Construction cost per square metre in Australia in 2026

Building in Australia in 2026 costs roughly $1,600 to $2,900 per square metre for a project home, $2,500 to $7,600 for a custom house, $3,700 to $7,000 for apartments with a lift, $840 to $1,960 for a 4,500 m2 warehouse and $3,350 to $7,800 for an office, gross floor area excluding GST and land. Building type and city drive the spread.

There is no single cost to build per square metre in Australia. A quantity surveyor's rate for a warehouse in Perth and a rate for a 30-storey tower in Brisbane sit about seven times apart, and the same building type moves 20 to 40 per cent between capitals. The figures below come from the Rider Levett Bucknall Riders Digest 2026 (rates current at the fourth quarter of 2025), ABS building approvals, and 2026 cost guides from Cushman and Wakefield, JLL, Altus Group and Turner and Townsend. They are gross floor area rates, exclusive of GST, land, site works and car parking unless stated.

The headline bands by building type

The table below is the quick read: the lowest and highest published rate across the six main capitals for each building type. The low end is generally Adelaide or Perth on a simple specification. The high end is generally Sydney or Brisbane on a complex one.

Two things to keep in mind when you read any rate. First, these are gross floor area (GFA) rates, so the number per lettable or saleable square metre is higher: an office at 80 per cent efficiency turns $4,000 per m2 GFA into $5,000 per m2 of net lettable area. Second, the range is the point: a precast shed with attached offices is a different building from a bare metal-clad box.

Houses and townhouses by city

The ABS building approvals data gives the cheapest and most honest benchmark for a standard new house because it is what builders actually reported. In 2024-25 the average new detached house cost about $474,939 to build across an average floor area of 241.5 m2, or roughly $1,967 per m2 nationally. By state that ran from about $1,585 per m2 in WA and $1,788 in SA to $1,914 in Victoria, $1,987 in Queensland and $2,396 in NSW. Those are volume-builder numbers, and 2026 quotes sit above them after another year of escalation.

The Riders Digest custom-built house range is where architect-designed work lands. RLB publishes townhouse rates per m2 for every capital except Sydney, where it quotes $425,000 to $775,000 per 90 to 120 m2 unit excluding car parking and site works instead. The BMT cost table puts a Sydney three-bedroom two-level brick veneer townhouse at $3,256 to $4,318 per m2, which agrees with the per-unit figure.

A Perth project home reported to the ABS at $1,585 per m2 and a Perth custom house at $3,100 to $5,100 are both real; they are different products. On a townhouse feasibility, a basement adds $1,600 to $4,750 per m2 of basement area on the RLB figures depending on the city, before site works and external works.

Apartments by city and building height

Apartments cost more per square metre the higher they go, because lift cores, structural loading, fire services and facade all scale up. RLB's 2026 rates for 60 to 70 m2 units, excluding car parking, run as follows.

Above 40 storeys Brisbane runs $7,000 to $9,000 per m2, Melbourne $6,200 to $7,100, Sydney $5,500 to $7,800 and Perth $4,800 to $6,200. Brisbane is now the most expensive capital for tall residential in the Riders Digest, which matches the Turner and Townsend finding that Brisbane overtook Sydney as Australia's most expensive construction market in 2025 (a $5,009 per m2 all-typology average against Sydney's $4,866). The ABS builder-reported average for new apartments in 2024-25 was about $4,533 per m2, at the bottom of the RLB range because it is dominated by low and mid-rise product.

Per unit, RLB's Sydney figures are $425,000 to $525,000 for a 60 to 70 m2 apartment in a building up to 10 storeys and $490,000 to $605,000 in a building of 10 to 20 storeys, before car parking. Basement parking in Sydney adds $55,000 to $110,000 per space.

Industrial, office and retail by city

Industrial is the cheapest thing you can build per square metre and the most sensitive to specification. RLB's benchmark is a 4,500 m2 shed with 6 metres to the underside of truss; attached air-conditioned offices are priced separately at $1,980 to $4,100 per m2 of office area.

The RLB shed rate is the building only. Blackark's NSW guide (reviewed September 2026) puts it in project terms: a structure-only steel kit from $500 to $700 per m2 installed, a basic lock-up shell at $500 to $1,200, a standard lettable-spec warehouse at $1,500 to $2,500, and turnkey small-bay industrial units at $2,800 or more once amenities, services and inter-tenancy walls are in. Cushman and Wakefield reported in May 2026 that major industrial builders had lifted warehouse construction pricing by about 6.5 per cent in a single quarter, so a 2025 quote is stale.

On offices, the new-build shell and the fitout are separate budgets. Cushman and Wakefield's 2026 office fitout averages are $2,599 per m2 in Sydney, $2,535 in Melbourne, $2,615 in Brisbane, $2,406 in Perth and Adelaide and $2,938 in Canberra. RLB's Sydney fitout table runs from $1,860 to $3,500 per m2 for open-plan government style space up to $3,250 to $5,300 for solicitors and financiers.

Childcare and medical

Compliance drives the rate here more than finish level. For childcare, the 2026 market sits at roughly $2,300 per m2 for a modular structural-steel centre and $3,500 to $5,500 per m2 for a fully finished traditional build, with national build costs commonly quoted at $30,000 to $35,000 per licensed place. Sydney specialists quote $3,800 to $5,500 per m2 for a traditionally built centre, which puts a centre of up to 60 places at $1.5 million to $3 million and a 60 to 100 place centre at $3 million to $5 million or more before land.

Medical fitouts of a leased tenancy for general practice and primary care run $2,500 to $4,500 per m2, with sterilisation rooms, X-ray suites and procedure rooms pushing above that. The RLB new-build rates for health show how steep the curve gets: a single-storey aged care facility costs $3,900 to $5,100 per m2 in Sydney, $3,600 to $5,200 in Melbourne and $4,500 to $5,500 in Brisbane, while a low-rise private hospital at 45 to 60 m2 per bed runs $4,050 to $5,300 per m2 in Sydney and $8,600 to $11,000 in Brisbane. Medical equipment is excluded from all of those.

How much costs moved in the last 12 months

Construction cost escalation eased from its 2022 peak but never returned to CPI. The indices disagree on the size of the move because they measure different things: RLB's Tender Price Index tracks non-housing tenders, Cotality's Cordell index tracks residential inputs, and Altus and Turner and Townsend forecast from their own project data.

On the residential side, the Cordell Construction Cost Index rose 1.0 per cent in the June 2026 quarter and 2.8 per cent over the year to June 2026, up from 2.3 per cent to March. The ABS producer price index for building construction was running at 4.2 per cent to March 2026. Altus's Q2 2026 outlook has concrete up 5.58 per cent and structural timber up 8.29 per cent year to date, with anti-dumping duties of up to 82 per cent on some Chinese steel products expected to flow into tenders from the September quarter.

The practical reading: a QS report more than six months old is 2 to 5 per cent light before you open it. RLB's Sydney TPI moved from 237.0 at December 2024 to 247.7 at December 2025, and Brisbane's from 244.1 to 256.3, so the index itself is the cleanest way to bring an old estimate forward.

What the rate does and does not include

Every published $/m2 rate is a building cost. It is not a project cost. A lender's QS adds the items below to get to a cost to complete, and together they routinely add 25 to 45 per cent.

• Land, stamp duty and holding costs. Never in the rate.
• Site works, demolition and external works. RLB prices demolition of a brick house at $175 to $280 per m2 and a multi-storey office at up to $580 per m2 in Sydney; bulk earthworks, retaining, stormwater and driveways sit on top.
• Car parking. Priced per space or per m2 of parking area. Sydney CBD basement parking is $58,000 to $110,000 per space.
• Professional fees. Architect, engineers, planner, certifier, QS and project manager, typically 8 to 15 per cent of building cost.
• Authority contributions. Infrastructure charges and developer contributions, which vary by council and can exceed $30,000 per apartment in parts of Sydney.
• Contingency and escalation. A design contingency, a construction contingency and escalation to the mid-point of construction, which is where the tender price index table above gets used.
• GST. All rates on this page exclude it.

The materials-versus-labour split matters too. On a standard house roughly half the building cost is materials, and how the builder funds that gap between paying suppliers and receiving progress claims is covered in how builders pay for materials.

How lenders use the cost per square metre

A lender does not fund a building rate. It funds a QS-verified cost to complete, which is the builder's fixed-price contract plus every item in the list above, with the QS confirming the contract sum sits inside the benchmark band for that building type and city. A Brisbane townhouse contract at $2,400 per m2 against an RLB band of $2,600 to $5,100 gets flagged, and the lender asks for a bigger contingency.

Loan to cost (LTC) is set against that verified figure. Banks typically lend 60 to 65 per cent of total development cost and want presales covering 100 per cent of debt on residential. Non-bank lenders typically go to 65 to 75 per cent LTC with lighter or no presale requirements at a higher rate. Private lenders will fund up to about 80 per cent LTC on a business-purpose basis, priced accordingly and not consumer regulated; mezzanine or preferred equity fills the gap between senior debt and the developer's equity. Most lenders want a 5 to 10 per cent construction contingency inside the cost to complete, and any cost overrun is the borrower's equity first, not the lender's.

On completion the asset can refinance onto a term facility against finished value rather than cost, which is how developers release equity for the next site. See construction finance, commercial property finance and property finance. To get a number from Ventas, send the site address, building type and GFA, the QS report or builder's quote, your equity and any presales. See development finance for how Ventas structures the whole stack.

This is general information only and not financial, credit, or tax advice. Figures are indicative market data from the sources listed, not Ventas offers, and move with the market. Consider your own circumstances and speak to a professional. All finance is subject to lender assessment and approval.

This article is general information only and not financial, credit, or tax advice. Ventas Asset Lending is a finance broker, not a lender. Approvals are subject to lender assessment. Consider your own circumstances and speak to a qualified professional, including your accountant for any tax questions.