Sunshine Coast transformed from holiday strip to Queensland's fastest-growing region

The Sunshine Coast is carrying about 370,000 residents today, a number the regional council expects to push past 500,000 by 2041. That projection, embedded in the Sunshine Coast Planning Scheme 2014 and its subsequent amendments, is not a distant abstraction. It is the arithmetic behind almost every contentious decision the region has faced over the past five years, from the half-built towers rising along Maroochydore's new CBD grid to the short-term rental debate eating up council chamber hours in Caloundra.

Understanding where the coast sits right now requires going back further than the COVID-19 migration wave, though that period, roughly 2020 to 2022, undeniably accelerated the pressure. The deeper story starts with the 2009 decision by the Sunshine Coast Council to pursue a purpose-built city centre on the former Horton Park Golf Course site at Maroochydore. That call locked in a 53-hectare urban footprint on reclaimed cane and golf land, channelled by Cornmeal Creek, and set the terms for what developers, planners and residents have been arguing about ever since.

Infrastructure Spending Catches Up, Slowly

The Sunshine Coast University Hospital opened at Birtinya in April 2017 with 738 beds, the single largest piece of public infrastructure the region had seen. The facility anchored the Kawana health and education precinct and drew thousands of workers into surrounding suburbs including Bokarina, Birtinya and Little Mountain. A $665 million expansion, announced by the Queensland Government and confirmed in the 2025-26 state budget, is now underway and will add a new clinical services building along with additional surgical capacity. Completion is targeted for 2028.

The airport at Marcoola tells a similar story of long-delayed ambition finally finding money. Sunshine Coast Airport's new terminal opened in 2020, almost comically timed given international aviation's collapse, but the facility was designed for international routes from the outset. Singapore Airlines launched direct services to Singapore from early 2024, the first scheduled international flights the airport had ever operated, validating a planning argument that local boosters had been making since the 1990s.

Population growth and infrastructure spending arrive on different timetables. That mismatch is the dominant theme in local politics right now. The Bruce Highway between Caloundra Road and the Sunshine Motorway has been under various upgrade programs since 2013, with the federal and state governments jointly funding works exceeding $2.3 billion across multiple packages. Drivers on that corridor in 2026 are still sitting in congestion that residents were complaining about a decade ago.

The Short-Term Rental Question and the Housing Crunch

No issue better illustrates the region's growing pains than the fight over short-term rental properties. Noosa Shire moved first, introducing registration requirements and a cap on unhosted short-term rentals in non-residential zones from October 2023, one of the most restrictive frameworks adopted by any Queensland local government. Sunshine Coast Council has moved more cautiously, commissioning a housing supply study through 2025 that documented a rental vacancy rate sitting below one percent across suburbs including Mooloolaba, Alexandra Headland and Coolum Beach.

Long-term renters and community housing advocates have pointed to that vacancy figure repeatedly, arguing that platforms like Airbnb have hollowed out the permanent rental stock in the most desirable beach suburbs. Property investors counter that short-term letting sustains tourism, which remains the coast's foundational industry. The council is expected to present a formal regulatory framework for public consultation before the end of 2026.

Vegetation clearing on the hinterland fringe, particularly around the Caloundra South development corridor and the Beerwah East Priority Development Area, has added an environmental dimension to the growth debate. Councils and state agencies are now required to reconcile a 60,000-dwelling target for Beerwah East with koala habitat mapping that overlaps substantial parts of the proposed footprint.

Residents following these threads have two practical entry points. The Sunshine Coast Council's ShapingSunshineCoast online portal carries current consultation windows, and the Department of Housing's Queensland Housing Strategy 2027 outlines state-level commitments to social housing in the region. Both are worth bookmarking before the next round of planning decisions lands on council's agenda later this year.