Safe suburbs in Brisbane, and where they actually are

Low crime Brisbane suburbs within 20 km of the city

This is the practical finding. Of 36 low crime suburbs, 8 are within a 20 km drive of the CBD, and they are not scattered across Brisbane. Every one of them sits in a single corridor running north west from Chermside out through Albany Creek towards Samford.

Compare two of these suburbs side by side →

McDowall is the closest at 10.3 km and the cheapest of the group at $8,885 a year. That is still $3,721 more than Spring Hill, the cheapest suburb in Greater Brisbane, almost entirely because of the longer drive.

All 36 low crime Brisbane suburbs, by running cost

Beyond 20 km the list opens out into Moreton Bay's rural north, the Redland islands and Ipswich's western fringe. Several of these are small semi rural localities with no supermarket or scheduled transport within a 2 km walk, which is worth knowing before treating a low crime rating as a recommendation.

See the full cost breakdown for any of these →

Safety in Brisbane costs about $1,852 a year

The 36 low crime suburbs average $12,735 a year in running costs. Greater Brisbane as a whole averages $10,883. The $1,852 difference is not a safety premium charged by anyone. It is distance: low crime suburbs average 32.3 km from the CBD against 23.9 km across all 432, and the modelled drive commute rises with every kilometre.

That is the real trade off for a Brisbane buyer weighting safety heavily. You are not paying more for policing. You are paying more to drive further, every working day, for the rest of the time you own the house. Whether that is worth it depends on how you weight a longer commute against a lower recorded offence rate, and the Brisbane Suburb Score shows how the two balance out across all 432 suburbs.

The bushfire question, in proportion

34 of the 36 low crime suburbs are classified High for bushfire risk, which is 94 per cent. That sounds alarming until you compare it with the baseline: 302 of all 432 Greater Brisbane suburbs carry a High classification, or 70 per cent. Bushfire prone land is mapped across most of the Greater Brisbane fringe, so a High rating is the norm rather than the exception.

The elevation is real but modest, and it has a straightforward explanation. Both low recorded crime and mapped bushfire land follow the same geography, low density residential areas backing onto bushland. It is worth checking the QFES mapping for any specific address you are considering, and worth factoring into the insurance quote, but it is not a reason to discount the corridor.

Only 2 Brisbane suburbs combine low crime with neither a High flood nor a High fire classification. If you are trying to minimise every mapped risk at once, the choice is genuinely that narrow.

What the crime classification does not tell you

• It is a suburb summary, not a street. Offence concentrations within a suburb can vary sharply, often around a single shopping centre, transport node or licensed venue.
• It does not separate offence types. Property offences and other offences are broad groupings. A suburb rated Medium may be entirely different in character from another rated Medium.
• It has no trend. The classification is a point in time. A suburb improving quickly and one deteriorating quickly can share a rating.
• Reporting rates differ. Recorded offences reflect what is reported to police, which is not the same as what occurs.
• It is not comparable across state lines. Queensland Police Service classifications and the NSW BOCSAR data used on SuburbCost's Sydney pages are built differently and must not be read against each other.

For offence counts by type and period, the Queensland Police Service publishes an online crime map at mypolice.qld.gov.au.

Most of these suburbs sit in Moreton Bay, see its current rates and cost any suburb in the area →