Do Queenslanders Really Win All the Prize Homes? We Checked the Last 60 Winners

Post a prize home on social media and you can set your watch by it. Somewhere in the comments, usually within the first hour, someone writes: hopefully someone from outside Queensland wins this one, because it always seems to be a Queenslander. It's said with a grin, mostly. But behind it is a question plenty of people quietly wonder about. If you live in Sydney, Melbourne or Perth, are you wasting your time?

We decided to stop guessing and count. We took the last 15 prize home winners from each of the four charities we cover: Dream Home Art Union (the RSL Art Union), Mater, Endeavour and Yourtown. That's 60 draws, from June 2024 to October 2026, and we checked every winner's home town against the charity's own published results.

The verdict: Queensland doesn't win most of them

Of the 60 winners, 26 live in Queensland and 34 live somewhere else. New South Wales alone won 19.

So "it's always Queensland" isn't right. It isn't completely wrong either, and this is where it gets interesting. The fair test is to line up each state's share of the winners against its share of the people.

New South Wales is home to 31% of Australians and won 32% of these prize homes, almost a perfect match. Tasmania and the ACT land right on their share too. Queensland, with about one in five Australians, won about two in five homes, while Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia won less than their share. Is the draw tilted? No, and the real reason makes complete sense once you see it.

Why it feels like Queensland always wins

Winners follow tickets. Every ticket is one entry with exactly the same chance as every other, so the winners end up spread across the country roughly the way the tickets are. A state that buys more tickets will win more homes.

And Queenslanders probably buy a lot of them. All four charities are Queensland-based, and almost every prize home sits on the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast. For a Queenslander, it's a home you could drive past on a Sunday, and in some draws you can walk through it. It's much easier to get excited about a house that's an hour up the road. As far as we can find, the charities don't publish ticket sales by state, so we can't put a number on it, but the pattern in the winners is exactly what you'd expect if Queenslanders are their biggest supporters.

Streaks feel like proof, but they're normal. Toss a coin twenty times and you're more likely than not to see the same side come up four or more times in a row. Real randomness is lumpy, and our brains are brilliant at spotting patterns in it. You'll see a perfect example in Endeavour's results below.

We remember the stories closest to home. A Brisbane family winning a Gold Coast mansion makes the local news and gets talked about at the footy and in the school car park. A winner in Geelong or Urunga is just as real, but you're far less likely to hear about it if you live in Queensland. The reverse is true in Victoria, which is probably why both sides of the border think the other one wins everything.

Charity by charity

Our favourite finds

If the last 60 are anything to go by, the next winner is more likely than not to live outside Queensland. Wherever you live, your ticket goes in the same barrel.

Winner locations from each charity's official results: Dream Home Art Union, Mater, Endeavour and Yourtown. Population shares from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, estimated resident population at 31 March 2026. Percentages are rounded.