IPSWICH has emerged as Australia’s fastest-growing property market, with house prices soaring by 116 percent since 2019 – outpacing Melbourne, Brisbane, and Queensland’s booming coastal hubs.

Once regarded by buyers and investors as a budget-friendly city, Ipswich has become a magnet for first-home buyers and interstate investors.

But with that rise has come growing pressure on affordability and urban planning.

“If you’d told anyone six years ago that Ipswich would outperform Melbourne, they wouldn’t have believed you,” Ray White Chief Economist Nerida Conisbee said.

“But that’s exactly what’s happened. It has been a market that people have done extremely well in – the fact you could buy a house under $400,000 quite easily in Ipswich in 2019 might mean you would be looking at around $700,000 now.”

She said the local authority offered a balance few other regions could match; new-build estates and heritage homes, proximity to Brisbane, strong rental returns, and a growing pipeline of infrastructure upgrades.

“Ten years ago, people thought of Ipswich as too far out,” Ms Conisbee said.

“Now, it’s being absorbed into the wider urban footprint. It’s connected.”

She said this evolving identity had created what some economists called a “Goldilocks zone” – not too rural, not too urban; just right.

Ms Conisbee said investor lending data showed Queensland was dominating national investor interest, with Ipswich among the most targeted affordable markets.

But she warned that with demand rising and supply lagging, Ipswich’s affordability was eroding fast.

Still, she said the city’s growth showed no sign of slowing.