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.

The Queensland commercial property story has been told through industrial for several years. The 2025/26 data tells a broader one, with retail, aged care and hotels all lifting their share of state turnover alongside it.

A sector once considered operationally niche has drawn some of the largest institutional names in global real estate. What self storage offers that traditional commercial property types do not is worth understanding.

Queensland's share of national commercial property investment has climbed from 16.9 per cent to 25.4 per cent in six years. Within that shift, the Gold Coast is increasingly standing out as a market in its own right.

The 2025/26 financial year confirmed the commercial property market has moved out of its subdued phase. How that recovery distributed itself across states and sectors tells a more complicated story than the headline figure.