Brisbane's effort to build its way out of a housing crisis is quietly coming unstuck. While apartment prices have surged nearly 18 per cent in the past year and demand remains fierce, something alarming is happening on the supply side: developments are quietly disappearing from the pipeline.
A new report reveals that one-third of Brisbane's apartment supply is at moderate to high risk of not being developed by 2027. That translates to thousands of homes that were planned but never built, leaving the city's housing targets further out of reach.
The problem isn't zoning or planning approvals. It's economics. The numbers simply don't stack up for developers anymore. Construction costs, labour shortages, and developer feasibility issues are still choking off new supply. When building an apartment tower costs tens of millions more than anticipated, when finance becomes harder to secure, and when land prices have already spiked, the margin for profit evaporates. Developers walk away.
One symptom of the underlying crisis is the time it takes to turn a concept into a finished building. Apartment projects are taking longer than ever, with the time taken to develop an apartment building increasing from 45 months in 2019 to 75 months in 2024. That's six months of additional carrying costs per project, added uncertainty, and higher risk that interest rates, construction costs, or market conditions shift before the first resident moves in.
Brisbane's government has pitched density as the answer to spiralling housing costs. Rezone suburban shopping centres for apartments. Speed up approvals. Loosen height limits. In principle, it's sensible policy. More supply should ease affordability pressure. But there's a gap between what planners zone and what private developers can actually afford to build in the real world. That gap is now gaping.
The backdrop to this story is a market that looks booming on the surface. Brisbane led the nation with an 18.3% increase in unit prices over the past year. Interstate migration is driving demand. Population growth is steady. By most measures, the apartment market is hot.
Yet demand and price growth can mask an ugly truth: without new supply hitting the market, those rising prices reflect growing scarcity, not genuine health. For renters and first-home buyers hoping to enter the market, it means prices accelerating faster than wages. For a city that needs thousands of new homes before the Olympics in six years, it means a structural shortfall that no amount of zoning reform can fix if the underlying development model is broken.
Some argue that this is exactly when government needs to get creative. If private developers can't make the numbers work, should government rethink how it leverages the institutional capital required to make large-scale apartment projects feasible? Direct investment, public-private partnerships, or even public housing could fill the gap. Others worry that subsidising apartments props up unworkable business models and distorts market signals about where development should actually occur.
The honest answer is that Brisbane faces a genuine trade-off. You can have affordable apartments or you can rely on private developers to build them. Right now, the city is getting neither. Prices are soaring whilst supply is drying up. Until the economics of apartment development improve, or government finds a way to change them, Brisbane's high-density push will remain stuck in the planning documents.