In this episode of Talk Property To Me, hosts Brad East and Aaron Downie dive deep into the Brisbane property market and what the upcoming 2032 Olympics could really mean for property prices, construction, and investment opportunities in Queensland.
Brisbane has been one of Australia’s fastest-growing housing markets, but with construction costs still rising and thousands of new homes needed before 2032, investors and homebuyers are asking the same question — will the Olympics drive another property boom or a sharp correction?📊 In this episode, Brad and Aaron break down the real numbers — from population forecasts, LGA and suburb-level data, to vacancy rates and rental yields — revealing which areas might benefit from the Olympic investment and which are at risk of overpricing.
🔍 Key Topics Covered:
🏠 Brisbane’s 2025 property market overview
📈 LGA vs suburb data – where the real growth is
💼 The impact of the 2032 Olympics on Queensland’s economy
🚧 Construction costs, delays, and housing shortages
📉 Post-Olympic slowdown: lessons from Sydney 2000
👩💼 Demographics shaping Brisbane’s buyer market
📊 Best suburbs for long-term property investment
Brisbane Property Market: Olympics Boom or Housing Bubble?podcast transcript
Brisbane is one of Australia’s fastest growing capital cities and it’s the host of future Olympics in 2032 but can it can it maintain and sustain the current growth levels?
So firstly, this isn’t opinion based. This is all numbers. These are things that have been pulled out of different insight tools that buyers agent Aaron Downie uses.
The economy snapshot at the moment. Currently, Brisbane has 1.3 million people, there’s 853,000 jobs and an annual output of $363 billion. And it’s just a good thing to reference that entire GDP for that Brisbane economy because it gives you a better understanding of what impact the Olympics is going to have on that economy.
The top sectors are health, healthcare and social assistance, professional services, education and training, and retail – so nice diversity there. It’s not reliant on one thing like resources, like a different town on the other side of the country.
In terms of the the tourism sector, it’s only 6% of the economy. So the tourism sector is going to impact the Brisbane economy massively over that Olympic period, but just noting that it is only 6% of the economy so it should only be a short-term impact.
Property performance based on LGA, so local government areas. Just giving a contrast to people here with the difference between LGA and suburb level data. So majority of the local government areas have grown between 100% and 150% over the 10-year period, which has been pretty good growth largely speaking. I think there have been some markets that have outperformed, but anything over that 100% is is pretty good growth over that 10 year time period.
There’s a big difference between the the short-term growth over a one-year period. There’s a difference between the LGAs of 16% and 5% growth. At high-level metrics, which is what a lot of people look at, when they’re looking at the LGA level the days on market for most of these markets are around 30 days which is a high demand market and but when you’re looking at it on a suburb level um data you’ve got some suburbs that are trading within 104 days so it’s a really slow long slow drawn out process to sell your property and there’s a difference in vacancy latency periods between some of these markets. The most high demand market at the moment is 46%. But there’s some markets up to 5.4% vacancy periods. So, there’s a very significant difference.
Even in terms of growth, Kensington Grove has grown by 220% over 10 years. And you’ve got other suburbs like Rocklea that did 116% growth. So essentially even though that whole council area has done well, there’s pockets within those suburbs that have done okay and others that have done excellent. So it’s very important to not just say invest in this in this council area like invest in Lake Macquarie as an example. There’s going to be areas in Lake Mac that you wouldn’t touch.
One of them, like Newport for example, has a typical price of $1.76 mil. It’s grown by 141% over 10 years, but still the last 12 months it’s grown by 29%. 29% is unsustainable growth for a 12-month period. And the yields or the rental market has only increased 17% over 10 years. The vacancy rate is a huge difference too – 3.89% at Newport. Compared to what’s the lowest? Well, 1% sitting at Kensington Grove again.
So it’s super important that you do drill down not just into an area suburb level but then I’d argue as well not just suburb but also street level.
The biggest buyer demographic that we have in that market from the biggest buyer cohort or people occupying that Brisbane market is aged between 25 and 29. So catering your property type for those people because they’re going to be the main buyers moving forward. But again, just think about that because the the peak cohort of 25 to 29 years of age, if you go based on this, the average age of of first home buyers now, they’re within their 30s. So that peak cohort of people occupying Brisbane are in a rental market.
Population forecast
Brisbane’s going to grow at an average of 2.1% per annum and increase to a population of 3.7 million by 2046. So 2.1% seems like a pretty strong population growth when you compare it to New South Wales, but that’s the average over the past decade as well.
There were some years that Brisbane grew by 3% around 2008. So it’s not anything abnormal. Ipswich and Moreton Bayare going to share the largest population growth.
Brisbane vs Sydney Olympics
The Olympics is going to have short-term construction and all of those things that come with it but in for long term it doesn’t have a major tourism sector and it might increase because of the Olympics it might, like Sydney, it did put Sydney on the global map. However Sydney isn’t Brisbane; Brisbane isn’t Sydney. That’s one thing to keep in mind.
In terms of a comparison to what happened to Sydney during the 2000 Olympics. A lot of people are jumping on the Brisbane property market because they saw what happened to Sydney during that time.
There’s been some research into what actually happened to the economy during that Sydney Olympic period. There’s obviously infrastructure. There were new high density suburbs created. There were jobs in all of those suburbs. People moved suburbs. They relocated social housing to Raymond Terrace. There were 100,000 jobs created in the leadup to the Sydney Olympics. So that was a massive impact to the economy. And it did boost trade, you know, and put Sydney on a global scale.
A lot of international travelers got to come to Sydney and see what Sydney had to offer. So there was that long-term impact.
Property growth in 1995, which is 5 years before the Sydney Olympics, to 2003, the market grew by 163% but then after that it plateaued until 2005 and then it started going backwards, likely because people were throwing a lot of stock on the market.
It’s something to really look at. It it has been something that I’ve been researching for a while which is the post Olympics. And almost in every market post Olympics there has been a bit of a decline. And it’s simple: fewer jobs. You know, you think about all the jobs that are all of a sudden these construction workers have got a new big project they want to work off at somewhere else in another capital city, wherever it is. So, there is a bit of that migration as well.
And it’s like when you’re looking at it on a property specific level, you’ve got the the short-term economic impacts, but ultimately what you’re buying property for is a long-term residence. And that’s why you buy properties to cater to owner occupiers and not investors because owner occupiers make up majority of the market, not investors. And same as long-term residents, not short-term travelers.
I don’t think it’s something to panic about anyway. Like if you’re buying a property in Brisbane now, don’t try and time it with the Olympics. Buy it, hold on to it, worry about it when you’re going to retire. You know, I think a lot of people are going to buy now, sell just before the Olympics as well, trying to predict a downturn. But it could also create a downturn before the Olympics.
Potential Brisbane property market downturn
There’s a lot of things but the fact is that most markets have grown by 150% over the past decade. They’re still growing between 10% and 25% now. That’s unsustainable growth. For that to continue up until 2032 when the Olympics happens, there will be a massive contraction phase in Brisbane in the short term.
Whether that’s going to have another spike like it just did, wait and see, but there’s going to be a big contraction phase in Brisbane shortly.
Construction issues
Short-term construction is a big issue in Queensland at the moment. Obviously, a lot of construction workers are being put onto the government projects to get the Olympics rolling. Residential construction time frames are blowing out, costs are blowing out. It’s just lack of labour essentially.
The upticks or some of the benefits I guess of this is Brisbane is going to get a lot of new infrastructure, a lot of investment in transport. These things are going to be residual. They’re not going to just be ripped up as soon as the Olympics is done. So there is a lot of uptick to it as well.
A lot of people just go, you know, Olympics, let’s buy. But have a look at it on what we saw what the GDP of Brisbane was. What’s going to be the increase in economic output in Brisbane in the short term and then post Olympics as well. Because ultimately that’s money within the market.