In this suburb you need to earn $2.3m to be in the top 1%: How does your area compare?

In one Brisbane suburb, the top 1 per cent of income earners take home more than $2.3 million a year on average, while half-a-dozen other riverside neighbourhoods bring in more than $1.5 million.

Five years ago, the leafy enclave of Pullenvale in Brisbane’s west, where sprawling homes sit on manicured acreages, was the suburb where the top 1 per cent earned the most.

Pullenvale now ranks seventh on the list, usurped by the traditional blue-chip suburbs of Ascot and Hamilton, where the top echelon of earners are making an average of $2.2 million a year.

Brookfield, Hendra and Yeronga have fallen out of the top 10 completely, replaced by Fig Tree Pocket, Newstead and Norman Park.

This masthead has analysed income data from the Australian Tax Office for the 2022-23 financial year, the most recent available.

The data is based on individual, pre-tax income, including salary and wages, and business and investment income. It captures people receiving sizeable rental income and dividends, but does not take in individuals’ assets, such as property and shares.

In 2022-23, inflation spiked, which generally had a greater impact on those who rely on business and investment income, rather than a salary.

The data can be skewed by one or two ultra-wealthy individuals having a really good or rather poor year financially. But it can also be affected by a high-earning individual buying into a sought-after suburb, and another selling up.

Among Newstead’s new residents in 2023 was former Domino’s Pizza boss Don Meij, who paid $12.95 million for the penthouse in Cavcorp’s Luminare project. (He sold two years later to start a new food-based business in the United States.)

That same year, Newstead lost one of Brisbane’s best-known deal-makers and company directors, Howard Stack, and wife Hilary. They sold their luxury sky home in Mirvac’s Pier development for $16 million to spend more time at their bolthole on the Gold Coast.

Stack, a former corporate lawyer and independent director of Flight Centre, was chairman of Brisbane Grammar School for 30 years before he retired.

Also in 2023, mining entrepreneur Adam Beswick bought the heritage riverfront estate Amity House in New Farm for $20.5 million, from Brisbane architect Tony Dempsey and his wife, Poppy.

Beswick was no stranger to New Farm, having sold a Queenslander on nearby Hawthorne Street for $2.35 million in December 2021. His company, M2P engineering, sells construction and engineering equipment to Australian mines.

Meanwhile, among the top 1 per cent living in Ascot are power couple Trevor Lee and Keri Craig-Lee.