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Virtual Buyers Agent(TM) · Brisbane, Queensland
Host city for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and a metropolitan area spreading from Caboolture to the Gold Coast hinterland. This page will not tell you what Brisbane is worth — it sets out the QLD transfer duty, the local context, and what you have to confirm before you offer, starting with flood.
It does not publish a Brisbane median price, a rental yield, a vacancy rate or a growth figure, and it says nothing about what the 2032 Olympics will do to prices. Arguing from Sydney 2000 and London 2012 that host cities see sustained growth is a forecast dressed as a history lesson, and it is gone.
It does not tell you which suburb to buy in, whether now is a good time, or what a property is worth. Virtual Buyers Agent holds no AFSL and no real estate licence, and every one of those is advice.
What it does is state the Queensland transfer duty rates that apply, name the registries that publish Queensland property data so you can read the real figures yourself, and list what is worth confirming before you sign anything.
General information only — not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice. Virtual Buyers Agent does not hold an AFSL or a real estate licence. Check your circumstances with appropriately licensed professionals before acting.
Queensland charges transfer duty on property purchases. For contracts from 1 May 2025, eligible first home buyers pay no transfer duty on a new home or vacant land, with no cap on the purchase price. For an established home, the concession is full up to $700,000 and reduces on a sliding scale up to $800,000.
| Purchase price | Duty |
|---|---|
| $0 - $5,000 | Nil |
| $5,001 - $75,000 | $1.50 for each $100, or part of $100, over $5,000 |
| $75,001 - $540,000 | $1,050 plus $3.50 for each $100, or part of $100, over $75,000 |
| $540,001 - $1,000,000 | $17,325 plus $4.50 for each $100, or part of $100, over $540,000 |
| Over $1,000,000 | $38,025 plus $5.75 for each $100, or part of $100, over $1,000,000 |
An additional 8% foreign acquirer duty surcharge applies.
General information only — not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice. Virtual Buyers Agent does not hold an AFSL or a real estate licence. Check your circumstances with appropriately licensed professionals before acting.
These are the standard investment rates. No first home buyer, owner-occupier or off-the-plan concession is applied here — eligibility turns on facts this page cannot establish.
Things worth having an answer to before you sign. A list of questions, not a list of answers — the answers depend on your contract and on the people advising you.
What the Brisbane City Council Flood Awareness Map shows for the address, and what a flood search returns.
What your insurer will actually quote for the address, obtained before you are committed rather than after.
The cooling-off period that applies to your contract, and what it costs to use it.
Whether the seller's disclosure statement is complete, and what is missing from it.
Whether there is a pool, and whether a current pool safety certificate exists for it.
When transfer duty falls due, who lodges it, and whether foreign acquirer duty applies to you.
What is there and what is being built. Descriptive and checkable — no forecast, and no view on what any of it does to a price.
Brisbane is the capital of Queensland and the centre of the south-east Queensland region. What this page gives you is the transfer duty you will actually pay, the areas people ask about, and the checks that decide whether a specific address is right.
Brisbane will host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the associated infrastructure programme includes the Brisbane Arena, the Gabba precinct, Cross River Rail and Brisbane Metro. We will not tell you what the Games will do to property prices. Pointing at Sydney in 2000 or London in 2012 and inferring what Brisbane will do in 2032 is a forecast dressed up as a history lesson, and it is exactly the kind of claim we have taken off this site. What is verifiable is which projects are funded, which are under construction, and where they are — and Queensland Government project pages will tell you that.
The check that matters most in Brisbane is flood. The 2011 and 2022 events showed that risk varies street by street and sometimes property by property, and that two homes in the same suburb can sit on opposite sides of a flood line. Get the Brisbane City Council Flood Awareness Map for the address, obtain a flood search, and ask your insurer for a premium before you are committed rather than after.
A list of places, not a shortlist. There is no price, no yield and no ranking here, and nothing on this page suggests one suburb over another.
Logan
Local government area between the Brisbane CBD and the Gold Coast, with new transport links.
Ipswich
City west of Brisbane with heritage character, defence industry connections at RAAF Base Amberley, and a city-centre revitalisation underway.
Moreton Bay
Coastal local government area north of Brisbane, spanning established bayside towns and newer master-planned estates, with a University of the Sunshine Coast campus.
Redcliffe
Bayside peninsula connected to the Brisbane CBD by the Moreton Bay Rail Link, with a waterfront foreshore and an established town centre.
Caboolture
Town at the northern edge of the Brisbane commuter belt, with a rail connection and a hospital.
Springfield
Master-planned community south-west of Brisbane with its own university campus, rail station and town centre.
The bodies that publish it. Go to them for a figure rather than to us — we have no source we could cite for a market number, so we do not print one.
Queensland Government open data
Property sales and valuation data published as open data.
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Census counts, dwelling approvals and residential property price indexes, by capital city.
Queensland Revenue Office
The transfer duty rates that apply to your purchase, and land tax thresholds.
Queensland Globe
Zoning, property boundaries and mapped overlays for a given address.
Named, checkable facts — not a case for buying here.
Host city for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with an associated infrastructure programme spanning the Brisbane Arena, the Gabba precinct, Cross River Rail and Brisbane Metro.
The centre of the south-east Queensland region, which extends from the Sunshine Coast through Brisbane and Ipswich to the Gold Coast, connected by an existing rail network.
An economy spanning resources services, health, education, tourism and logistics, with the Port of Brisbane and Brisbane Airport both inside the metropolitan area.
Flood mapping is public and property-specific. The Brisbane City Council Flood Awareness Map covers the council area, and neighbouring councils publish their own — check the address, not the suburb.
Everything a Queensland buyer needs to verify is published by a body you can name: the Queensland Revenue Office for transfer duty and surcharges, Titles Queensland for title, and your local council for planning and flood.
Once you have a specific property
The duty and the registries on this page change by state. The order of the work does not.
The properties you are actually weighing up, in one place, with the listing, the notes and the numbers attached to them.
The same named checks open on every one — the rates, the levy, the documents, the settlement costs.
What you saw, recorded against the property while you still remember it, rather than left in a photo roll.
What is still needed, visible, so the decision is made with the gaps in front of you.
What a search actually does to you
Nothing on this page is specific to where you are buying except the rates. The problem is the same everywhere; the numbers are not.
What gets lostWhat the workspace does
What gets lost
What the workspace does
Three properties in, the strata levy on the first one is a number you half remember from a PDF you closed a fortnight ago.
Financials
You checked what was near the place once, on your phone, in the car outside the inspection, and you are no longer certain which property that was.
Location
You asked an agent for the contract of sale on Tuesday. You are no longer certain which property that was.
Documents
Duty, legals, inspections and the deposit were four separate sums, worked out at four separate moments, across two different properties.
Offer
We will not answer that, and we would treat anyone who does with caution. Citing Sydney in 2000 or London in 2012 to say what Brisbane will do in 2032 is a forecast dressed up as a history lesson: different city, different decade, different housing supply, different interest rates. Virtual Buyers Agent does not hold an AFSL and does not publish price predictions. What is checkable is which venues and transport projects are funded and under construction, and where they are — Queensland Government project pages publish that, and it is worth reading before you accept anyone's Olympic argument.
Flood is the check that matters most in Brisbane, as the 2011 and 2022 events showed. Risk varies dramatically at the individual property level — some streets in flood-prone suburbs sit well above the flood line while a neighbouring street does not. Check the Brisbane City Council Flood Awareness Map for the specific address, obtain a flood search, and get an insurance quote before you are committed rather than after. Virtual Buyers Agent keeps flood alongside the rest of the property's outstanding checks so it is not the thing that gets missed.
We do not rank markets against each other. Doing so would mean publishing comparative figures we cannot source and date, and a ranking is a recommendation whether or not it is worded as one. Use Virtual Buyers Agent to compare two specific properties side by side on the same cash flow, cost and document-check framework, and decide from that.
We do not publish a Brisbane yield figure, or a yield figure for any suburb within it. A yield we cannot source and date is a number you would be relying on without knowing where it came from, so we removed them rather than estimate. For a property you are actually looking at, the Rental Yield and Cash Flow Forecast tools work the yield out from the price and the rent you enter and show the arithmetic, including where the net figure diverges from the gross. For market-level data, use a source you can name.
Once you have a specific property
Bring the properties you are weighing up into one place. The listing, your numbers, the documents and the next thing worth checking stay attached to the property they belong to.
General information only — not financial, legal, tax, or investment advice. Virtual Buyers Agent does not hold an AFSL or a real estate licence. Check your circumstances with appropriately licensed professionals before acting.
This page publishes no Brisbane price, yield or growth figure, and nothing on it is a recommendation about a suburb, a property or a time to buy.