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Australia’s luxury property market has never been more geographically diverse, and that diversity is the defining story of this third edition of the Ray White Luxury Outlook.
For much of the past two decades, Australia’s premium market was a tale of two cities, where Sydney set the benchmark and Melbourne followed. The rest of the country existed at the margins of that conversation, but what our data now shows is that the conversation has changed. Perth is in its third consecutive year of double-digit luxury price growth.
Queensland’s coastal markets have outpaced Sydney in both percentage growth and, in the case of units, absolute price. Brisbane and Perth now sit within $100,000 of Melbourne’s luxury threshold, a gap that was once measured in the hundreds of thousands. The luxury market is no longer concentrated; it is spreading and deepening in markets that would have been afterthoughts a decade ago.
This is not a cyclical story either. It reflects a genuine shift in where Australia’s most affluent choose to live, and what they are choosing to buy. The buyers at the top end of our market today built their wealth in industries that barely existed 20 years ago, which means they are less likely to follow established patterns of luxury. In many cases, they are writing new ones.
In this edition, our Economist Atom Go Tian examines the thresholds and suburb-level data that define luxury across the country. Our Chief Economist Nerida Conisbee maps how regional luxury precincts have performed over the decade, separating structural repricing from pandemic-era noise. Our Head of Research Vanessa Rader explores the global branded residence phenomenon now arriving on Australian shores, the wellness and technology features reshaping what a luxury home actually delivers, and what the luxury vehicle market tells us about the values of high-net-worth buyers.
As Australia’s leading real estate group, with an unrivalled presence in the luxury segment across every state and territory, Ray White is uniquely positioned to track where this market is moving and why. Our network of over 13,000 members gives us a ground-level view of buyer demand, pricing behaviour, and sentiment that no data source alone can replicate.
We trust this report will serve as a valuable resource for vendors, buyers, developers, and industry professionals seeking to understand the evolving dynamics of Australia’s luxury property market in 2026.
Dan White
Managing Director, Ray White Group
Executive Summary
Australia’s luxury property market is moving in more directions at once than at any point in the past decade, and the shift runs deeper than price.
At the surface, the price story is already significant. The national luxury house threshold sits at $2.75 million, 80 per cent above where it was a decade ago, but the more important movement is geographic. Perth has more than doubled its luxury threshold and is still accelerating, with its top suburbs recording growth of 17 to 19 per cent in the past year. Meanwhile, the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast luxury unit thresholds have already surpassed Sydney’s. The premium market is no longer just a Sydney and Melbourne story.
Go deeper, and the changes are more structural. The buyers at the top of the market today are predominantly self-made, including founders, technology entrepreneurs, and private equity operators who built their wealth in industries that barely existed twenty years ago. They are buying in coastal and regional markets as much as harbour side ones, drawn by time and autonomy as much as prestige. That demand has driven a decade of divergent regional performance: temperate coastal markets have surged and held their gains,
rural lifestyle markets strengthened on migration and retained it, alpine markets rose sharply and corrected accordingly.
Deeper still, the homes themselves are changing in ways that reflect who is buying them. Wellness technology (air quality systems, circadian lighting, continuous health monitoring) has moved from optional feature to baseline expectation, commanding premiums of 15 to 30 per cent over conventional luxury stock. Branded residences, a global category with over 800 schemes worldwide, are arriving
in Australia for the same reason: buyers who have spent years staying in Six Senses and 1 Hotels want the same experience at home.
Even the luxury vehicle market tells a version of this story. Electric vehicles exceeded 100,000 sales in Australia for the first time in 2025, led by buyers applying the same values to their driveways as their front doors: performance, technology, and a brand that reflects how they see themselves.
The luxury market in 2026 is broader, faster-moving, and less predictable than the edition before it. The pages that follow make the case for why.
Nerida Conisbee
Chief Economist, Ray White Group
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