Real Estate
25 June, 2026
High performer
CAIRNS’ position as one of the best performing real estate markets in the country in recent years remains unchallenged, according to the Cairns Chamber of Commerce’s June edition of the Cairns Economic Monitor.
“Over the past three years, compounding annual growth in Cairns has averaged 18.2%, which equates to an increase of 65% over those three years,” the report said.
“This compares to a national average of 9.0% annually for a three-year increase of 29.5%. Despite this huge out-performance in recent years, the median combined (houses and units) price in Cairns is still $270,000 below the national average, and even though this gap has closed significantly in recent years, Cairns remains a good-value option and can therefore certainly sustain further growth.”
The report said despite the fact that interest rates were rising (and look set to rise even further) and the recently announced changes to CGT (capital gains tax) appear to have the potential to negatively impact investment property prices (which is a feature rather than a bug), property prices continued to perform well in the Cairns market.
“In the year to May, median unit prices have increased by 19% (to $470,000) while median house prices have still not breached the $800,000 level ($798,000) and are now up just 15.1% for the year,” it said.
“Rents continue to increase, albeit at a slower pace, with two-bedroom unit rents up just 6% for the year ($512 per week).
“Given the divergences between rent and price changes through the earlier part of this year, in last month’s issue we said we would expect “either house prices or unit rents” to lead growth in coming months.
“That has indeed been the case with unit rents up 2.5% for the month (beating house rents +0.8%, house prices unchanged ($656 per week) and unit prices -2.5%).
“Despite this month’s movements going some way to addressing this divergence we would still anticipate the best moves to be in either house prices or unit rents.”
The report said for the third consecutive month. the rental vacancy rate had edged a little lower this month to just 0.8%.
“It has now been 64 months during which the rental vacancy rate has been between 1.2% and 0.5% – an extraordinary period of tightness which appears to once again be getting ever tighter,” it said.
“This tightness in the rental market over the past five years has been a major driver of such strong rental growth.
“We noted last month that the recent slow-down in rental growth was likely to have been due to seasonal effects and that we expected rental growth to pick up again – and that’s precisely what has happened in May. Rents have again turned positive with growth between 6-9%.”
