At $700k, Ipswich mostly buys you an older or smaller house, a townhouse or a unit, or a new build. It does not buy you the typical established house. The cheapest established suburbs now have house medians that start in the low $700s, so your budget sits at or just under the bottom of the market.
That changes the search. Here's how I'd think about it.
What the medians say
These are house medians for the last 12 months, from a local agency's sales table (ipswich.com.au). The citywide median on that table is $870,000 across roughly 4,900 sales.
| Suburb | House median | Sales |
|---|---|---|
| Goodna | $780,000 | 158 |
| Bundamba | $790,000 | 115 |
| Leichhardt | $745,000 | 99 |
| East Ipswich | $740,000 | 54 |
| North Booval | $726,000 | 71 |
| One Mile | $725,000 | 43 |
| Moores Pocket | $703,000 | 10 |
Two warnings before you lean on these. Medians differ by source and period. Cotality has Goodna's house median at $754,000 for the 12 months to July, on 177 sales, against $780,000 in the table above. Neither is wrong, they're just measuring differently. And Moores Pocket's $703,000 rests on 10 sales, which tells you very little about what your house will fetch.
A median is the middle sale, so half of those houses sold for less. Under $700k you're shopping the lower half of each suburb: smaller blocks, older stock, tired renovations, or the wrong side of a busy road.
Three kinds of $700k home
An older house in an inner suburb. North Booval, One Mile, East Ipswich and Leichhardt are where the sub-$750k houses tend to be. You get land and a house, and you give up condition and, often, flood certainty. More on that below.
A unit or townhouse in Goodna or Redbank. This is where sub-$700k is realistic. Cotality's 12 months to July 2026 shows a Goodna unit median of $583,000 (up 24.2%, on 35 sales), a Redbank unit median of $663,000 and an Ipswich CBD unit median of $660,000. Those samples are small, so treat them as a guide. You trade land and long-term scarcity for a price that leaves room to move. Check the body corporate: levies, sinking fund, and any works coming.
A new build or land package. This is the one where the rules help you most, because of how Queensland treats new homes (next section). The trade-off is that you're paying for new, you wait for it to be built, and you're buying in an estate area, such as Ripley or Springfield, rather than an established street.
None of these is the right answer for everyone. If you want a backyard and can live with a 1980s kitchen, the older house. If you want to be in the market at the lowest entry price, the unit. If you want low maintenance and the concessions, the new build.
The duty cliff at $700k
If you're a first-home buyer, $700k is a line in the sand. For an established home in Queensland, transfer duty is nil at $700,000 or less. From $700,001 to $799,999 you get a partial concession that shrinks as the price rises, and from $800,000 there's none. The largest saving is $24,525. You also need to move in within 1 year of settlement, and since 1 August 2026 every buyer claiming a home concession must be an Australian citizen, a permanent resident or a specified foreign retiree.
So a $690k purchase and a $710k purchase are not $20k apart in total cost. Run both through the stamp duty calculator and you'll see the gap. Don't stretch to the vendor's price if it pushes you over the line without a reason.
New homes work differently. For a new home or vacant land, the first home (new home) concession takes duty to nil with no value cap, for contracts dated 1 May 2025 or later. The $30,000 Queensland First Home Owner Grant also applies, but only to new homes valued under $750,000 including land, and not to established homes. It continues for eligible contracts signed from 1 July 2026. My post on stacking the Queensland grant and concessions walks through how the pieces fit, and the first home buyer grant checker will tell you where you land.
Then there's the federal scheme that lets eligible first-home buyers purchase with a 5% deposit and without paying lenders mortgage insurance. Since 1 October 2025 it has no income caps and no limit on places. Price caps apply, though. In Queensland they're $1,000,000 for the capital city, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, and $700,000 for the rest of the state. Confirm which tier your target postcode falls in on Housing Australia's site before you build a plan around it. I covered the catches in the 5% deposit scheme post.
This is general information only, not financial advice. Check duty and grant eligibility with the Queensland Revenue Office and your lender before you sign anything.
A falling market with rising rates
The backdrop has shifted. The RBA lifted the cash rate target to 4.60% on 29 September, effective 30 September. That was the Board's fourth rise this year, and the minutes say rates could rise further if needed. The next decision is due on 3 November, so check where the rate sits when you read this.
Cotality's Home Value Index has Greater Brisbane dwelling values down 1.5% in September, the sharpest monthly fall of any capital. Annual growth was still 5.9%, and nationally values have fallen six months in a row and sit 5.2% below the March 2026 peak. Those are Greater Brisbane and national figures, not Ipswich ones. In the four weeks to 11 October, Brisbane's listings were up 60.4% on the year and selling times had stretched from 17 to 38 days.
Now look at the Ipswich growth numbers you'll see online. One agency found all 17 Ipswich and Western Corridor suburbs it checked had house price growth over the 12 months to August 2026, from 7.1% in Karalee to 22.1% in Raceview. Goodna's days-on-market figures (13 for units, 18 for houses) are averages for the 12 months to July. All of that is backward-looking. It describes the run, not what a house sells for next month.
What that means in practice:
- Weight recent sales over 12-month medians, and ask what a comparable property sold for in the last few weeks, not the last year.
- Look at how long a listing has been up and whether the price has moved. A slower market gives you room to negotiate, including on settlement and conditions.
- Test your repayments at a higher rate than today's. The mortgage repayment calculator and borrowing power calculator make that quick, and why your borrowing power dropped explains what's behind it.
Flood and overlay checks
This is the check I'd never skip in Ipswich. A third-party overlay analysis (Layered Geo) finds 80 of Ipswich City's 82 suburbs have some mapped flood area. For several of the cheaper inner suburbs, the share of the suburb mapped is very high: North Booval 100%, One Mile 99%, East Ipswich 94% and Redbank 88%.
Those are suburb-wide shares, not a verdict on any one lot. Some properties in a heavily mapped suburb sit higher than their neighbours. I won't call any suburb safe, and you shouldn't either. For the address you're considering:
- Look it up in Ipswich City Council's City Plan 2025 overlay, OV12 Flood Risk and Overland Flow. It shows five levels of development-related flood risk.
- Check council's historical flood maps for 1974, 2011 and 2022. At the David Trumpy Bridge the February 2022 peak was 16.7m, against 19.4m in 2011 and 20.7m in 1974. Context matters here, but so does the specific lot.
- Get an insurance quote before the contract goes unconditional. Don't assume you can get cover on the terms you want.
- On older houses, a building and pest inspection should look hard at subfloor, stumps and timber in Queenslanders, and at roof, drainage and cracking in low-set brick.
Where a buyer's agent helps, and where they don't
I run a business that matches buyers with agents, so discount this accordingly. But here's where I think an agent earns their place at this price:
- Flood and overlay work. Reading the overlay, the flood history and the insurance position together, and knowing what to ask the selling agent.
- Comparable sales in a softening market. Old comps flatter the seller. Choosing the right recent ones takes practice.
- Thin-sample suburbs. If a median rests on 10 or 35 sales, one outlier distorts it. An agent who works the area has a feel for what sits behind the number.
And where you probably don't need one: if you've done the overlay checks yourself, have your finance sorted, can read comparable sales confidently, and are buying a standard new package where the price is fixed on paper. The same goes if you have the time to inspect plenty of properties. I wrote about where the hours actually go if you want to weigh that honestly. If you do hire one, agents charge in different ways (a fixed fee, a percentage, an engagement fee), so ask how it works up front. This post on costs covers the structures.
If you'd rather have someone run those checks, Converta can match you with a licensed buyer's agent who works the Ipswich area, and you can speak to more than one before you decide.
A note for investors
The numbers are modest. Realestate.com.au data, from June 2025 to May 2026, shows an Ipswich LGA house median of $813,500 and median rent of $550 a week, a 3.52% gross yield. Cotality's Goodna house figure is a 3.9% gross yield. The LGA unit median in that data rests on only 6 sales, so I wouldn't use it. Gross yield ignores rates, insurance, body corporate and vacancy, so work it through properly with the rental yield calculator and how to calculate rental yield properly. That's general information, not financial or tax advice.
Before you make an offer
Pick the type of home first, because that decides which rules apply. Confirm the duty and grant position with the Queensland Revenue Office. Check the flood overlay for the actual address. Then anchor your offer to recent sales, not to last year's growth.