What your inputs are doing.
33 real material price indexes, quarterly since 2018 — so a quote that jumped can be checked against what the material actually did.
Electrical and copper are still climbing.
Before the detail: the sharpest movers over the last year, and the one number that matters most — what it costs to build a house in Queensland now against 2018.
The spread between trades is enormous.
Copper pipe is up 25.1% in a year while steel beams are down 2.4%. An across-the-board escalation figure hides that completely — the electrical and plumbing lines are carrying the increase, and the structural ones are not.
Up the most this year
Change in the price index over the last four quarters.
What this means on a job
These are the lines to re-price before signing. Copper, cable and plastic pipe all sit in the electrical and plumbing packages — so a house with a big services component has moved far more than the headline build cost suggests.
Flat or coming down
The same twelve months, at the other end.
What this means on a job
Structural steel and roofing have stopped rising. If an old escalation allowance is still being applied across every line, these are where it is now overstated.
The full eight years
How far each material has moved since early 2018, where 100 was the starting point. This is the number that explains why old rates do not work.
Why this matters more than the yearly figure
Electrical cable has gone up 126% and copper pipe 120% since 2018 — both more than doubled. Sand is up 73%, which surprises people because it feels like a commodity that should not move.
A rate card built before 2020 is not slightly out of date on these lines, it is out by a factor of two. That is the single most useful thing on this page.
Source: ABS producer price indexes for building materials, Queensland, quarterly. 34 quarters from 2018-Q1 to 2026-Q2.
Price the services lines separately. The average hides where the money went.