Brisbane's Office Market Turns a Corner — and Savvy Tenants Are Already Moving In

Brisbane's CBD office vacancy rate has dropped to 11.2 per cent in the June 2026 quarter, its lowest reading since before the pandemic, according to Property Council of Australia data released this week. After years of subdued leasing activity and sky-high incentives, landlords are quietly pulling back the generous fit-out packages that defined the post-COVID leasing era — and tenants who hesitated are now scrambling.

The timing matters. With AI datacentre developers competing aggressively for industrial land across South East Queensland, traditional logistics and warehousing tenants have been squeezed toward inner-city fringe locations, adding a new layer of pressure to an already tightening commercial market. The ripple effect is landing squarely on Brisbane's mid-tier office precincts, where rents are rising faster than the headline CBD numbers suggest.

Who Is Already Moving

The beneficiaries are concentrated and identifiable. Waterfront precinct at 1 Eagle Street has seen two floors change tenants in the past 90 days, with professional services and financial advisory firms snapping up space that sat vacant for much of 2023 and 2024. Across the river, the Montague Road corridor in West End — long the province of creative agencies and small tech startups — has attracted several mid-sized engineering and environmental consultancy firms seeking both affordability and proximity to the South Bank cultural precinct.

Dexus, which manages a substantial chunk of Brisbane's premium office stock including assets on Creek Street in the CBD, reported improved occupancy across its Queensland portfolio in its most recent update. Charter Hall's King George Square-adjacent holdings have similarly reported stronger enquiry volumes than at any point in the past three years. Neither company is offering the 18-to-24-month rent-free periods that were common in 2022.

The Spring Hill and Fortitude Valley fringe markets tell a sharper story. Net face rents in those precincts have moved from roughly $420 per square metre in mid-2024 to around $465 per square metre today, a gain of more than 10 per cent in under two years. Incentives — once running as high as 35 per cent of total lease value — have contracted to closer to 22 per cent for B-grade stock, according to CBRE's Queensland research desk.

The Supply Gap Driving the Shift

Very little new office supply is coming. The last major CBD tower to complete was 360 Queen Street in 2022. The next significant speculative project is not expected to deliver before late 2028 at the earliest, meaning the existing stock has to absorb whatever demand emerges from Brisbane's continued growth as a global city hosting the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games infrastructure boom. That event-related professional services activity — legal, engineering, project management, urban planning — is starting to translate into real leasing decisions now, not in 2031.

Queensland Treasury Corporation and several state government agencies have also been consolidating tenancies rather than expanding their footprints, freeing up some secondary floors in mid-2025 and early 2026. That stock was absorbed faster than most agents expected, largely by interstate firms establishing Brisbane bridgeheads ahead of the Olympic cycle spending surge.

For tenants still sitting on the fence, the practical calculus has shifted. Businesses that locked in five-year leases at peak-incentive conditions in 2022 and 2023 are sitting on effective rents well below today's market. Those leases expire progressively from 2027 onward, and when they do, the renewal terms will be materially different. Firms with lease events in the next 12 to 18 months should be in the market now — both to understand their options and to negotiate before incentive pools shrink further. The window of relative opportunity has not closed, but it is measurably narrower than it was six months ago.