Gold Coast passes Brisbane for office buyer searches: realcommercial

The Gold Coast has overtaken Brisbane for office buying searches, according to the realcommercial.com.au Commercial Property Update for the September 2026 quarter. The data covers the 12 months to September. For a Brisbane office or industrial owner, the read-through is that buyer attention in South East Queensland is spreading south, while yields are tightening in both Brisbane and the regional Queensland market that includes the Gold Coast.

The findings were reported by Harrison Astbury for realcommercial.com.au on 15 October 2026. All figures below come from that article, not from our own data.

Why it matters

The report says the Gold Coast also remains on top for retail and industrial lease searches. Search volume is a measure of interest, not of sales or leasing deals, and the article gives no price or vacancy figures for either city.

Dave Kertesz, director of Crew Commercial Gold Coast, put the shift down to migration. In his words, “it really follows” southern-market businesses wanting to run closer to where they live. He also said contacts are “getting 20-30% better returns than in Sydney and Melbourne”. That is his anecdote, not a figure from the quarterly data.

For Brisbane owners, the practical point is competition for the same pool of buyers and tenants. A Gold Coast office or shed now draws attention that once defaulted to the capital.

The numbers

The article lists yields for Brisbane and for regional Queensland, which it says encompasses the Gold Coast.

• Industrial: Brisbane 4.8%, 14 basis points tighter than three months ago. Regional Queensland 4.9%, down 5 basis points.
• Office: Brisbane 6.6%, down 5 basis points. The rest of Queensland 6.9%, down 13 basis points.
• Retail: 7.2% for Brisbane and 7.2% for the rest of Queensland. The article gives changes of -14 and +29 basis points for the two, but its wording does not make the order unambiguous, so we have not assigned them to a region.

The gap between Brisbane and regional Queensland is 10 basis points for industrial and 30 basis points for office, based on the article’s figures. Both gaps are our arithmetic from the published yields.

On suburbs, the article says these Gold Coast locations cracked the top 10 for search volume:

• Southport, for office buying and leasing, and retail buying.
• Burleigh Heads, for industrial buying and leasing, and retail and office leasing.
• Yatala, for industrial buying and leasing.
• Surfers Paradise, for retail buying and leasing.

Kertesz described an industrial pattern in which businesses step up as they grow. They start in Burleigh, move to about 1,000 sqm in central Gold Coast, then to about 10,000 sqm in Yatala. He said the northern corridor suits employers drawing staff from both the Gold Coast and Brisbane.

The article also reports that search volume in the Richmond-Tweed region, which it describes as an extension of the Gold Coast, rose 5.1% over the past 12 months.

What’s next

Andy Chan, senior sales and leasing consultant at Crew Commercial, said Southport has “a fair bit of vacancy” as businesses upgrade from C and B grade space to A grade. He said Broadbeach has low vacancy and that Robina is emerging as a hub near the M1. The article says Southport is emerging as the Gold Coast’s central business district.

That flight to quality is the same trend seen in capital cities. Brisbane owners of older stock face the same pressure to upgrade or reposition.

Chan also pointed to major infrastructure spending in Queensland and ongoing construction as supports for demand. The article does not forecast yields for the December quarter.

Brisbane owners weighing a sale or refinance should watch whether the Gold Coast search lead turns into transactions. Yield compression of 5 to 14 basis points in three months is modest, but it moves in the same direction across every Queensland office and industrial category the article lists.

For wider context on where South East Queensland demand is heading, see our Queensland hub and our morning story on buyers moving to regional hotspots as rate hikes bite.