Rising prices and huge competition kept Aaron and Niki Vinnell out of the property market despite putting offers on eight houses.
“We had been looking since May this year, and we’d listed our own property in August,” Mr Vinnell said.
“Then our property went to market and basically sold within three weeks, and we still hadn’t found a property in the Redcliffe area.”
Aaron and Niki Vinnell found even eight offers weren’t enough to secure them a house in today’s property market. Picture: Lachie Millard
The couple needed to find a new home, having to live in an Airbnb after their home was sold.
“It’d take us an hour to drive to open homes on the weekend, and we were doing this basically every weekend,” Mr Vinnell said, the pair also balancing two full-time jobs and their two year-old child.
Analysis from News Corp and REA has found only 118 suburbs across Queensland have median house values at or below $500,000, a decrease from 510 suburbs five years ago.
This is around a tenth of the 1008 house suburbs across the state — 387 suburbs cost more than $1m for a median house, more than triple of those under $500,000.
Only 118 suburbs across Queensland were recently valued at or below $500,000, with Brisbane’s median house price at $1.15 million.
PropTrack’s final Home Price Index of the year found Brisbane’s median house price rose to $1.15 million in 2025, increasing by more than 13 per cent over the year.
But experts say even if a buyer can afford a place in the more expensive markets, there isn’t enough supply for the demand.
Mr Vinnell said he and his wife travelled to six open homes one weekend, only to find offers had just been placed on each of them.
The agents for each home had not placed this information online, and they were only told when they arrived at the open home on the day.
“They were just giving us the run-around,” he said.
“We were just wasting our time.”
Mr Vinnell said for every month that passed, they found themselves pushed to homes that kept being further away from the city. Picture: Lachie Millard
Each of the couple’s offers fell through during their search.
Mr Vinnell said one deal didn’t eventuate because the seller wanted a 90 day settlement, with the family unable to wait that long.
Another offer on a home in North Lakes was $20,000 north of the final buyer’s price, who won due to accepting an unconditional sale.
In the current housing market, flood-prone Rocklea ended up being Brisbane’s most popular suburb for potential buyers, with an average of 153 views per listing.
After finding a buyers’ agent through PropApp, the couple were finally able to find a house in Kippa-Ring.
While the family was grateful to have a place, it wasn’t what they had first pictured.
“Our ideal home we wanted to move to changed every month, because we kept being pushed back by price increases,” Mr Vinnell said.
“We basically had to sacrifice things. The house we’ve moved into, we’re basically going to have to build it up.”
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