Brisbane Apartments Beat Houses on Yield at City Level

At the city level, 4+ bed apartments deliver the highest short-term rental yield in Brisbane at 11.3%, above the standard 3-bed house at 5.3%. Houses average 5.3% across bedroom counts while apartments average 7.6%, a gap of +2.3% in favour of apartments. The bedroom-count curve slopes upward for both property types in Brisbane: larger formats yield more because rents and nightly rates scale faster than the marginal price of adding bedrooms at the 4+ bed end, while smaller formats carry a lower denominator but lag on absolute rent generated. These are city medians across 129 suburbs, so treat the ranking as directional. Your specific suburb will differ, sometimes by a lot.

The City-Level Ranking: Apartments Lead, Larger Formats Dominate

Brisbane's city-median gross yield ranking puts apartments ahead of houses on a like-for-like basis. The ranking below is sorted by short-term rental gross yield, highest first. Every figure is a median across all 129 Brisbane suburbs in our dataset.

City medians across all suburbs. Your suburb's ranking will differ. Ignore any category where your target combination has too few listings to trust the median.

Apartments Outyield Houses at the City Level on a Much Smaller Entry Price

Brisbane apartments average 7.6% on short-term rental yield against 5.3% for houses, a gap of +2.3%. The mechanical reason is entry price. A 3-bed Brisbane house sits at roughly $1,291,192 while a 2-bed apartment sits at roughly $755,053, so the rent each property produces is divided by a much smaller denominator on the apartment side. For a yield-first investor with limited capital, apartments are the obvious starting point in Brisbane.

Houses still have a case, just not on yield. They favour long-term rental investors chasing stable tenants, capital growth from land value, and renovation optionality. Apartments win on short-term rental yield, but come with a hard caveat that rarely shows up in a spreadsheet: strata by-laws. A growing number of Brisbane strata schemes now ban or restrict short-term letting outright, and some lenders tighten serviceability on high-density buildings. Before assuming you can run an apartment as a holiday rental, read the scheme's by-laws and confirm with the body corporate. A strata ban converts the apartment yield figure in the table above into the long-term rental figure next to it.

For pre-tax cash flow the order is clear: apartments win on yield. For appreciation, land value, and resale optionality, houses historically win. Brisbane sits in premium territory (median 3-bed house at roughly $1,291,192 versus Australia at $609,772), so the appreciation case for houses is part of why overall yields here run below the national median of 4.7%. Investors here are paying for a growth market, not a cash flow market.

Larger Formats Win on Yield for Both Houses and Apartments

The bedroom-count curve in Brisbane inverts the textbook pattern for short-term rental: short-term rental yields rise as bedrooms rise, for both houses and apartments. A 4+ bed apartment outperforms a 1-bed or 2-bed apartment on short-term rental percentage return, and a 4+ bed house outperforms a 1-bed house on the same basis. The mechanism is nightly rates, not weekly rents. Larger Brisbane properties command disproportionately high per-night pricing from group and family bookings, and those nightly rates scale faster than sale prices as bedrooms are added. Long-term rental tells a different story in the same city: long-term rental yields are essentially flat across bedroom counts (roughly 2.9% to 3.2% for houses, 4.1% to 4.9% for apartments), because weekly rents do not scale faster than sale prices when you add bedrooms. The rising-with-bedrooms pattern is a short-term rental phenomenon in Brisbane, not a long-term rental one.

That said, the yield-maximising combo is not automatically the best investment. Larger formats face higher absolute capital at risk, thinner buyer pools on resale, and more sensitivity to council-level short-term rental rules targeting whole-home holiday letting. Smaller formats carry lower entry cost and more stable tenant demand, which can matter more than headline yield for a first investment. The table gives you the direction; the dashboard gives you the suburb-level reality.

Treat the 4+ Bed Figure With Extra Caution

Our 4+ bed category bundles 4-bedroom, 5-bedroom, and 6+ bedroom listings into a single median. If the #1 ranked combo in your ranking above is a 4+ bed type, treat it more sceptically than the other figures. A small number of oversized or premium listings can pull the median upward without representing what a mainstream investor would actually buy. The 2-bed and 3-bed numbers are more reliable guides for the properties most investors will actually buy.

Why the City Median is Directional, Not Prescriptive

Brisbane's yield range across suburbs is wide. The top-performing suburb, Pallara - Willawong, runs at 6.4% on long-term rental gross yield, which is well above the city-wide 3-bed house figure of 3.0%. Further down the list, Inala - Richlands sits at 5.4% and Rocklea - Acacia Ridge at 4.7%. That is a meaningful spread inside a single city. A property type that wins at the Brisbane median can easily lose in a premium inner suburb where prices have run ahead of rents, or win by a bigger margin in an affordable outer suburb where rents have held up better than sale prices.

The practical implication: do not treat "apartments beat houses in Brisbane" as a buy signal for any specific apartment. Use it as a starting hypothesis. Then check the suburb you actually care about, because the suburb-level answer is the one you will live with for the next decade. A 3-bed house in Pallara - Willawong may beat a 2-bed apartment in an inner suburb by a wide margin, even though apartments win at the city level.

Negative Gearing Can Flip the After-Tax Verdict Toward Long-Term Rental

The yield ranking above is pre-tax. Australia's tax treatment of rental losses can change the conclusion materially, especially for high-income investors. Negative gearing lets a rental property's cash loss (where mortgage interest plus deductible costs exceed rent) be offset against salary income, reducing taxable income. This overwhelmingly favours long-term rental investors, because buy-to-let properties in premium markets like Brisbane frequently run at a cash-flow loss in early years. A profitable short-term rental, by definition, has no loss to offset.

The benefit scales with marginal tax rate. At 45% (taxable income above $190,000), each dollar of rental loss saves 45 cents in tax. At 30% (the $45,001 to $135,000 bracket), it saves 30 cents. Division 43 building depreciation at 2.5% of construction value amplifies the effect by adding a non-cash deduction on top of genuine cash outflows. The dashboard calculates your after-tax position including negative gearing and depreciation based on your income. Enter your salary to see how the tax treatment changes the short-term rental versus long-term rental comparison for your tax bracket.

Queensland Regulation: Light Touch Statewide, Heavier at Council Level

Queensland has no statewide night cap on short-term rentals, unlike Greater Sydney's 180-night non-hosted limit. That is why Brisbane's available-nights default sits at 330. What Queensland does have is active council-level regulation: the Gold Coast and Noosa have imposed their own permit and tax regimes, and Brisbane City Council applies higher council rates to properties used for short-term accommodation. Verify current Brisbane City Council rules before investing; this is an active legislative area.

What the City-Level Table Does Not Capture

• Suburb-level variation: yields across Brisbane's 129 suburbs span a wide range, and the city-level winner may not be the suburb-level winner.
• Capital appreciation: houses usually win on land value over long horizons, which is not visible in a gross yield snapshot.
• Strata levies: quarterly body corporate fees on apartments are not in the gross yield figures above and can materially shrink net returns.
• Renovation potential: houses carry land value and optionality to extend, subdivide, or rebuild; apartments do not.
• Financing constraints: some lenders restrict studios, 1-bed apartments under 50 square metres, or high-density buildings, which can narrow the buyer pool and affect resale.
• Stamp duty and transaction costs: Queensland stamp duty applies on purchase and varies with price and buyer type. Check with your solicitor.

How to Use This Ranking

Read the table as a hypothesis, not an answer. If apartments win at the Brisbane city level, that tells you where to start looking, not what to buy. The work from here is suburb-level: check the target suburb's yield, check whether strata allows short-term letting if you're aiming at holiday rental, and run the after-tax numbers at your marginal rate. Explore rental data in the dashboard to see every Brisbane suburb ranked by your chosen property type and strategy. For the methodology behind these figures, see our market score methodology and data sources. Brisbane Short-Term Rentals Gross 79% More, but Costs Narrow the Gap covers adjacent questions, and Gold Coast Short-Term Rentals Double Long-Term Income, but Costs Halve the Gap extends the comparison to regional Queensland.

Data reflects market conditions as of April 2026.

This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered financial or legal advice. The "best" property type depends on the investor's specific suburb, goals, and financing, and should never be prescribed at city level. Regulations and market conditions change frequently. Verify current rules with local authorities before making investment decisions.