2025 Rental Affordability Snapshot Southern Queensland
Since 2010, Anglicare Australia and a network of state and regional partners have conducted the annual Rental Affordability Snapshot. Now in its sixteenth year, findings across the country continue to expose an alarming trend in the private rental market.
This year, of the 8646 rental properties surveyed across southern Queensland, we found:
- Only 41 unique properties (0.5%) were affordable and appropriate for households on income support.
- Only 666 unique properties (7.7%) were affordable and appropriate for those on minimum wage.
- All household categories surveyed in Brisbane Metro and Ipswich are paying at least 30% of their household income on rent
- Coastal areas continue to be the least affordable across southern Queensland. On the Gold Coast, there are 0 available for people on income support, and just 2 properties for those on minimum wage.
- The highest level of rental stress across all household categories is experienced by single people with some categories paying up to 150% of their income on rent.
Lifting people out of crisis is a policy choice
We are calling on the Australian Government to increase financial supports to enable people to afford the basic living costs of housing, food, bills, and transport; and for both federal and state governments to invest in more social and affordable housing.
Our approach
As part of the annual Anglicare Australia national Snapshot, every year Anglicare Southern Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. We do this by taking a snapshot of the thousands of properties listed for rent on realestate.com.au on a particular weekend in March. We test whether each property is affordable and appropriate for people on low incomes.
The Snapshot provides evidence for the advocacy we undertake with, and for, the people we work with, including those who access our InSync Youth Services, Homelessness Services Women and Families, and Emergency Relief Program.
Turning round the housing crisis would leave a legacy of transforming hundreds of thousands of lives
Rental Affordability Snapshot 2025 Report
Past Rental Affordability Snapshots
Anglicare Southern Queensland 2024 Rental Affordability Snapshot: Southern Queensland
As part of the Anglicare Australia national Snapshot, every year Anglicare Southern Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. In response to the growing housing and homelessness crisis, in 2024 we expanded our focus from the Brisbane Metro region to the whole of southern Queensland
Anglicare Southern Queensland Rental Affordability Snapshot Brisbane Metropolitan Area 2023
As part of the Anglicare Australia national Snapshot, every year Anglicare Southern Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. The 2023 report captures the desperation faced by Brisbane renters in a ‘catastrophic’ rental crisis.
Anglicare Southern Queensland Rental Affordability Snapshot Brisbane Metropolitan Area 2022
As part of the Anglicare Australia national Snapshot, every year Anglicare Southern Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. The 2022 report is set against a ‘perfect storm of adversity’, including Covid, floods, increasing living costs, record low vacancy rates and surging rents.
Anglicare Southern Queensland Rental Affordability Snapshot Brisbane Metropolitan Area 2021
As part of the Anglicare Australia national Snapshot, every year Anglicare Southern Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. The 2021 report explores some of the rental market peculiarities of the first Covid year, but concludes that rental affordability that year remained as bleak as it had been for at least a decade.
Anglicare Southern Queensland Rental Affordability Snapshot Brisbane Metropolitan Area 2020
Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. The 2020 ‘Snapshot’ data collection was uniquely held on the same weekend as the Australian Government doubled income support in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This report therefore comprises two ‘snapshots’, as it explores the difference the rate increase would make to people on income support if it were ongoing rather than temporary.
Anglicare Southern Queensland Rental Affordability Snapshot Brisbane Metropolitan Area 2019
As part of the Anglicare Australia national Snapshot, every year Anglicare Southern Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. The 2019 report focuses on the particular challenges faced by young people in the rental market.
Anglicare Southern Queensland Rental Affordability Snapshot Brisbane Metropolitan Area 2018
As part of the Anglicare Australia national Snapshot, every year Anglicare Southern Queensland tests if it is possible for people on low incomes to rent a home in the private market. The 2018 report highlights some of geographic shift in disadvantage as more people on lower incomes are pushed to suburbs increasingly distant from job opportunities, transport and services.