Latest Industrial Vacancy Rates Across Australia

JLL Research's comprehensive Industrial Vacancy and Supply update reveals the ongoing divergence between gateway industrial markets and the rest of Australia. The vacancy rate in the Sydney and Melbourne markets increased in Q4 2025. Conversely, vacancy in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth tightened. Sydney overtook Brisbane as the market with the highest overall vacancy at 5.8%. Meanwhile, Perth maintained Australia's lowest industrial vacancy rate at just 1.6%.

• Sydney: 5.8% vacancy across 23.1 million sqm
• Melbourne: 4.3% vacancy across 30.5 million sqm (Australia's largest market)
• Brisbane: 5.2% vacancy across 13.5 million sqm.
• Perth: 1.6% vacancy (lowest nationally) across 7.6 million sqm
• Adelaide: 3.3% vacancy across 5.5 million sqm

• Melbourne's South East: 3.5% vacancy rate (tightest major eastern seaboard market)
• Sydney's Outer Central West: 6.0% vacancy rate (highest proportion of sub-lease vacancy nationally)
• Brisbane’s Southern: 5.4% vacancy rate
• Perth's East: 1.2% vacancy rate
• Adelaide’s North West: 4.2% vacancy rate

The Q4 2025 vacancy data reveals significant variations across Australia's industrial landscapes.

In Melbourne, the South East precinct remains the tightest eastern seaboard sub-market (>1,000,000 sqm) with a vacancy rate of 3.5%, despite increasing 1.4 percentage points over the the quarter. The vacancy rate in Melbourne’s North precinct, where developers have introduced over 250,000 sqm of speculative warehouse space over the past two years, has escalated rapidly, reaching 8.6% in Q4 2025. Occupancy in the West precinct has been broadly stable for most of 2025, hovering between 5.3% - 5-4% since Q2 2025.

Apart from Sydney's North precinct, where occupier activity is comparatively low, vacancy across all precincts increased in Q4 2025. The Inner West precinct remains the tightest at 4.0%. Vacancy in Sydney’s largest precinct, Outer Central West which covers 9.8 million sqm increased to 6.0% over the quarter after an acceleration of sub-lease space introduced to market over the quarter. Vacancy in the >5,000 sqm size cohort in South Sydney increased further to 10.0% as occupiers continue to explore more affordable accommodation options in outer western precincts.

Despite the ongoing flow of speculative warehouse supply delivered to the Brisbane market, headline vacancy decreased marginally to 5.2% in Q4 2025. The vacancy rate in the Southern precinct, which represents 61.1% to total warehouse space in the market, decreased from 6.0% to 5.4% as occupiers look to secure efficient space along Brisbane’s arterial road network.

The non-eastern seaboard markets of Perth and Adelaide are Australia’s smallest industrial markets and maintain the lowest vacancy nationally. The vacancy rate across all of Perth’s precincts decreased in Q4 2025, resulting in a headline vacancy rate of 1.6% - the tightest vacancy in Australia. Perth’s largest precinct, The East, fell to just 1.2%. The decline in vacancy in Adelaide was more marginal, reaching 3.3% in Q4 2025. The vacancy rate in the North West precinct, which accounts for 48.7% of Adelaide’s total warehouse space, decreased by 0.2 percentage points to 4.2%.

Sub-lease vacancy rates increased in Australia’s largest two industrial markets, Sydney and Melbourne, reaching 1.5% and 1.1% in Q4 2025 respectively. Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide sublease vacancy is very low accounting for less than 0.5% of all stock.

JLL's analysis reveals that vacancy within the medium-to-large building size cohort (10,000-30,000 sqm) remains the highest of all the size cohorts nationally, reaching 6.0% in Q4 2025. The has been driven largely by ongoing speculative development within the size cohort, particularly along the eastern seaboard. Leasing demand for smaller space (<10,000 sqm) has been more buoyant. As a result, the vacancy rate within this size cohort is the tightest at 3.7%.

In the current slowing occupier demand environment, developer appetite for speculative warehouse projects is softening. As the pendulum swings towards the assurance of income that pre-commitments provide, it’s likely that the escalations in vacancy will moderate over the short-term.

That being said, occupiers will continue to look to improve business efficiencies through accommodation and will opportunistically look to upgrade facilities. This is likely to place pressure on secondary vacancy levels in major markets over the balance of 2026.

JLL Research tracks over 80.0 million sqm of industrial stock nationally, providing crucial market insights into Australia’s industrial market dynamics by precinct, suburb, and building size.