Luxury brands are opening more stores in Sydney and Perth while quietly closing them in Brisbane. The category is not growing across Australian CBDs. It is concentrating into fewer cities, and the reasons are specific.

The Gold Coast now has the lowest office vacancy of any market in the country at 7.3 per cent, in a city that added almost 12,000 residents and 873 net new businesses in the most recent quarter alone.

Commercial property spent two years with income doing all the work and capital values standing still. The latest returns data shows genuine appreciation returning to retail and industrial ahead of office.

Market Street and Martin Place have zero vacancy. George Street and Castlereagh Street are effectively full. Sydney's CBD retail core is now the tightest in the country, and luxury accounts for a third of it.

Most CBD retail markets depend on who works in the city during the week. Hobart's depends on who visits it, and why. The vacancy rate, tenant mix and trading rhythm all reflect a city centre built differently.

Nearly one in five Melbourne CBD offices is empty. Parking is cheaper than it was in 2013. Retail vacancy has dropped from 10 per cent to 7.6 per cent in two years. The numbers contradict until you look at who is actually showing up.

Two years ago Perth's CBD retail vacancy sat at 14 per cent. It is now 8.4 per cent. The shopfronts that filled the gap are not cafes or services. They are jewellers, watchmakers and luxury fashion houses.

Brisbane has the tightest office market in the country. Its retail vacancy just climbed to the second highest. Full offices and empty shopfronts do not usually sit side by side. In Brisbane they do.

One in four offices in Canberra's Civic Centre is empty. The public servants who remain are not all coming in. Cafes keep opening anyway, and a different population is starting to fill the daytime gap.

Desks are emptier. Shopfronts are fuller. Parking is more expensive. Adelaide's CBD is pulling in different directions on paper, but the street-level tenant mix connects them into a single story.

Office attendance was supposed to drive CBD retail recovery. In some cities it has. In others, the strongest retail cores are drawing on trade that has nothing to do with the Monday to Friday worker.

A national office vacancy figure tells you how much space is unoccupied. It does not tell you why. The forces behind the latest results vary so sharply by city that the headline number risks being read the wrong way.