Darling Downs Defies Qld Slowdown as City Buyers Head West
Brisbane fell 2.7% and the Gold Coast dropped 2.2% last quarter, while Darling Downs property prices keep climbing with a median below $600,000.
Brisbane, the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast all recorded property price declines last quarter, but one regional Queensland pocket keeps bucking the trend — and it's drawing a growing wave of buyers from south-east Queensland ready to trade city congestion for country space and lower prices.
Property analysts Cotality found that while the median price of real estate across regional Queensland slipped 1.3% over the past three months, prices on the Darling Downs continued to rise. By contrast, Greater Brisbane fell 2.7% in the quarter, the Gold Coast was down 2.2%, and the Sunshine Coast pulled back 1.6%. All three of those coastal markets carry median property prices above $1.1 million. The Darling Downs, where the main centre of Warwick has a population of fewer than 20,000 people, has a median still below $600,000.
As ABC News reports, an increasing number of sea-changers are arriving from south-east Queensland with proceeds from sold city homes — and in many cases, with no remaining mortgage at all.
Why Buyers Are Heading West
The motivations are straightforward: affordability, lifestyle, and space. Dave Summerville lived in Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland — by any measure a desirable location — but found it had become unmanageable. "The Sunshine Coast became far too busy. The beach was no longer an attraction, you couldn't get a park," he said. When his daughter headed to Warwick to study agriculture, Summerville and his wife Kay sold their home — gone in about three months at a higher price than expected — and bought a house on 13 acres for half the cost.
Ann Bailey made a similar move, leaving Brisbane's Indooroopilly after years of traffic and rising costs. She described her former suburb as a "rabbit warren" of roadworks and expense. When she took a short-term role in Warwick and was asked to stay permanently, she agreed immediately. "Within three minutes I was at work, three minutes I was at home," she said. "I got time back in my life."
Matthew Collins, who heads a real estate firm in Warwick, said roughly 60% of his enquiries now come from people wanting to leave south-east Queensland. "People are wanting their lifestyle and it's affordable," he said. "We're still seeing a lot of people coming out of the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Brisbane, selling their product there, and getting into the same [property] or very similar [here], and putting cash in the back pocket debt free."
Cotality research director Tim Lawless put the longer-term picture in perspective. Regional Queensland prices have risen 58% since 2021, even including the current pullback. "For most home owners that have been in the market for at least 12 months, they've got quite a decent buffer before moving into a property value that's lower than what they paid for it," he said.
On the Sunshine Coast, buyers' agent Tim Thompson described a pricing "awkwardness" — sellers holding on to peak gains while buyers negotiate for discounts. He pointed to a recent contract: a property advertised at "offers over $750,000" that his clients purchased for $705,000. He sees the Sunshine Coast as "resilient" given strong population growth, but Lawless was more measured on the broader picture: "We're in the fairly early stages of the market moving into a downturn," he said, citing inflation, negative gearing changes, interest rates and the war in Iran as headwinds.
What This Means for First Home Buyers and Investors
For buyers still trying to get a foothold in the market, the divergence between south-east Queensland and regional areas like the Darling Downs creates genuine opportunities that weren't available at the height of the market.
A lower median price means a lower deposit requirement, lower stamp duty in most cases, and a more achievable loan-to-value ratio. Emma Moehead and Aaron Mockford spent two years saving a $50,000 deposit while living with Moehead's parents, eventually purchasing a two-bedroom, two-bathroom property on the Sunshine Coast to be built next year for slightly under $750,000. That same deposit applied to a Darling Downs purchase priced well below $600,000 represents a meaningfully larger share of the purchase price — changing both the loan structure and the borrower's overall financial position.
For first home buyers exploring regional options, the key considerations beyond price are commute viability, local employment, and infrastructure. Warwick is a working agricultural and commercial town, not a remote outpost — and for buyers willing to look past the familiar coastal markets, it is delivering returns that are hard to ignore. For investors, a market that has delivered 58% growth over five years, continues to attract genuine owner-occupier demand from downsizing city buyers, and sits well below the major coastal medians represents a different risk-return profile to overheated suburbs.
Use our borrowing power calculator to understand what a regional Queensland purchase might look like under current rates, or our repayment calculator to compare monthly outgoings across different price points before you talk to lenders.