What has happened to the Gold Coast property market, and where it stands now

The climb, and where it stopped

Nine years ago the median Gold Coast house sat near $600,000. Today the coast-wide composite clears $1.4 million. The line has three chapters: a flat market before 2020, a surge through 2020 to 2022 as interstate migration met near-zero interest rates, a pause when rates rose through 2022, and a second leg from 2023 on thin supply. One thing to hold onto: the composite averages a full year of sales, so it shows the level of the market and lags its turns. The quarterly clearing price in the zoom panel is the faster read, and it peaked in early 2026.

• The 12-month composite is still at its high because it averages a year; it will keep printing positive for quarters after a turn.
• Quarterly clearing prices for houses peaked in Q1 2026 and have eased since; the current quarter is partial and overstates the dip.
• Units followed the same path a step behind.

The affordable Gold Coast disappeared

This is what a 135% rise looks like from the buyer's side. Every house sale on the coast, sorted into fixed price bands. As homes appreciated they climbed through the bands, so the block that used to anchor the market, houses under $800,000, has all but emptied, and the top band has become a large share of everything sold. The entry price for a house on the Gold Coast is now about a million dollars, and that is the fact that shapes everything else on this page: who can buy, how much they can borrow, and how sensitive the market is to the cost of money.

• Three in four houses sold under $800,000 in 2017; today it is around one in fifty.
• More than a quarter of house sales are now above $1,800,000.
• The chart shows homes moving through fixed bands as they appreciated: a picture of price growth seen from the buyer's side, not a change in which homes are selling.

Units caught up

Houses ran first through the boom while units lagged. From 2023 units closed much of the gap as buyers priced out of houses moved across, and over the past year unit prices have grown faster than houses. That matters for what comes next: the segment that rose last is the one with the least cushion if the market softens, and the one most exposed to the new supply arriving in the towers.

• Units have out-grown houses over the last year.
• Different measures behind each line, so read the shape, not one quarter.
• Chapter 11 shows which unit markets are still rising and which have stalled.

Money got expensive, cheap, then expensive again

Most of what has happened to prices traces back to the cost of money, but the cash rate on its own does not explain the timing. The rate the market is carrying now, 4.35%, is the rate it carried through all of 2024 without a fall. What changed is everything underneath it. The median house needs a loan a quarter larger than it did the last time rates were here; a year of cuts had already been spent on price by the time 2026 began; and in December 2025 the buyer's expectation of where rates were heading flipped from down to up, before any hike landed. The oil shock from March then turned two hikes into three and broke confidence. Three charts, in order: the rate and the repayment; the repayment as a share of what a household earns, which is the ceiling; and the month-by-month order in which things moved.

The rate, and what it costs on the median house

The ceiling: the repayment as a share of income

What moved first: October 2025 to now

• The 2025 cuts lifted borrowing power by about a tenth and prices rose by about the same, so the cuts were fully spent before 2026 began.
• The 2026 hikes cut borrowing power by about 5% while the loan the median house needs rose a further 4.5%: the first time in the boom the two moved against each other from a high.
• The repayment on the median house now takes about 81% of the median household's gross income, above the boom's previous high of 74% in late 2024.
• Confidence turned in December 2025, two months before the first hike; prices peaked in March; selling times turned up in April; and the number of homes sitting 60 to 90 days on market has more than doubled since March.

Then the sellers arrived

For three years the Gold Coast story was scarcity. Stock on market fell to the lowest level in the series in December 2025. In the eight months since, it has risen by more than half. The character of that stock matters as much as the amount: it is fresh. Homes are coming to market faster than they are clearing, which is the setup that precedes discounting, rather than a backlog of homes that will not sell. Switch to the three core suburbs to see the same surge at street level.

• Stock on market is up more than 50% since December and about a quarter on a year ago.
• Only around one listing in eight has sat more than six months, versus roughly a third at the 2019 peak.
• Fresh supply meeting fewer buyers is what moves asking prices, which is the next reading.

Sellers are asking more than buyers are paying

The gap between what a home is listed at and what it sells for is the negotiating room, and in a turning market it is where seller expectations meet the new reality. Asking prices have started to fall in most Gold Coast postcodes over the last quarter, houses and units alike, which is the first stage of that gap closing.

• House vendors are still pricing to the peak; buyers are not paying it.
• Unit asking and sale prices are near parity.
• Asking prices are a leading read on sale prices by one to three months.

Homes are taking longer to sell

Days on market is the most direct read of buyer demand: how long a home sits between first advertisement and sale. Coast-wide, a house now takes about forty days on the three-month measure, up from the high twenties in autumn. The dotted line is the seasonal norm for each month over ten years, so you can see how much of the rise is the usual spring pattern and how much is new. Switch to units, widen to twelve months, or compare with price-matched suburbs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

• Selling times have risen sharply since April and now sit at the top of the seasonal range.
• Units and houses have moved together.
• The capitals' price-matched panels are slowing too; the Gold Coast is not alone.

The dearer the home, the slower it sells

Coast-wide, a house now takes about forty days to sell, up from the high twenties a year ago and still inside the historical range. Split the market by price and the picture changes. The table shows the last ninety days against the same window a year earlier: every tier is slower, and the top tiers are slowest by a wide margin. In a softening market liquidity leaves the expensive end first, well before its prices move.

• Selling times have lengthened in every price tier over the last year.
• Above $3,000,000 the median campaign now runs close to twice as long as a year ago.
• Longer campaigns at the top typically precede discounting there.

More campaigns end without a sale

Some homes come to market and leave without a recorded sale. That count is the market's rejection rate. Still small beside the pile-ups of the financial crisis and the 2022 rate shock, but rising. Overlay the median price to see how failures and prices have moved together through past cycles.

• Failed campaigns are up on last year but far below past downturn peaks.
• Houses account for most of the increase.
• The 2026 figure is provisional: campaigns are still concluding.

The fastest read on buyer demand

The Gold Coast is a private-treaty market, so for the quickest weekly read on buyer appetite we watch the capital cities' auction rooms. Clearance is a read on current conditions, not a lead on prices: it is the share of homes sold at, before or after auction out of all auctions scheduled, so it moves with the week's buyers and sellers rather than ahead of them. Because SQM Research counts withdrawn and postponed auctions as unsold, the level runs lower than other providers' figures, and Brisbane, a small auction market, has sat below 50% for the whole series, including through the 2021 boom. Read the direction and the change on a year ago, not the level against a threshold.

• Brisbane clearance is the weakest of the three capitals.
• Every capital is well below the levels of a year ago.
• Not a Gold Coast measure, but the same buyers and the same lenders.

Suburb by suburb: rising, flat, falling

The turn is uneven, and that is the most useful thing to know about it. Switch the period to three or six months to see the most recent turn: the shorter the window, the fewer suburbs clear the sample-size bar, but the closer you are to what is happening now. The pattern across groups is consistent: the premium canal and central suburbs are giving back the most, the mid-priced middle of the market is flat, and unit markets in the north and inland have held up better than beachside units.

• Premium canal and central suburbs are falling; mid-priced suburbs are flat.
• Units are holding better than houses, led by the north and inland.
• Three windows on one complete transaction record; medians follow the mix of homes sold, so read direction, not a valuation.

Renters got no reprieve

While prices paused, rents did not. The Gold Coast is now the most expensive rental market in the country on Domain's June-quarter figures, with vacancy near 1%. Rising yields are the one reading in this story that leans the other way: they are the floor that eventually brings investors back, though at today's mortgage rate that floor is still well below the cost of borrowing.

• Rents are up around 6 to 7% on a year ago and flat over the last quarter.
• Yields are rising because prices eased while rents held.
• Yields remain below the variable mortgage rate: the investor sum still does not close.