Why Toowoomba Is Becoming One of Australia's Smartest Property Markets & Why CJAM Group Moved Early

Drive up the range from Brisbane, past the last of the suburban sprawl, and you'll crest a plateau that opens onto a city most east-coast Australians still underestimate. Toowoomba — once dismissed as a large country town — has been growing at a pace that the numbers can barely keep up with.

The city is experiencing a confluence of infrastructure investment, demographic shifts, and housing demand that has placed it squarely on the radar of investors, developers, and analysts who track where the next wave of property growth will come from. And the early movers are already here.

The single biggest catalyst is the New Toowoomba Hospital at Baillie Henderson — a $1.3 (2.5 billion) billion facility targeting completion in 2027, set to deliver expanded emergency, maternity, surgical, and diagnostic services. For a regional city, a hospital of this scale is transformative. It brings permanent jobs in the thousands, attracts medical professionals and their families, and anchors the kind of ancillary services — specialist clinics, allied health, aged care — that create long-term demand for housing.

"One of the things that makes a really good city is a major hospital," said Craig McDermott, founder of CJAM Group, which is developing two residential projects in the region. "That's what they're building. It changes everything."

Toowoomba's Wellcamp Airport — the only privately funded public airport built in Australia in over 50 years — was developed by the Wagner family on their own land. It can accommodate wide-body aircraft and has become a critical freight hub for the agricultural and logistics industries servicing north and south Queensland. Its expansion continues to drive commercial interest and population growth.

Perhaps the most compelling trend is demographic. Toowoomba's major real estate agencies have documented a pattern: young people leave for Brisbane to attend university, enter the workforce, meet a partner, and establish their career. Then, in their early thirties, they start having children — and they come back.

The result is pent-up demand for quality new housing stock in a market where supply has been chronically limited.

The vacancy rate across the Toowoomba region sits below 1% according to SQM Research. In Middle Ridge — one of the city's premier suburbs — the median house price has reached $986,000, with 12-month price growth of 16.1%. Toowoomba's population is forecast to reach 225,000 by 2046, supported further by the Inland Rail Project, which will cement the city's position as a national logistics hub connecting Melbourne to Brisbane via the western corridor.

Toowoomba has always had wealth. Sitting at the top of the Great Dividing Range at the gateway to the Darling Downs — one of the most productive agricultural regions in the Southern Hemisphere — the city has been home to generations of farming families, graziers, and agribusiness operators. The private school network is extensive, and boarders from western Queensland have long been a fixture of local life.

What's new is the urban amenity. Major shopping centres, expanded healthcare, an international airport, and a growing café and dining scene have closed the lifestyle gap between Toowoomba and the coastal capitals. For the first time, the city offers a genuine alternative — not a compromise.

Developers have taken notice. CJAM Group has launched two projects in the region — Havenwood on Highfields (39 homes) and Rise at Middle Ridge (58 homes) — and reports strong early demand. Other established developers are active across the broader area, with an estimated one thousand lots currently under construction across the Toowoomba corridor.

"We weren't the first here — there were already developers with 500-lot projects under way," McDermott acknowledged. "But when we saw the demand, the infrastructure pipeline, and the kind of buyer that's moving back, we knew this was the right market for what we build."