Where Are Queensland's New Buyers Really Coming From?

When a property sells in Cairns, Townsville, or the Tablelands, the buyer is increasingly likely to have arrived from somewhere else in Australia. Understanding where — and why — is one of the more useful pieces of intelligence available to sellers, investors, and agents operating in Far North Queensland's market.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes quarterly interstate migration data, and the picture it paints for Queensland is consistent and striking. In the year to December 2024, Queensland recorded a net interstate gain of approximately 25,940 people. Of that total, New South Wales accounted for more than 60 percent — roughly 18,000 people who left NSW and settled in Queensland over a twelve-month period. Victoria was the second-largest source of interstate arrivals, though the ABS does not break out all state-to-state flows in its headline release.

To put this in historical context: Queensland has recorded a net gain of people from New South Wales every single quarter since June 1981. The migration flow is not a post-COVID anomaly — it is a structural feature of Australia's internal population geography, one that has accelerated in recent years as the affordability gap between Sydney and Queensland's regional markets widened.

The Investment Dimension

Perhaps the most striking single statistic in recent coverage of Queensland's property market comes from Westpac banking data: nearly one in four investment properties purchased in Queensland is now bought by a NSW resident. That figure, if accurate, represents a substantial reorientation of New South Wales capital toward Queensland real estate — driven by a combination of yield advantage, lower entry prices, and Queensland's continued population growth trajectory.

By comparison, Queenslanders account for approximately one percent of property purchases in New South Wales. The flow of capital and population is overwhelmingly one-directional.

Queensland also recorded a 24 percent annual growth in investor lending in 2023-24 — the highest of any state — overtaking Western Australia, which had previously led on that metric. The combination of owner-occupier migration and investor capital from the south has created conditions in which demand is consistently outpacing available stock, particularly in regional markets where new construction is constrained by land supply, labour availability, and material costs.

Regional Queensland Outpacing Brisbane

One of the more significant shifts in recent data is the relative performance of regional Queensland versus the state capital. In the fourth quarter of 2024, regional Queensland recorded 4,317 interstate arrivals — compared to 3,285 for Greater Brisbane. That a regional state is outpacing its capital city for interstate intake is unusual by Australian standards, and it reflects a deliberate lifestyle shift among a segment of the migration cohort that has no need or desire to replicate a capital city existence.

The regional destinations capturing the most interstate interest include the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba, Bundaberg, and — increasingly — Cairns and Far North Queensland. In research published by CoreLogic and REA Group, Cairns is specifically named alongside Toowoomba and Bundaberg as a high-interest destination for buyers priced out of Brisbane, which recorded a median house price of approximately $900,000 by late 2024.

What Is Driving the Movement

The ABS data captures where people move but not comprehensively why. Supplementary research from CoreLogic, Domain, and REIQ points to several consistent themes among Queensland-bound migrants:

Affordability remains the primary driver. Sydney's median house price exceeded $1.6 million by late 2024; Melbourne's sat above $1 million. Cairns, by comparison, offered a median well below $700,000 — with significantly higher rental yields, typically in the four to six percent range against Sydney's two to three percent.

Remote and flexible work removed the requirement to live within commuting distance of a CBD employer, decoupling residential location decisions from employment geography for a meaningful share of the professional workforce.

Lifestyle preferences — including climate, outdoor amenity, and pace of life — accelerated sharply as a decision factor following 2020. Research consistently shows that this driver has persisted beyond the immediate post-lockdown period, rather than reversing as some analysts anticipated.

Brisbane 2032 infrastructure spending has generated expectations of capital growth across Southeast Queensland and, by extension, has pushed price-sensitive buyers further north toward Cairns and the surrounding region.

What This Means for Sellers and Investors in FNQ

For property owners in the Cairns region, the practical implication of this migration pattern is that the buyer pool for your property is larger than local population figures suggest. A significant proportion of active buyers are currently living in Sydney, Melbourne, or regional NSW, and are conducting searches remotely before visiting or purchasing sight-unseen in some cases.

Marketing that speaks to an interstate audience — emphasising lifestyle, yield, affordability relative to southern capitals, and the practical liveability of Cairns — reaches a different and valuable cohort than content pitched exclusively to the local market. For investors specifically, the combination of strong rental yields, a vacancy rate that has sat below one percent for over two years, and the ongoing structural demand from population growth creates a case that requires relatively little embellishment.

The data, in this instance, does the work.