a little this quarter.

The reasons the Property Council gave along the way were specific to the state. When the March quarter result came out in April, its Queensland division pointed to a strong pipeline of future work and continued population growth, and said Queensland had the strongest forward work schedules in the country. The same release warned that labour shortages left the industry unsure who would build the projects. In July, with the index at 120, the division said Queensland had the highest capital growth expectations in the country for offices and hotels, because too few of either were being built.

What respondents expect in Queensland

The September chartbook breaks the headline number into its parts, and Queensland appears in several of them as the exception.

It is the only market where respondents expect their own state's economy to grow over the next twelve months. Every market, Queensland included, expects weak growth for the national economy.

Queensland and South Australia are the only two markets where respondents think their State government is doing a good job of planning and managing growth. They are also the only two where the capital value of hotels is expected to rise.

On the questions that bear most directly on housing, Queensland follows the rest of the country. Every market expects interest rates to rise over the next year. Every market expects debt finance to become harder to obtain. Every market recorded a fall in expectations for house price growth, and the Property Council says those expectations are now at record lows nationally and in Victoria, Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory.

That last point deserves care. The survey does not forecast prices. It records what a group of industry participants expect, as a balance between those who expect a rise and those who expect a fall. A record low in that balance says the mood has turned further than at any time since the question was first asked. It does not say how far values will move.

Offices are expected to lose capital value in every market, and expectations for industrial property fell everywhere. Nationally, the measure of how much work firms expect to have on their books over the coming year fell for the third quarter running.

Tax overtakes supply as the main worry

The finding the Property Council put first is about tax. For the first time, respondents named tax reform as the most critical issue they want the Federal Government to address, ahead of economic management and ahead of housing supply and affordability.

A year earlier the order was the other way round. In the September quarter of 2025, the Property Council reported that housing supply and affordability led the federal list at 32 per cent, with national tax reform at 22 per cent, itself a record at the time.

At State level the shift is larger. This quarter, 42 per cent of respondents said property taxes and charges were the most critical issue for their State or Territory government, the highest share the survey has recorded. In the September quarter of 2025 the figure was 32 per cent, which the Property Council then called a record and put at 11 points above the historical average.

The survey also found confidence in the Federal Government's performance at its lowest level on record. The Property Council links that to recent federal tax changes and to a proposed minimum tax on trusts, which it says would fall on family-owned and mid-sized development businesses. Its chief executive, Mike Zorbas, said in the release that up to 40 per cent of the cost of a new home is government taxes and charges. That figure is the Property Council's own.

"The industry is saying to government – we support the housing targets, now stop making them harder to achieve," Mr Zorbas said in the same statement.

Who was asked, and when

The Procore and Property Council survey began in 2011. Its respondents are drawn from across the property industry: developers, owners and managers, agents and firms that supply services to them. The Property Council describes the industry as the country's largest employer, supporting 1.4 million jobs.

The September quarter survey was conducted online between 24 August and 9 September 2026 and drew 366 respondents. Two points follow from that.

The first is timing. The answers were collected before the Reserve Bank's interest rate rise at the end of September. The Property Council's release opens by noting that sentiment was already deteriorating before that decision, so the survey does not yet show how the industry reacted to it.

The second is size. The same survey a year earlier drew 935 respondents, according to the Property Council's release at the time. With 366 responses spread across six markets, the number of people behind any single state's figure is smaller than it was, and quarter-to-quarter moves in the smaller markets should be read with that in mind. The Property Council does not publish the number of respondents for each state in the chartbook.

What the result means outside the industry

For a buyer or a seller, a developer's mood matters through what gets built. The survey is one of the few regular measures of whether the firms that start housing projects expect to start more or fewer of them, hire or shed staff, and find the money to proceed. Queensland's reading says those firms are, on balance, still willing. The answers on finance and interest rates say they expect that to become harder.

For Queensland agents and property managers, who are part of the survey's pool, the result matches what the state-level answers describe: an economy expected to keep growing, a State government rated better than most, and a housing market in which the people closest to it now expect values to soften.

The survey also asked about artificial intelligence. Asked for the biggest barrier to using it widely in their organisation, 35.8 per cent of respondents nationally named awareness and internal training, 23.1 per cent named proving a first successful pilot and 19.3 per cent named scaling pilots beyond the first teams. The remaining 21.8 per cent said there was no barrier because it was already embedded.

What comes next

The survey is quarterly, so the next reading will cover the December quarter and will be the first collected after the September rate rise. It will show whether Queensland stays above 100.

On tax, the Property Council's Queensland division said in July that the state's tax treatment of offshore investors was holding back projects. The trust tax proposal the national body objects to is still a proposal. Whether it changes before it becomes law is a matter for the Federal Parliament.

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.

About Kooky and Shaka →