Australia's home-building sector remains well short of its glory days. Total residential construction spending nationally sits 2.6% below the peak recorded in June 2018, despite an 8.4% rise over the past year.
Six of the eight states and territories remain below their own historic highs, four of them by more than 30% — the Northern Territory trails furthest behind at 72.5% under its 1976 peak, followed by Tasmania at 39.4% below its 2021 high.
Queensland is the standout departure from that pattern, and it's now carrying almost half the country's growth in new home building.
New research from HomeLoanRates.com.au, compiled by Primara Research using Australian Bureau of Statistics data, shows the state poured $20.3 billion into new home construction over the past year — an all-time high in 52 years of records, and the only state or territory currently sitting above its previous peak. The figure is up 19.3% year-on-year and 4.1% above the prior record set in the year to December 2016, itself an increase of $801 million. Quarterly figures tell the same story: the June quarter brought in $5,293 million, narrowly eclipsing the previous high of $5,278 million set in September 2025.
"New South Wales and Victoria still put more dollars into new housing than Queensland does," said Peter Drennan, head of research and data at Primara Research. "Queensland is growing faster than either of them, while both sit below their own peaks."
Behind Queensland's record run is a pronounced shift toward higher-density housing.
Apartments supplied 62% of the state's entire increase in new home building over the year and now make up 42.9% of Queensland's residential construction activity — the largest share since 2017, though not an outright record.
House construction grew too, up 10.0% year-on-year to $2.94 billion, but that result ranks only 27th among 208 quarters of Queensland data and remains 22.8% below the state's own peak, set in September 2008.
That apartment-led growth is also propping up the national numbers: Queensland alone supplied $897 million of the country's $1.88 billion quarterly increase in residential construction spending, accounting for nearly half — 47.7% — of all national growth.
The momentum looks set to continue: ABS approvals data for June recorded a 33.4% jump in Queensland's total dwelling approvals, one of the strongest results of any state, suggesting the apartment pipeline still has room to run.
Drennan puts Queensland's outperformance down to a convergence of factors specific to the state, rather than a broader national turnaround.
"New home construction spending nationally is still short of where it stood in 2018," he said. "Queensland looks like the exception because of timing: Brisbane's Olympic infrastructure build and continued interstate migration into the south-east are both landing in the same window as this apartment surge."
That construction boom hasn't yet flowed through to loan volumes, however: Queensland's new housing loan commitments fell 5.9% in the June quarter, a steeper drop than the national decline, with investor lending down 10.1% over the same period.
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