Rapid Growth and Bold Planning Decisions Transform Sunshine Coast's Future

The Sunshine Coast Local Government Area now carries a population of roughly 360,000 people, a figure that has climbed by more than 60,000 since 2016, faster than almost any other regional council in Queensland. That growth didn't happen by accident, and the decisions made along the way are now landing on the desk of Sunshine Coast Council with compounding urgency.

The pressure is immediate. Short-term rental regulation, infrastructure funding shortfalls, and a half-built city centre at Maroochydore are all converging at once, forcing councillors to account for years of planning choices that looked manageable individually but are proving far harder to absorb together.

The Long Road to Maroochydore CBD

Start with the Maroochydore City Centre. The 53-hectare development precinct off Dalton Drive has been under construction in one form or another since SunCentral Maroochydore, the council-owned company managing the project, began civil works in 2016. The vision was ambitious from the beginning: a purpose-built urban core for a coastal region that had long operated without a proper downtown. A decade on, the precinct has office towers, a town square, and residential apartments, but key commercial tenancies remain unfilled and the promised Maroochy River boardwalk connection still falls short of what early renders suggested.

SunCentral has maintained that the project is on track commercially, and the Sunshine Coast Council has backed that position consistently. But the broader question, whether the region's planning framework kept pace with the growth the CBD was supposed to serve, is one that critics, including several community groups operating through the Sunshine Coast Environment Council, have raised persistently since at least 2020.

The Sunshine Coast Airport expansion adds another layer. International routes to Tokyo and Singapore launched through the Sunshine Coast Airport's new terminal in 2022, a project that cost approximately $347 million and was part-funded by the state government. The airport precinct at Marcoola was marketed as an economic catalyst for the northern end of the coast. The jobs did come, but so did pressure on surrounding residential streets, and the local road network on Friendship Drive and Caloundra Road remains a chronic congestion point that Transport and Main Roads Queensland has not fully addressed.

Short-Term Rentals and the Housing Crunch

The most politically charged issue right now is short-term rental regulation. The Sunshine Coast has an estimated 7,500-plus properties listed on platforms including Airbnb and Stayz, one of the highest concentrations in regional Queensland. A state government framework introduced in 2023 gave councils tools to impose local rules, but Sunshine Coast Council has moved cautiously, worried about economic blowback from a tourism sector that contributes around $2.3 billion annually to the regional economy.

That caution has frustrated housing advocates. Vacancy rates across suburbs including Mooloolaba, Buderim and Noosa Heads, technically a separate council area but functionally connected, have sat below one percent for the better part of three years. Median weekly rents for a three-bedroom house in Mooloolaba reached $850 in the March 2026 quarter, according to data from the Real Estate Institute of Queensland. Residents who grew up on the coast increasingly cannot afford to stay.

The politics of all this are complicated because the same council that must regulate short-term rentals also relies on tourism as a central pillar of its economic strategy. Successive mayors and divisional councillors have tried to hold both positions simultaneously, and the tension is now visibly unsustainable.

The next ordinary council meeting is scheduled for late July at the Sunshine Coast Council chambers on Sunshine Parade in Maroochydore. Agenda items related to the local housing strategy and vegetation clearing applications in the Palmview Structure Plan area are both expected to draw submissions from residents and advocacy groups. For anyone who wants to understand why those debates will be heated, the decade of decisions outlined above is where to begin.