Average council rates in Australia: what ratepayers pay by state

What are council rates and how do they work in Australia?

Australian councils and the ACT government collected $25.1 billion in municipal rates in 2024–25, up 49% over the previous decade. This figure covers all rateable land, including residential, commercial, industrial and rural properties, not residential ratepayers alone. The amount an individual property owner pays depends on the property's official value, the council's rate settings and any fixed charges added to the notice.

Unlike a power or water bill, council rates are not based on how much a person uses local services. A higher-value property usually pays more, but rate revenue is pooled and spent on shared local infrastructure and services. Most properties must pay rates. Depending on the state or territory, some land may be exempt, including certain Crown, charitable, religious or educational land. Each year, a council sets a rate multiplier, applies it to each property's official value, then adds fixed charges where they apply.

How a council rates notice is structured

Every rates notice has two main parts. The first is a variable charge based on the property's official value, which is usually set by a government valuer. The second is a set of fixed charges that can apply regardless of property value. These fixed charges, mainly waste collection and emergency services levies, help explain why a unit owner can sometimes pay a similar total bill to a nearby house owner despite owning a lower-value property.

Council rates payment options and due dates

Councils usually send rates notices at the start of each financial year, often between July and August. Notices may arrive by post or email. Most councils allow ratepayers to pay the full annual amount upfront or split the bill across quarterly instalments. Late payment can attract penalty interest.

Average council rates by state and capital city

Canberra's indicative figure of $4,241 is higher than every other capital-city benchmark used here, but it is not a like-for-like city average. It comes from ACT Treasury's Cost of Living Statement, which models household scenarios rather than publishing a single territory-wide rates figure. The $4,241 figure is the "Rates, PFESL, SFL, Health Levy" line for one scenario: a single, fixed-income retiree in an owner-occupied house in Cook, in the 2025–26 Budget papers. The ACT is also structurally different from the other capitals because it operates as a single-tier government with no separate municipal councils, and its long-running tax reform programme has shifted more revenue away from stamp duty and toward general rates. This makes ACT rates structurally different from council rates in other states.

Brisbane's indicative rates-only figure of around $2,032 is based on a $1,519 general rate for an owner-occupied house plus a standard $513 Waste Utility Charge, both published by Brisbane City Council for 2025–26. This separates council rates and waste charges from water and sewerage charges, which are billed separately in Brisbane and can make combined property-related bills look much higher.

Victoria also limits how much councils can increase their total rate revenue each year. The cap was 3.0% for 2025–26, and the Essential Services Commission has since set a lower cap of 2.75% for 2026–27. That means councils cannot automatically convert rising property values into equivalent increases in total rate revenue.

Property values increased across Australia over this period, but rate revenue growth does not come from property values alone. Total collections can also rise when the number of rateable properties increases, when councils change budgets or when charges and levies are adjusted. Victoria's rate cap limits annual increases in council rate revenue.

The state totals can seem counterintuitive. NSW has more residential dwellings than Victoria, and Sydney's own average rate is higher than Melbourne's, yet Victoria collects more total rate revenue than NSW. This likely reflects differences in valuation bases, rate multipliers and the mix of properties across each state's full population of councils, rather than any single explanation. Queensland and Western Australia have seen strong growth in total collections, which may reflect population growth adding new rateable properties to the system.

Which capital city has the highest council rates for houses?

Among the seven non-ACT capital-city benchmarks used in this article, the indicative annual council-rate figure ranges from $1,775 in South Australia to $3,188 in New South Wales. These are capital-city proxies, not state-wide averages. The ACT's $4,241 figure sits above this range, but it is a modelled ACT Treasury household scenario rather than a directly comparable benchmark, so it is shown separately.

As a share of median house value, the ACT scenario is higher than any of the seven benchmarks at 0.40%. Because it is a single household scenario, that percentage should not be compared directly with the other figures. Among the seven benchmark states, the Northern Territory and Tasmania are highest at 0.25% and 0.24%, while Queensland and South Australia are lowest at around 0.18%. NSW has the highest capital-city median house price in the table at $1,485,000, and its indicative rate works out to 0.21% of that value.

Once Brisbane's figure is separated from water and sewerage charges, Queensland no longer appears as a high-rate jurisdiction in this proxy calculation. It sits among the lowest, alongside South Australia.

A higher property price does not automatically mean a higher rate bill. NSW has the highest median house price in the country but a below-average effective rate percentage, since Sydney's rate multiplier is applied to a larger property value base. Queensland's earlier appearance of having a high effective rate was an artefact of combining rates with water and sewerage charges; on a rates-only basis it is one of the lowest in the country.

Do unit owners pay higher council rates than house owners?

When the same indicative annual rate is compared with median house and unit prices in each capital city, units show a higher rate as a percentage of property value than houses in the same city. The gap is widest for the ACT scenario, where the modelled house is charged at 0.40% of property value and the modelled unit at 0.68%, a difference of 0.28 percentage points. This reflects one ACT Treasury household bill measured against two different median prices, not separately observed house and unit rates. Elsewhere, the gap is narrower: in Queensland, once the rates figure is corrected to exclude water and sewerage charges, the gap is about 0.06 percentage points, with units at 0.24% compared with houses at 0.18%.

Outside the ACT scenario, the main reason for the gap is fixed charges. A rates notice can include waste collection charges, emergency services levies and minimum contributions that do not always change based on what a property is worth. These charges can apply to both lower-value units and higher-value houses. Because fixed charges make up a bigger share of a lower-value property, this proxy calculation shows a higher effective rate for units than houses. Actual bills can differ where councils set different fixed charges, minimum rates or rating categories for units and houses.

The ACT scenario's 0.68% is higher than every state average, but it describes one ACT Treasury household bill of $4,241 measured against a median unit price of $625,000, not a separately calculated unit rate. Once that ACT scenario is set aside, the house-versus-unit gap across the rest of the country ranges from about 0.06 percentage points in Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania to about 0.17 to 0.19 percentage points in NSW and the Northern Territory.

How are council rates calculated in Australia?

All Australian councils follow a similar seven-step process to set rates each year. A property owner's bill has two parts: a variable charge based on the property's official value, and a set of flat or service-based fees. Most people focus on the variable charge, but the flat fees can make up a large share of the total notice.

What's changing for council rates in 2026–27?

In the ACT, the average figures hide a wide spread. Rate rises for houses in the 2026–27 Budget range from 4% in Belconnen to 13% in the inner-south suburbs of Forrest and Griffith; for units, the range runs from 2% in Wright and Hackett to 19% in Ainslie. The Police, Fire and Emergency Services Levy rises by $32 to $458, and the Safer Families Levy rises by $10 to $70, while the $100 Health Levy charged to residential and rural properties in 2025–26 (reduced from an originally announced $250 after negotiations with the ACT Greens) ends from 1 July 2026. Because the ACT calculates rates from suburb median values rather than a single territory-wide figure, the change for an individual property depends heavily on which suburb it is in.

In NSW, IPART says the 2026–27 core rate pegs range from 2.5% to 4.2% before each council's population factor, and the final rate pegs range from 2.7% to 5.7%. In Victoria, the Minister for Local Government has set the 2026–27 average rate cap at 2.75%. Brisbane City Council's 2026–27 Budget states that the average general rate increase for residential owner-occupied houses is 3.97%.

Council rate calculator