Thinking of Selling? Discover the value of your home
NOOSA PROPERTY MARKET REPORT
3RD QUARTER 2026
Based on the latest data it would be safe to say that the Noosa’s market has turned. Dwelling values across the Noosa LGA are 5.3% below their March peak, and that peak came a month after the rate rises began. The slowdown started before then: growth peaked at 4.1% for the December quarter, eased through autumn and turned negative in June. Values fell 4.0% over the September quarter, and houses fell harder at 4.5%. The median dwelling value now sits at $1.50M, still 1.4% higher than a year ago.
That 1.4% needs context. Inflation ran at 4.0% over the year to August, so in real terms Noosa values have gone backwards. The longer view tells two different stories. Over 10 years, values have more than doubled (108.8%). After inflation that’s a real gain of around 54%, more than two and a half times the national result. Over five years, the headline growth of 20.6% has only just kept pace with the cost of living. In today’s dollars, Noosa is worth roughly what it was in 2021. All of the substantial growth came before then.
Supply is where the pressure shows. Listings are 11.3% above last year and 10.6% above the five-year average. That’s not a rush of new sellers. Stock is selling more slowly, so it builds up. Our weekly tracking shows the same thing: new listings across Noosa passed 60 in mid-September, the most since we began tracking in April, while sales held around 15 to 20 a week. Almost every genuine guide change has been a cut, and the top end is moving too.
The economy explains most of it. On 29 September the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.60%, its fourth rise this year, which takes rates to their highest since 2011. Inflation is the Board’s priority, and markets expect more to come. Unemployment has edged up to 4.6%, still low by any long-run measure. Cheaper money isn’t coming soon.
Today’s rates are a long way from the 17% home loans of 1989, but that comparison flatters the present. Back then, the median Australian home cost around four years of the average full-time wage. Today it costs more than eight, and in Noosa closer to 14. Even at today’s rates, repayments on a median home take about half of an average wage, much the same share as at the 1989 peak. The buyers transacting in Noosa now are moving equity rather than borrowing their way in, and they are paying for homes priced to today’s market, not last summer’s.
What’s shaping Noosa
Noosa Junction is being remade. The Brisbane family behind The Calile has moved into main construction on The Calile Noosa, a 186-room resort on a 2.4-hectare hillside site at Serenity Close, about 1.5km from Main Beach, on a build of roughly three years. A few hundred metres away, the same family, with Kilter Property and Frank Developments, has unveiled a $300M plan for the former Noosa Bowls Club at 99 Noosa Drive: 208 apartments, including 48 affordable apartments and 48 rooms for local workers, a fresh food market, and a new town square linking Lanyana Way and Noosa Drive. Between them, it is the largest private investment the Junction has seen in a generation. For Noosa Heads, it adds amenity rather than competing stock.
Short-stay letting has been squeezed out of residential neighbourhoods in two steps. Noosa Plan 2020, which took effect on 31 July 2020, made regular short-stay letting an inconsistent use in the Low Density Residential zone once it goes beyond four stays and 60 nights a year. The amendments that took effect on 26 September 2025 extended the restriction to the Medium and High Density Residential zones and most centre zones, and rezoned part of the Tourist Accommodation zone for residential and centre uses. Alongside council’s short-stay local law, 360 approvals have been cancelled since 2023 and a further 112 have not been renewed. A buyer relying on holiday-letting income now needs to look to what remains of the Tourist Accommodation zone, and properties with established short-stay rights carry a scarcity value they did not have before.
The Noosa River also has a new manager. Since 1 July, the state’s Sunshine Coast Waterways Authority has been responsible for marine planning, dredging, channels, jetties and boat ramps from Pumicestone Passage to the Noosa River and lakes, and it is now preparing a 10-year waterways strategy. Noosa Council pushed for local representation on its board. For waterfront owners, decisions on channel depth and river infrastructure now sit with a new body, and the strategy it writes over the next year will matter.
Sources: Cotality (Tim Lawless), Noosa LGA data to September 2026. ABS Consumer Price Index and Average Weekly Earnings. Reserve Bank of Australia. Judo Bank 1-2-3 Economics. Noosa Council. Queensland Government. Sunshine Coast News. The Urban Developer. Reed & Co market tracking.
