It is an investor and first apartment market far more than a family one, and the difference between a good building and a bad one here is worth more than the difference between two suburbs elsewhere.
Our patch / Fortitude Valley 4006
Fortitude Valley has a median age of 31 and is eighteen per cent owner occupied, among the most heavily rented suburbs in the corridor. Four hundred and twenty five units sold in the year to July 2026.
The numbers
Every figure on this page is Cotality's, for the twelve months to July 2026, and we have left it as published rather than rounding it into a nicer shape. The median is the middle sale price, not an average, and not a valuation.
Kaló haus found here
2
Median house price
$738,000
Houses sold, 12 months
53
Days on market
16
Median unit price
$700,000
Cotality, data to July 2026. Brisbane is the whole council area.
Cotality, data to July 2026. Brisbane is the whole council area.
This is an apartment suburb. 425 units sold against 53 houses in the same twelve months, so the unit market is the real market here and the house median rests on a small sample. Read it with that in mind.
Median house, a year earlier
Withheld. The year earlier figure the source publishes for Fortitude Valley implies a move so far from its own valuation series that one of the two has to be wrong, and we would rather print nothing than print the wrong one.
Change in median value
+178.6% over twelve months. This is Cotality's valuation series, which runs on a different base from the median sale price above, so the two will not agree and are not meant to.
Vendor discount
-1.5% from the asking price, typically
Units
$700,000 median, 425 sales, 18 days to sell
In context
Cotality, data to June or July 2026 depending on the suburb. The periods are not identical, so read this as the order rather than the gap.
The rest of the patch
We have bought right across Brisbane, 306 kaló haus in 108 suburbs, and we will happily work anywhere in the city. This patch is simply where we have done it most often, and the whole of it is on Our patch.
Who lives here
18%
Owner occupied
82%
Rented
$675
Median weekly rent, unit
5.0%
Gross yield, unit
9,708
Population
31
Median age
$86K
Median household income
Tenure, population, age and household income are ABS Census 2021. Rents are the Cotality median weekly asking rent, read November 2026, with periods running from June to October 2026 depending on the suburb. Gross yield is the annualised rent against the median sale price on this page, before costs, so it is a comparison between suburbs rather than a forecast of your return. A thin rental market moves these figures around, and where a suburb has too few sales to mean anything the line is left out rather than filled in.
Before you buy here
This is a river suburb, and the river is the whole flood question. Parts of the inner east and inner north went under in 2011 and again in February 2022, and the line is rarely where people assume it is: two houses on the same street can sit on opposite sides of it. There is no suburb level answer to this and anyone offering one is guessing. We pull a Council FloodWise report on every property before you make an offer.
Brisbane City Council publishes flood risk address by address through the FloodWise Property Report. There is no suburb level answer, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. Council's creek mapping was last updated in September 2024, so older advice may be out of date.
Roads, rail and river
Train
Fortitude Valley station, 0.3km. Exhibition 1km
Ferry
Howard Smith Wharves terminal, 0.6km
Road
1.7km to the CBD
State school catchments
Primary
Brisbane Central State School and New Farm State School
Secondary
Fortitude Valley State Secondary College
Catchments follow streets, not suburb boundaries, and Fortitude Valley falls across more than one. Confirm your exact zone by street address on EdMap before you let a catchment decide anything. We do this on every property.
It is an investor and first apartment market far more than a family one, and the difference between a good building and a bad one here is worth more than the difference between two suburbs elsewhere.
The market now
The medians above cover the twelve months to July 2026, and Brisbane has turned since. Cotality has the city down 1.5 per cent in September 2026 and 4.7 per cent across the quarter, a sixth consecutive monthly fall, leaving values close to 6 per cent below the peak they reached in May. Annual growth was revised down from 10.8 per cent to 5.9 per cent in a single release.
Here is the clearest measure of how far it has turned. A year ago a house in Brisbane sold in a median 17 days. It now takes 38. The figure for Fortitude Valley above is a median across the twelve months to July 2026, not today, which is exactly why a twelve month median is the wrong thing to buy off on its own. Total listings are up more than 60 per cent while new listings have fallen, sales are down about 27 per cent on the same quarter last year, and in the week to 24 October only 21 per cent of Brisbane auctions sold under the hammer. A hundred and seventeen passed in. Every one of those is a conversation rather than a contest.
Two other things are shaping who you are bidding against. The cash rate has been at 4.6 per cent since the end of September, and from July 2027 negative gearing on residential property is limited to new builds while the fifty per cent capital gains discount is replaced by indexation plus a minimum tax. Both are law, neither touches the main residence exemption, and your accountant is the right person to advise you on your own position. The effect we see at inspections is fewer investors in the room.
What all of that means for a buyer here: a twelve month median is a rear view mirror, and right now it is flattering. There is more stock, more time, and more room to negotiate than there has been in four years.
Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, October 2026; Domain auction results, week to 24 October 2026, preliminary; Reserve Bank of Australia; Australian Taxation Office. Read on 27 October 2026 and superseded by the November release.
An hour, no charge, and no commitment at the end of it. If we cannot add value to your search in Fortitude Valley, we will say so on the call.