Retail yields sit at or above industrial in four of five capitals, by up to 88 basis points in Adelaide. Melbourne is the exception.

Each row below puts one capital's two headline yields on the same scale. The square is CBRE's super prime industrial midpoint yield, the measure for modern logistics buildings, which CBRE's Melbourne edition defines as under six years old with 13.7 to 14.6 metres of clearance. The circle is the average yield on regional shopping centres, the large multi-anchor centres, which CBRE reports by state. The amber bar between them is the spread.

Adelaide has the widest spread at 88 basis points, with its regional centres at 6.88% and super prime industrial at 6.0%. Sydney has the lowest yield in both classes, 5.17% for industrial and 5.61% for regional centres, which means buyers there pay the most for each dollar of rent. Perth's two readings are level at 6.0%. Melbourne runs the other way to every other capital, with industrial at 6.0% and Victorian regional centres at 5.88%.

Over the June quarter CBRE recorded super prime industrial yields holding in Sydney and Perth and moving out modestly in Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. CBRE puts that down to elevated bond yields and financing costs, which buyers are weighing against steady demand for high-quality warehouses. Investment hasn't stalled, with national industrial transactions in the first half of 2026 already ahead of the total for calendar 2025.

Retail moved the other way, with regional centre yields falling 7 basis points nationally over the quarter to 6.03%, and 22 basis points over the year. South Australia led with a 20 basis point fall, Queensland and Victoria each fell 7, and NSW and Western Australia held. CBRE links the firming to rental growth across regional centres, up 3.7% nationally over the year, and to thin supply, with only around 114,000 sqm of regional and sub-regional centre space due over the next two years.

Other sources use different measures. realcommercial.com.au's Q2 yields report found industrial yields compressed in every capital over the twelve months to June. The two figures can both hold: CBRE's is one quarter's move in its benchmark for super prime buildings under six years old, while realcommercial's covers twelve months on the measure of a property listings platform, so a slight softening at the top grade in the June quarter can sit inside a year of compression. A yield always belongs to a grade of building in a particular market, and a valuer reads your property the same way, against sales of comparable stock.

Melbourne's super prime industrial midpoint yield is 6.0%, level with Adelaide and Perth and 83 basis points above Sydney. CBRE recorded a modest softening over the quarter, in the same quarter as a record for Melbourne industrial investment: about $2.2 billion of sales of $5 million or more, with the sale of Moorabbin Airport the largest.

On the retail side, Victorian regional centres sit at 5.88%, down 7 basis points over the quarter and 14 over the year, with net face rents up 4.7% on a year earlier. Victorian retail transactions totalled $571.8 million in the quarter, and Melbourne CBD retail vacancy was 6.5% in the second half of 2025.

For a Melbourne buyer, new logistics stock is priced close to the city's large shopping centres and at a higher yield than the same class of building in Sydney or Brisbane. Our guide to commercial property finance in Melbourne covers how lenders read the city's corridors, and we wrote about the Melbourne commercial property market beyond the price headlines earlier this year.

A yield is the property's net rent divided by its price, so on the same price a higher yield brings in more rent. Commercial lenders size an investment loan on that rent. They test whether net income covers the interest by a set multiple, they cap the loan at a share of the valuation, and they lend the lower of the two. For illustration we use 1.5 times interest cover and a 65% LVR cap, which are common bank hurdles; some lenders test a lower multiple against a buffered rate.

The panel runs both tests on every yield from the ladder. It uses an illustrative 7.23% interest rate, which is the 3-month bank bill rate of 4.73% on 24 September plus the 2.50% example margin from our explainer on how BBSW sets a business loan rate. Move the price and the rate to match your own deal.

At $5 million and 7.23%, the rent at Sydney's super prime industrial yield supports a loan of about $2.38 million, or 48% of the price. The same price at Adelaide's regional centre yield supports about $3.17 million, or 63%. At these yields the interest cover test sets the limit in every row, and only the Adelaide retail row gets close to the LVR cap, so a buyer of low-yield stock brings more equity whatever the valuation says. Bring the rate down to 7.0% and the LVR cap takes over on the Adelaide retail row first.

This is arithmetic on benchmark yields for top-grade stock. Lenders also weigh the lease term, the tenant, vacancy risk and the borrower's other income, and a suburban warehouse or strip shop will usually trade at a higher yield than these benchmarks. Our guides to owner-occupier and investor commercial property loans and why banks decline commercial property loans go through the rest of the assessment, and commercial property finance in Australia covers the lender tiers.