Our first State of the Land reports cover six years of real lot sales across Queensland and Victoria. The most useful number in them is not the price growth. It is the starting position.
At the start of the series, Queensland had 5.4 months of land supply.
Victoria has 5.4 months now.
Same measure, same method, same dataset. What separates the two is six years of trading that has already run its course in one state and has not yet run in the other.
Queensland went from 5.4 months to 1.6, touching a low of 1.1 in the first quarter of 2026. Under about three months, you are competing for stock rather than choosing it. Queensland crossed that line and has not been back.
We have the whole run, quarter by quarter, to the second quarter of 2026. That is what these reports are.
The headline is the least useful thing in either report
Queensland doubled. Victoria did not. That is the comparison, and it is close to useless on a Monday morning when you are pricing a job.
A doubling tells you the market moved. It does not tell you whether you can buy a lot this quarter, what format that lot will be, or whether you can put a slab on it before your finance approval expires.
A state average describes no corridor in particular. It is the average of markets that are behaving nothing like each other.
That is the reason we built the reports around corridors rather than states. Twelve corridors in Queensland, seven in Victoria, each ranked on median lot price, six year growth, months of supply and monthly absorption.
Same number, two very different roads to it
Here is where the parallel gets interesting, and where it stops being a prediction.
Queensland reached 5.4 months on the way down, moving from a reasonably balanced market into genuine scarcity. Victoria reached 5.4 months on the way back up, after peaking at 12.3 months. That is a market that carried heavy oversupply and has been working through it.
Identical reading. Opposite direction of travel.
That distinction is the whole difference between a corridor that is tightening and a corridor that is clearing, and none of it is visible in a single current figure. It is only visible in the series. Which is why the reports publish all six years rather than the number as it stands today.
Victoria is sitting where Queensland started. Whether it goes the same way is not something we claim to know. What we can tell you is exactly what the same starting position looked like on the way through, in a market next door, with the same measures applied.
Why approvals data will not tell you this
Most of what the industry reads about land is built on building approvals. Approvals are a record of decisions that have already been made. They are useful, and they are the standing limitation of most Australian construction industry trends reporting, including a fair amount of ours.
Absorption works the other way. It measures the share of available lots clearing each month, which moves before anything reaches a council desk. Land sells, then the slab goes down. If you want to know where Australia is actually building next quarter rather than last quarter, absorption is the number that gets you there first.
For suppliers, that lead time is the difference between stocking a corridor and chasing it. For trades, it is where the slabs are heading. For builders, it is where to point sales effort and supervisor capacity before the competition works it out.
Supply you cannot start on is not supply
The measure most builders skip is titled stock. It is the share of remaining lots that are actually registered and ready to build on.
A corridor can show comfortable months of supply and still have very little you can start on this year. The headline figure counts lots that are on the market. It does not care whether they are titled.
That gap is where programs come apart. A contract signed against untitled land is a contract with an unknown start date, and cash flow for builders does not survive many unknown start dates in a row.
We have covered land registration times across the states before. The reports go a step further and tell you the titled share, corridor by corridor, so you can see which supply is real and which is queued.
What is in each report
Both editions run the same five sections.
Every corridor ranked. Twelve in Queensland, seven in Victoria, on median lot price, six year growth, months of supply and monthly absorption.
Seven standard volume builder lot formats, priced whole lot and per square metre, with six year growth on each.
Six years of quarterly series on price, dollars per square metre, supply and product mix.
A read for builders on every section. What each number means for pricing, programming and land buying.
Underlying land data you cannot assemble yourself, supplied through our partnership with Terralytics.
The second one is worth pausing on. Pricing a lot format rather than a suburb is the difference between a land allowance that holds and one that quietly eats a job. A 12.5 metre frontage and a 16 metre frontage in the same estate are two different products with two different price paths, and a suburb median flattens both.
Where the data comes from
Actual lot sales inside active estates across Queensland and Victoria, six years of them, quarter by quarter, to the second quarter of 2026. Every release and every unsold lot is counted. Every lot is sorted by its frontage and its area.
This is not building approvals and it is not median house prices. Land that developers are still holding back is left out, because the question the reports answer is what you can buy and build on now.
We set the questions, run the analysis and write the conclusions. Land data is supplied by Terralytics. No commercial partner has approval over the findings.
That last line matters more than it sounds. Most land market intelligence reaching this industry comes from parties holding a position in the outcome. The people telling builders what land is worth are frequently the same people selling it, financing it or marketing it. We hold no position in the dirt. We present the data.
Two states. Buy either, or both
State of the Land, inaugural edition
Queensland. Twelve corridors, data to the second quarter of 2026. PDF.
Victoria. Seven corridors, data to the second quarter of 2026. PDF.
Both states. Nineteen corridors, two PDFs.
Pricing for each edition and the two state bundle is on the report page.
Buy the state you build in. The case for taking both is the argument this article has been making. Queensland is the worked example, six years of tightening now on the record. Victoria is the market standing at the same reading Queensland opened on.
Set either against a land allowance that is out by a few per cent across a season of contracts, or a build program written against lots that turn out not to be titled. That is the comparison worth making.
Common questions
Six years of quarterly data, running to the second quarter of 2026. Every quarter is reported, not just the endpoints.
No. It is actual lot sales inside active estates, sorted by frontage and area. Approvals tell you what has already been decided. Median house prices tell you about houses, not land.
How long the land currently on the market would last at the rate it is selling. Around three months is a reasonable balance. Below that you are competing for stock. Above it you have choice.
Buy the state you build in. Buy both if you are deciding where to deploy capacity, or if you want the Queensland series as a worked example of what a tightening market looks like from the inside.
This is the inaugural edition. Further editions across the rest of Australia are planned in coming quarters, again with Terralytics.
The point
Land is the first cost in a build and the least well measured. Most builders find out what the land market did after it had already done it, usually from someone with something to sell off the back of it.
Queensland has now run six years of tightening on the record. Victoria is standing at the same reading Queensland opened on. That is not a forecast. It is a reason to know your corridor numbers before the next release, rather than after it.
State of the Land: Queensland and State of the Land: Victoria are available now.
Get the reports.
Related reading
1. Where Australia is actually building right now
2. The states with the fastest and slowest land registration times
3. Who controls the land in your state
General information only. This article summarises data published in The Good Builder State of the Land reports and does not take account of the circumstances of any particular business. Figures describe market conditions to the second quarter of 2026 and will change.
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