1. APRIQ
  2. Method

How this is built

The constraints are the product. Everything below is generated from the same database that produces the figures, so it describes this build and not a previous one.

Every rent on this site is an achieved rent: what a tenant actually started paying, taken from a bond lodged with a state authority. It is not an advertised asking rent, which is what the property portals and most commercial forecasters measure. The two are different populations observed at different moments, and a figure from one cannot settle a claim about the other.

Of 2,351,786 figures held, 2,351,503 can be published. The rest are waiting on a licence or failed a coherence check.

Figures published 2,351,503of 2,351,786 held
Source retrievals 641each archived by hash
Quarantined 283failed a coherence check
Modelled on a market page 0by rule, not by accident

What every figure is labelled

The label travels with the number, on the page and in the database. It is the difference between quoting a government and making a claim of our own.

LabelOn a page it reads PublishedWhat it means
OBSERVEDAs publishedbeside a figure: “publisher’s figure”2,302,172The publisher computed this figure and we reproduce it. Nothing was recalculated, rebased, smoothed or interpolated. If the publisher revises it, our figure changes with theirs and the archive still holds what it said before.
CALCULATEDComputed by APRIQbeside a figure: “our calculation”49,331Arithmetic on observed figures, or a statistic computed from records the publisher released. A gross yield is an observed rent over an observed price. A Tasmanian median is ours, because Tasmania releases the tenancies and no median. The inputs and the rule are published beside the result, and the count it rests on travels with it.
MODELLEDnever appears on a market page0An estimate. Nothing modelled is published on a market page, and nothing modelled may feed a calculated figure - that rule is what stops an estimate laundering itself into an observation two steps later. Forecast ranges are the only modelled output here and they are labelled as forecasts, on their own page.
LICENSEDnever appears on a market page0Third-party data used under a commercial licence. We hold none, which is why there are no dwelling values outside New South Wales and South Australia.

The first column is the word in the database. The second is what a reader sees, and it is written here by the same two functions that write it on every market page — so these are not a description of the vocabulary, they are the vocabulary.

How current this is

Each state publishes on its own schedule and none of them tells us in advance. So this says what the latest quarter is, when it ended, and nothing about when the next one will arrive — a predicted release date would be the only invented figure on the site.

State PublisherLatest figures That quarter endedNext quarter
New South WalesNSW Department of Communities and Justice June quarter 2026 30 June 2026 September quarter 2026, ending 30 September 2026
QueenslandResidential Tenancies Authority June quarter 2026 30 June 2026 September quarter 2026, ending 30 September 2026
South AustraliaSouth Australian Housing Trust June quarter 2026 30 June 2026 September quarter 2026, ending 30 September 2026
TasmaniaTasmanian Department of Justice June quarter 2026 30 June 2026 September quarter 2026, ending 30 September 2026
VictoriaDepartment of Families, Fairness and Housing twelve months to September quarter 2025 30 September 2025 December quarter 2025 has closed and has not appeared here

The rules

Each of these exists because breaking it produced a wrong number here first.

Archive before parse

Every source file is stored by its own SHA-256 hash exactly as retrieved, before anything reads it, and never overwritten. 641 retrievals are on record. Re-pulling each quarter turns into revision detection: when a publisher restates a figure we can show what it said before, because we still have the file.

The licence gate is a database view, not a habit

Pages read from publishable_observation, which excludes any source whose licence is not confirmed in writing and any figure that failed a coherence check. Of 2,351,786 observations held, 2,351,503 can be published. Data we may not publish is invisible here by construction rather than by anyone remembering.

Comparisons are keyed by period, never by position

Publishers report an area only in the quarters where it cleared their reporting threshold, so two suburbs' histories are different lengths. Counting back four rows would compare 2025 with 2021 for one and 2025 with 2019 for the next, and label both "one year". A missing quarter produces no figure rather than a wrong one.

A changing set of areas is not a changing market

Any figure that sums or averages across areas uses a balanced panel - the same areas in every period - because a publisher adding an area between quarters would otherwise show up as market movement. Where that drops coverage, the share kept is published beside the figure.

A restatement is not a change in the market

Publishers occasionally rebuild a series and the whole level steps. A detector looks for that signature - a large move, nearly every area moving the same way, and an unusually tight spread of moves - and a confirmed break goes into a registry so no growth figure is ever measured across one. One is on record.

Volume is not accuracy

Confidence records how much evidence a figure rests on; a separate coherence check records whether it makes sense at all, and it is quarantined on 200 sales as readily as on two. Three ways a figure fails it: a median that falls outside its own quartiles, a weekly rent no Australian market reaches at either end, and a figure out of line with both the quarter before it and the quarter after it while those two agree with each other. 283 figures are held back that way and cannot reach a page.

A forecast must beat assuming nothing changed

Ranges are published, never point estimates, and only at horizons where the method demonstrably beat carrying the last value forward. It failed that test at eight quarters, so 4 quarters is the longest horizon offered. Every range is graded in public against the same scoring rule other forecasters are graded by.

Restatements on record

A publisher rebuilt the series here. No growth figure is measured across one of these; the series is treated as two.

SeriesBreakStep Evidence
NSW total_bonds_held 2017-Q3 → 2017-Q4 -7.4% Detector: z 12.3, 99% of 388 postcodes moving together, dispersion 0.19 of the median move. Confirmed in the publisher workbooks: postcode 2007 Total/Total reads 2231 in issue 121 (Sep 2017), 1885 in issue 122 (Dec 2017) and 1946 in issue 123 (Mar 2018), with dwelling sub-rows summing consistently to each, so the figures are as printed. New Bonds Lodged over the same step moved a normal -4.7%, and the report gained its annual-change columns at the same issue. The quarter spanning it reports a 16.4% closure rate against a 7.4-10.6% band everywhere else.

Every source, and what we are allowed to do with it

Read from the source register, which is also what the licence gate consults. A source marked withheld is loaded and cannot reach a page.

PublisherLicence and attribution FiguresSpanStatus
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · geography CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) Published
Department of Health and Aged Care AU · geography CC BY 2.5 AU © Commonwealth of Australia (Department of Health and Aged Care) Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · population CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 507 2025-06 – 2025-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · population CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 7,281 2025-06 – 2025-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · population CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 4,225 2001-06 – 2025-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · population CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 59,966 2001-06 – 2025-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · rent CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · rent CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 13,175 2021-Q3 – 2021-Q3 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 4,813 1980-Q3 – 2026-Q1 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 5,551 1955-Q1 – 2026-Q1 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 2,484 2003-Q2 – 2026-Q1 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 5,711 1957-Q1 – 2026-Q1 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 6,084 2021-07 – 2022-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 6,084 2022-07 – 2023-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 6,084 2023-07 – 2024-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 6,084 2024-07 – 2025-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 6,084 2025-07 – 2026-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 87,372 2021-07 – 2022-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 87,372 2022-07 – 2023-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 87,372 2023-07 – 2024-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 87,372 2024-07 – 2025-06 Published
Australian Bureau of Statistics AU · supply CC BY 4.0 © Commonwealth of Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics) 87,372 2025-07 – 2026-06 Published
NSW Department of Communities and Justice NSW · rent CC BY 4.0 © State of New South Wales (Department of Communities and Justice) 818,856 2017-Q3 – 2026-Q2 Published
NSW Department of Communities and Justice NSW · value CC BY 4.0 © State of New South Wales (Department of Communities and Justice) 162,453 2017-Q2 – 2026-Q2/2026-Q1 Published
Residential Tenancies Authority QLD · rent CC BY 3.0 AU © The State of Queensland Residential Tenancies Authority 2011 152,615 2012-Q1 – 2026-Q2 Published
South Australian Housing Trust SA · rent CC BY 4.0 © Government of South Australia (South Australian Housing Trust) 487,410 2008-Q2 – 2026-Q2 Published
Department for Housing and Urban Development SA · value CC BY 4.0 © Government of South Australia (Department for Housing and Urban Development) 35,600 2014-Q1 – 2026-Q2 Published
Tasmanian Department of Justice TAS · rent CC BY 4.0 © State of Tasmania (Department of Justice) 11,698 2016-Q4 – 2026-Q2 Published
Tasmanian Department of Justice TAS · rent CC BY 2.5 © State of Tasmania (Department of Justice) 1,389 2021-Q3 – 2022-Q2 Published
Department of Families, Fairness and Housing VIC · rent CC BY 4.0 © State of Victoria (Homes Victoria) 110,772 2000-Q1 – 2025-Q3 Published
Valuer-General Victoria VIC · value CC BY (portal records disagree on version — see docs/sources.md) attribution not yet recorded Withheld

1 source is held back pending a licence confirmed in writing: Valuer-General Victoria. Nothing from it appears anywhere on this site.

What we do not publish

A national rent figureNobody publishes one on this basis. Bond data is administered state by state and the definitions differ, so averaging them would invent the figure a reader would trust most.
A city median built from suburb mediansIt would count a suburb of forty tenancies equally with one of four thousand. Where a publisher computes a regional figure over every bond inside it, that is shown and named as theirs.
Average tenancy lengthComputable from bonds held and bonds lodged, and wrong: the identity assumes a steady state the market has not been in.
Point forecastsA single number invites a precision the evidence does not support. Ranges only, at 4 quarters or less, each with the measured coverage beside it (1q ±7.5%, 2q ±8.4%, 4q ±10.9% at 80%).
Anything scrapedPortal listings are copyright, their terms prohibit it, and they are asking rents rather than achieved ones. The legitimate route is a commercial licence.

What “traceable to source” means

It is a claim about APRIQ’s evidence chain, and it is worth being exact about its two halves, because they are different things and only one of them is a promise about this page.

What APRIQ keeps

For every figure: the organisation that published it, the file, the exact address it was retrieved from, when it was retrieved, the sha256 of the bytes, which retrieval run fetched it, every transformation applied on the way to the number you see, the geography it describes, and when it became knowable. That record is complete and does not depend on what any page displays.

What a page shows you

What kind of evidence it is, how many observations sit behind it, the period it covers, whether it was observed or calculated, how its geography was resolved, how strong and how fresh the evidence is, and the method applied. Source identity comes after those, because those are the things that tell you whether to rely on a number.

When the publisher is named

Wherever a licence requires it, exactly as the licence asks — and every source APRIQ currently holds is openly licensed on those terms, so every figure on this site names its publisher and links its file. Naming is never withheld to avoid a licensing obligation; a source that could not be used openly would not be used at all.

Where it is not

If APRIQ later publishes evidence it observed itself rather than received from a government release, those figures will say so plainly — independently observed market evidence, with their count, period, geography and quality — without listing the individual sites observed. You will always be able to tell what kind of evidence supports a number. Nothing here will be dressed up as government data.

So “traceable to source” does not mean this site prints every address every observation came from, and it never claimed to. It means APRIQ can follow any published figure back through its evidence chain to the bytes it came from, and that what a reader is told about the nature and quality of that evidence is accurate.

How current each dataset is

Four different things, which “updated today” blurs into one.

A figure has a reference period — what it describes. It has a publication date — when its publisher released it. There is a checked date — when APRIQ last asked that publisher whether anything newer exists. And for evidence APRIQ collects itself rather than downloads, there is an observed date. A green badge reading “updated today” over a figure describing last June is true about the check and false about everything a reader would take from it, so all four are shown separately.

Whether something is current is measured against its own publisher’s cadence, not against today. The 2021 Census is the most recent Census and will be until 2027; annual population data is not stale a week after release. What makes a dataset late is an expected release failing to arrive.

Dataset Published by Describes Published Checked Next due State
ASGS geographic correspondencesPer ASGS edition. Edition 3 covers 2021 to 2026. Navigation only — no published figure is derived from it.Australian Bureau of StatisticsNothing heldNeverTodayNo fixed scheduleNo fixed schedule
Building approvals — dwelling units approvedMonthly, about four weeks after the reference month. The sub-state geography cubes follow the headline release by roughly a week.Australian Bureau of StatisticsJune 20266 August 2026Today6 September 2026Current
Census General Community ProfileEvery five years. The 2021 Census first release was 28 June 2022; the next Census is 2026 with data following in 2027. Not stale in the meantime — it is the most recent Census there is.Australian Bureau of StatisticsSeptember quarter 202128 June 2022TodayNo fixed scheduleNo fixed schedule
Regional populationAnnual, about nine months after the 30 June reference date. The 2024-25 edition was released 31 March 2026 and restates every year back to 2001.Australian Bureau of StatisticsJune 202531 March 2026Today1 April 2027Current
Metropolitan median house salesQuarterly. The eight most recent editions appeared 15 to 34 days after the quarter ended.Department for Housing and Urban DevelopmentJune quarter 20269 August 2026Today9 November 2026Current
Victorian Rental Report — moving annual rents by suburbQuarterly. DFFH blocks automated requests, so neither its schedule nor the date any edition went up could be read from a primary source — which is why Victoria is three quarters behind every other state here and APRIQ cannot say whether that is DFFH or itself.Department of Families, Fairness and HousingSeptember quarter 2025NeverNeverNo fixed scheduleCheck failing (3 in a row)
Rent and Sales Report — rent tablesQuarterly. DCJ publishes no stated schedule; the June 2026 quarter was on the page by 18 August 2026, about eight weeks after the quarter closed.NSW Department of Communities and JusticeJune quarter 2026TodayToday25 November 2026Current
Rent and Sales Report — sales tablesQuarterly, released alongside the rent tables but one quarter further behind: the March 2026 quarter was the latest on 18 August 2026.NSW Department of Communities and JusticeMarch quarter 2026TodayToday25 November 2026Current
Median rents quarterly dataQuarterly, for the March, June, September and December quarters. The RTA announced the June 2025 quarter on 18 July 2025, 18 days after it closed.Residential Tenancies AuthorityJune quarter 20264 August 2026Today4 November 2026Current
Private Rental ReportQuarterly. The eight most recent editions appeared 42 to 63 days after the quarter they cover ended.South Australian Housing TrustJune quarter 20268 September 2026Today9 December 2026Current
Rental bond and rental dataMonthly. The eight most recent releases appeared 11 to 46 days after the month ended.Tasmanian Department of JusticeJune quarter 202619 August 2026Today19 September 2026Current

1 of these has never been checked. A check reads the publisher’s own release page rather than re-downloading the file, and is skipped entirely where the next release is not yet due — re-fetching an unchanged cube daily to claim a daily update produces nothing. Detecting a change is also not ingesting one: new data still passes through the archive and every validation gate before it reaches a page.

Corrections

If a figure here is wrong, the fault is ours and the correction is published rather than argued. Every figure carries the source, the licence, the retrieval date, the file hash, the period, the method and the classification, so a disagreement can be settled against the file rather than against an opinion.