Yield is where the people aren't.
48 Queensland councils with real median price, rent, yield and vacancy — and the trade-off between income and growth laid out plainly.
The two ends of the state.
Before the detail: a house in Isaac costs $320,000 and returns 8.93%. One in Noosa costs $1.5 million and returns 2.94%. Both are real, and they are different businesses.
The highest yields are all regional.
Gross rental yield — annual rent against the purchase price. Every council in the top eight is a mining or agricultural centre, and none of them is on the coast. That is the trade being made: income now, in a town with one industry.
Top eight by rental yield
What the rent returns against the price. Anything above about 6% is unusual in Australia.
What you are actually buying
Isaac, Mount Isa, Cloncurry and Banana are mining towns. Barcaldine and Longreach are agricultural. The yield is high because the price is low, and the price is low because the population depends on one industry.
Mount Isa is the warning in the set: 8.6% yield, but the median price fell 3.02% over the year. A high yield does not protect the capital.
The dearest councils, and what they return
The same figures at the other end — coastal and metropolitan, where the yield is roughly a third of the regional number.
Why anyone buys at 3%
Because the growth is there instead. Brisbane returns 3% but the median rose 20.2% in a year; Sunshine Coast 3.26% and 20.1%. The return is coming as capital, not rent.
That is a different business with a different risk: it needs the growth to keep coming, where the regional play needs the tenant to keep paying.
Where prices actually moved
Change in the median house price over the last year.
The regional centres are leading
Townsville up 28.66%, Rockhampton 24.06%, Gladstone 22.72% — all ahead of Brisbane's 20.2%. These are the larger regional cities, not the small single-industry towns, and they carry both reasonable yield and real growth.
That middle group is where the two columns above overlap.
Almost nothing available to rent
Share of rental stock sitting empty. Anything under 1% is a severe shortage; these are a fraction of that.
What a 0.04% vacancy means
Effectively no empty rentals at all. For a landlord that means rent has room to rise and a tenant will be found immediately.
For a builder it means something more useful: there is nowhere for workers to live. Vacancy this tight is a constraint on any project needing people on site, and it usually precedes a push for new dwellings.
Source: realestateinvestar.com.au council-level medians — house price, rent, gross yield, one-year change and vacancy rate. 48 Queensland councils, as at 15 Aug 2026. Council-level figures, not individual suburbs.
High yield buys income from one industry. Low yield buys growth and needs it to continue.