Residential building work done hit a national record in the June quarter. Underneath that single number, one state is at an all time high, two are running a third below their own peaks, and the reasons are not the ones usually offered.

National figures are averages, and averages hide things.

Residential building work done reached a record $27.9 billion in the June quarter of 2026, up 9.1 per cent over the year. Of the $2,335 million that growth represents, Queensland accounts for roughly $1,249 million. One state, holding about a fifth of the national population, delivered 53 per cent of the growth.

That is worth understanding properly, because the usual explanation does not survive contact with the data.

Where each state actually sits

The most useful way to read the state figures is not against each other, but against each state’s own history. Measured that way, the spread is enormous.

Residential building work done, seasonally adjusted chain volume measures. State series begin September 1987. The ABS does not publish a seasonally adjusted residential breakdown for the Northern Territory. Source: ABS, Construction Work Done, Australia, Preliminary, June 2026.

Queensland is at its record. South Australia and Victoria are within a few per cent of theirs. New South Wales is 15 per cent below. Western Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory are all roughly a third below their own best quarters.

Those peaks were also set in different eras for different reasons. Western Australia peaked in 2015 on the back of the resources cycle. New South Wales and Victoria peaked in 2018 at the top of the apartment boom. Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory peaked in 2021 during the HomeBuilder period.

This is not one national cycle at different stages. It is several separate cycles that happen to be added together each quarter.

This is not one national cycle at different stages. It is several separate cycles that happen to be added together each quarter.

The national shortfall against 2018 is mostly apartments in Sydney

Comparing New South Wales at its September 2018 peak against the June quarter of 2026, residential building work done is $1,465 million lower.

Comparing each component against itself over the same period, higher density work is down $1,047 million. Detached houses are down $478 million. Alterations and additions are $158 million higher than they were at the peak.

Put plainly, the fall in apartments and townhouses is more than double the fall in detached housing, and it is the reason New South Wales has not recovered its 2018 level.

Victoria tells a milder version of the same story. Against its June 2018 peak, total residential work done is $214 million lower. Detached houses are $17 million higher than they were at the peak and alterations are $195 million higher. Higher density is the only component that has gone backwards, down $385 million.

Victorian detached construction and renovation work have both fully recovered. The apartment sector has not.

One technical note on those comparisons. Chain volume measures are only strictly additive close to the reference year, so the components of a quarter eight years ago do not sum exactly to the published total for that quarter. Each component figure above compares a series against itself over the same period, which is sound. The composition should be read as direction and relative scale rather than as an exact decomposition.

Queensland is at a record, but not on houses

Queensland residential building work done reached $6,383 million in the June quarter, up 24.3 per cent over the year and the highest figure in a series running back to September 1987.

The growth is concentrated. Higher density work rose 37.5 per cent over the year. Alterations and additions rose 42.8 per cent. Detached house construction rose 10.2 per cent, which is strong in national terms but is the slowest of the three.

Detached work in Queensland now sits at $2,890 million against a peak of $3,682 million reached in March 2008. Eighteen years later, the state is building detached houses at about 78 per cent of its best quarter, while its apartment and townhouse sector runs at a record. That composition is consistent with buyers shifting toward Brisbane units as detached stock moved out of reach.

Does interstate migration explain it?

Partly, and less than most coverage assumes.

In the year to 31 December 2025, Queensland and Western Australia were the only two jurisdictions with positive net interstate migration. Queensland gained 16,528 people on that measure and Western Australia gained 10,419. New South Wales lost 21,465. Every other state and territory was negative.

Those two states are also the two strongest on annual residential growth, at 24.3 per cent and 9.4 per cent. The pattern lines up.

It stops lining up as soon as total population is considered. Victoria added 117,300 people over the same year, more than Queensland’s 92,200. Victoria has the second fastest population growth of any state or territory at 1.7 per cent, behind Western Australia and ahead of Queensland at 1.6 per cent. Victorian residential building work done rose 3.4 per cent.

More people arrived in Victoria than in Queensland, and Victoria built substantially less additional housing. Population growth on its own does not produce construction activity.

What distinguishes interstate migration is that it tends to be concentrated, it lands in specific corridors, and the people moving are already in the market. But the honest position is that the ABS data shows a correlation and does not establish a cause. Land supply, planning timelines, finance conditions and state policy all sit in the gap, and none of them can be separated out from these releases.

What the approvals pipeline says about next year

Work done measures what has been completed. Approvals indicate what is coming.

Across the twelve months to June 2026, dwelling approvals tell a similar story to work done in most jurisdictions, with two exceptions worth noting.

Total dwelling units approved, original terms. Original rather than seasonally adjusted because seasonally adjusted state series are not published for the Northern Territory or the Australian Capital Territory. Source: ABS, Building Approvals, Australia, June 2026.

Queensland approvals rose 26.5 per cent over the twelve months, almost exactly matching the 24.3 per cent lift in work done. The pipeline supports the activity, which suggests the state’s lead is not a single quarter artefact. Queensland house approvals reached their highest level since 2021 earlier this year, and the trend has held.

Victoria is the only jurisdiction where approvals went backwards, down 1.7 per cent. It is also the state with the second largest population increase in the country. That combination is the tension worth watching over the next several quarters.

The Australian Capital Territory is the outlier in the other direction. Approvals rose 41.9 per cent while work done fell 18.1 per cent. The base is small, 2,840 dwellings rising to 4,031, so the percentage overstates the scale. But a territory at 63 per cent of its own record with a pipeline building is at a different point in the cycle to one where both measures are falling.

THE GOOD BUILDER TAKE

The national residential figure is now carried by one state and one part of the market. Queensland delivered 53 per cent of the annual growth, and higher density and renovation work delivered three quarters of it nationally.

The corollary is that detached house construction is not where the momentum is. Queensland is building detached houses at 78 per cent of its 2008 peak while its apartment sector runs at a record. New South Wales is short more than a billion dollars a quarter on higher density alone.

For anyone reading national figures to gauge their own conditions, the June quarter is a reminder that the national number describes almost nobody’s market.

What this data cannot tell you

Three limits are worth stating.

The population figures run to December 2025 and the construction figures to June 2026, so they do not align exactly. The next population release covering the March 2026 quarter is scheduled for 17 September 2026.

The construction figures are preliminary, built from responses covering roughly 80 per cent of surveyed entities, and will be revised on 30 September and 7 October 2026.

And nothing in these releases isolates cause. Queensland has run several housing programs across this period, and it is not possible to separate their effect from migration, land supply, finance conditions or the ordinary timing of an apartment cycle using ABS activity data. What the data shows is where work is being done and in what mix. Why is a different question.

Read against broader Australian construction industry conditions, the useful conclusion is narrower than a national headline suggests. There is no single Australian residential construction market at the moment. There are several, and they are years apart.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Construction Work Done, Australia, Preliminary, June 2026; Building Approvals, Australia, June 2026; and National, state and territory population, December 2025. State component and share analysis drawn from ABS Tables 05 and 07.

Last updated: 27 August 2026.

This article is intended for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice. Laws, regulations, and industry requirements vary by state and territory and change over time. Builders and trades professionals should seek independent advice relevant to their specific circumstances before making business, legal, or financial decisions.

Author: TGB Editorial