How much your Brisbane suburb grew (or shrank) last year

“It reminds me of the TV show Neighbours, but without the drama,” says Tim Ryan.

He’s describing his street in South Ripley, a booming housing estate on Greater Brisbane’s south-western outskirts.

The cookie-cutter houses here all look very similar, but Ryan has no regrets about leaving the hustle of Sydney for this growing community.

“On our street, we all have kids the same age, so on the weekends, we don’t even have to go anywhere. All the dads get out on the street and we throw the football with the kids,” Ryan says.

“It’s a really good family environment, a really good vibe.”

Ripley Valley, about 45 minutes from Brisbane’s CBD, gains an average of eight new residents a day, making it the city’s fastest-growing suburb.

Brisbane’s population is predicted to nudge 4 million people (up from 2.8 million) in 20 years, with the city’s economic momentum ahead of the 2032 Olympics almost unrivalled on a global scale, according to Deloitte Access Economics.

But sharp differences are becoming entrenched across the city. While housing estates on the outskirts are booming, dozens of inner- and middle-ring suburbs are losing residents.

Five years ago, Ryan, his wife Julie and their young daughter, Thessa, left Sydney for a new life on Brisbane’s urban fringe.

“I didn’t really think getting a house would be achievable in Sydney,” Ryan said. “But my wife really had the dream of getting one.”

Ryan took a redundancy from his job as a meat manager for Coles. Along with aged-care nurse Julie’s income, it was enough to pull together a deposit for a 410-square-metre corner block and four-bedroom home in South Ripley’s Providence estate for about $650,000.

“I wouldn’t go back to Sydney,” Ryan said.

While Sydney lost 33,000 residents last year, and Melbourne lost 8500, Brisbane gained 11,000 interstate migrants, according to data collated by KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley. And a third of those came from Sydney.

Interstate migration has softened in the past two years as Brisbane house prices have soared and Melbourne became the most affordable city for first-home buyers. But southerners are still seeking the warmer climes of Queensland, and a detached house with a double garage to call their own.

The data collated by Rawnsley shows most interstate migrants to Brisbane are settling in sprawling housing estates – with names like Providence, Kinma Valley and Everleigh – on the city’s outskirts in Ipswich, Logan and Moreton Bay.

More than 2600 interstate migrants moved to Ripley last year alone. The suburb also had the largest increase in births between 2014 and 2024, at a time when Brisbane’s fertility rate is in free fall.

In March, the median price of a detached house in Sydney was about $1.79 million, while in Brisbane it was $1.21 million.

By comparison, the median price for a standalone house in Ripley was $849,500, according to Domain.

“Here you get the benefit of having a nice, new, modern home, with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, two car spaces, and enough backyard space for most families without them having to spend all weekend tending the yard,” said Ray White Ripley real estate agent Vanya Tockuss.

After Ripley, population growth is highest where swathes of land are being cleared to build new homes in Morayfield, and in the Logan suburbs of Greenbank, Chambers Flat, Yarrabilba and Flagstone.

Building a square metre of housing on the outskirts of town is about half the cost of building a square metre of medium- or high-density housing.

However, Queensland’s lifestyle is also a factor, Rawnsley said.

“Queenslanders have a unique lifestyle that prioritises open space, which is why we are likely to see the population continue to increase in the greenfield growth corridors,” he said.

“The problem for the city will be that its rapid growth will diminish some of the advantages that made it so attractive in the first place, like cheaper housing.”

Tockuss said Ripley had not been immune to Brisbane’s exponential house price growth.

“I’ve sold many properties where the owners are telling me they bought the land and built the house for $450,000, and they’re now selling for close to $1 million,” she said.

The suburban squeeze

Meanwhile, the population in Brisbane’s inner- and middle-ring suburbs is either stagnant or in decline.

Rawnsley said the combination of an ageing population and high house prices was contributing to the falls in affluent pockets of the city.

“Housing affordability is squeezing young families out of these areas,” he said.

To buy a median-priced house in Brisbane in January, you needed a combined household pre-tax income of at least $188,000, according to Canstar figures.

Another contributor to this trend is a dearth of babies. Brisbane, like much of Australia, is in the midst of a baby drought.

The city’s fertility rate, which measures expected births per woman, has fallen by 19 per cent in the past decade to a historic low of 1.44.

Within the Brisbane City Council zone, the only suburbs with significant population growth were Pallara and Rochedale, both areas where farmland has made way for new housing estates.

Ex-Sydneysiders and Melburnians are not the only ones being pushed out into the master-planned estates.

Rawnsley’s figures show more than 1000 residents left Brisbane’s southern suburbs for Ipswich last year, while 2046 moved to Logan. Another 500 went north to Morayfield, Burpengary East and Deception Bay.

Associate Professor Stephanie Wyeth, a lecturer in urban planning at The University of Queensland, said the master-planned communities of Yarrabilba, Ripley and Greenbank were five or 10 years old, “and so the services are starting to arrive there”, making it more attractive to locals.

But Wyeth warned about the pitfalls of living on the urban edge. There is often one road in and one road out, public transport is almost non-existent, streets have few established trees to provide shade, and amenities such as public swimming pools and libraries have not yet been built.

“It’s not all roses in master-planned estates,” she said.

“Some of these places get really hot, and we don’t have sufficient trees, and we don’t have public swimming pools where people can cool down during heatwaves.

“We will need to go back and retrofit these communities in the not-too-distant future to improve their walkability and their climate resilience.”

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