Northern Territory House Suburbs

Overview

The Northern Territory is home to roughly 260,400 residents (March 2025), with just over half living in the coastal capital of Darwin, while the remainder are spread across a handful of inland towns such as Palmerston, Alice Springs, Katherine, Nhulunbuy and Tennant Creek that line the Stuart Highway. This concentration of people in a few urban centres amid a vast, sparsely‑populated landscape creates a housing stock that ranges from high‑density apartments and detached homes in Darwin to modest family dwellings and rental properties in the smaller regional settlements. Because most residents are clustered in these core locations, the rental market is largely anchored to the limited supply of units in Darwin and its immediate suburbs, with the outlying towns offering a smaller, predominantly owner‑occupied mix.

The Territory’s economy is driven by natural‑resource extraction, with mining and petroleum accounting for 23 % of gross state product in 2018‑19 and generating the bulk of export earnings. In recent years construction has overtaken mining as the largest single industry, contributing alongside manufacturing and government services to roughly half of the GSP, and the economy expanded by 10.5 % in 2014‑15, well above national growth rates. Strong per‑capita income and a focus on export markets such as Japan, China and the United States underline the region’s relatively high economic output despite its modest population size.