I've leaned on population growth as the explanation for almost everything in this market since I started writing about it back in 2023. Worth being honest that the number itself has actually been easing, interstate migration into Queensland dropped a meaningful amount in the most recent year of data compared to the year before, even though the state still leads the country by a wide margin.
Prices haven't slowed down to match that easing. If population growth alone explained the market, a slowdown there should show up in the price data with some lag. It hasn't, not clearly.
My honest read is that the supply side, insolvencies, the years-behind infrastructure pipeline, apartment completions running at a fraction of what's needed, has become the more binding constraint over the last year or two, even as the demand side eases slightly at the margin. Worth updating the explanation as the data updates, rather than repeating the same story out of habit.