Queensland may not be seeing new houses due to very high development levies and rising uncertainty in the Queensland planning system.

The Urban Taskforce of Australia (UTA) says housing approvals in Queensland have dropped by 9.3 percent. In contrast, Victoria posted an 11.5 percent increase, while New South Wales showed a slight rise of 0.5 percent.

UTA chief executive officer Aaron Gadiel said, “There is no questioning the integrity of these figures - they are published by the Australia Bureau of Statistics.” The taskforce head, however, pointed out that Queensland is losing and the State Government should take a close look at the factors that drive away investment.

Before the end of August, Real Estate Institute of Queensland's (REIQ) managing director Dan Molloy said, "Over the past two years, Queensland's median house prices have jumped up and down depending on the types of buyers in the market at the time.”

Molloy said, “Last year, the numbers of first-timers in the market was higher than usual, so correspondingly the median went down given they bought cheaper properties. This year, there has been a return to a more even distribution of first and non-first home buyers in the market so the medians have increased accordingly.”