The Gold Coast has overtaken every Australian capital city to become the nation’s fastest-growing economy, with new research identifying chronic housing undersupply and a $91 billion infrastructure pipeline as the dominant forces reshaping the region’s built environment.

The Gold Coast Property Report 2026, published jointly by COAST Buyer’s Agency and Hotspotting, draws on data from PropTrack, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Jobs Queensland, Gold Coast City Council and PRD Research. It shows the region’s Gross Regional Product (GRP) has reached $49.4 billion, $775 million above forecast, with growth of 10.07 per cent projected over the next four years against a national rate of 7.91 per cent.

Underlying the expansion is a fundamental shift in the regional economy’s structure. Construction and healthcare have overtaken tourism as the Gold Coast’s largest economic drivers, reflecting a maturing and more diversified economic base.

Population growth is the primary pressure point for the construction sector. More than 420 new residents arrive on the Gold Coast every week, the largest share relocating from higher-priced New South Wales coastal markets. That pace has pushed projections for the region reaching one million residents forward to 2040, six years ahead of earlier modelling.

The supply response has not kept pace. The Gold Coast requires approximately 9,250 new dwellings per year to accommodate current population growth, but approvals reached only 4,091 in the 2025 financial year, well under half the required rate. Rental vacancy has fallen to 1.3 per cent, leaving fewer than 900 properties available across the region.

“The number I’ve always watched is migration, and right now the Gold Coast is absorbing more than 400 people a week into a market that simply isn’t building enough homes,” says Joe Pullos, principal, COAST Buyer’s Agency. “When you’ve got too many people chasing too few houses, there’s really only one direction for prices.”

The $91 billion infrastructure pipeline and forecast of 25,300 new jobs are expected to sustain construction activity and continue drawing interstate migration. The report notes that recent federal budget changes, including a winding back of tax concessions on investment property while the family home retains its capital gains tax exemption, have shifted the economics of residential property ownership further toward owner-occupier demand in the premium segment.

The report identifies four Gold Coast suburbs recording strong price performance in the prestige tier. Mermaid Beach posted the strongest house price growth in the report, up 32 per cent over twelve months to a median of $3.35 million, with five-year average annual growth of 16 per cent. Broadbeach Waters saw its median rise 15 per cent to $2.575 million, alongside a 46 per cent surge in quarterly sales transactions, which the report identifies as a leading indicator of further price acceleration. Currumbin recorded 28 per cent median growth to $1.8 million, while Palm Beach reached a median of $1.93 million with 14 per cent average annual growth over five years.

“The fundamentals here are as strong as I’ve seen,” says Pullos. “This isn’t a speculative run, it’s a structural shift in where Australians want to live and work.”

Image: Gold Coast, Queensland / supplied

Gold Coast overtakes Australian capitals to become the nation’s fastest-growing economy

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