Brisbane edges ahead of Melbourne on higher occupancy (36% vs 30%), stronger RevPAR (£22 vs £15).
Head-to-head metrics
| Brisbane | Melbourne | |
|---|---|---|
| Median occupancy | 36% | 30% |
| Median daily rate | £97 | £80 |
| Median RevPAR | £22 | £15 |
| Active listings | 4,968 | 15,424 |
| YoY occupancy | — | +8.6 pts |
| YoY daily rate | — | +1.3% |
| Regulation risk | — | — |
| Annual night cap | None | None |
| License required | No | No |
Full analysis: Brisbane vs Melbourne
On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — Brisbane finishes clearly ahead of Melbourne. Revenue per available night — rate and occupancy combined, the figure that actually reaches an owner — is 49.5% higher in Brisbane: £22 against £15. Nightly rates favour Brisbane: £97 against £80 in Melbourne, a 21% premium. Those gaps are wide enough to survive a normal year's variance.
Brisbane takes both halves of the yield equation, which is less common than it sounds. It charges more per night — £97 against £80 — and still fills more of the year, 36% against 30%. A market that leads on price and utilisation at once is normally one where demand has outrun supply, rather than one where hosts are discounting to keep the calendar busy. RevPAR reflects the double advantage at £22 against £15.
That verdict needs a caveat, because Melbourne is not simply the weaker market of the two. Melbourne is the deeper market at 15,424 active listings against 4,968, which usually means better comparables going in and a wider buyer pool coming out. Melbourne's calendar is the flatter of the two — 19.6 points between its best and worst month against 27.5 in Brisbane — which makes debt service easier to underwrite. If your model leans on that dimension, the ordering above can reasonably flip.
Neither Brisbane nor Melbourne currently has a verified short-term rental regulation record in our register, so the comparison above is a yield comparison only. Regulation is the single largest source of downside in this asset class — an unverified market is an unpriced risk, not an absent one.
The two calendars also behave differently. Brisbane peaks in November at 62.3% and bottoms in January at 34.8%; Melbourne runs from 66.7% in July down to 47.1% in October. Melbourne is the steadier of the two at 19.6 points peak-to-trough against 27.5 — easier to underwrite against a mortgage — while Brisbane concentrates its return into a shorter window and rewards operators who price the peak aggressively instead of holding a flat rate all year.
Who each suits, then. Brisbane suits buyers who want a conventional, lightly regulated entry. Melbourne answers to the same regulatory profile, so the split between them is operational rather than legal. Every figure above comes from the same Inside Airbnb snapshot pipeline on both sides, filtered to listings with at least one booking in the last twelve months. Occupancy medians are drawn from 2,775 active Brisbane listings and 9,898 in Melbourne.
Frequently asked questions
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