Western Australia edges ahead of Brisbane on higher occupancy (42% vs 36%), stronger RevPAR (£25 vs £22).
Head-to-head metrics
| Brisbane | Western Australia | |
|---|---|---|
| Median occupancy | 36% | 42% |
| Median daily rate | £97 | £110 |
| Median RevPAR | £22 | £25 |
| Active listings | 4,968 | 10,674 |
| YoY occupancy | — | +19 pts |
| YoY daily rate | — | +3.3% |
| Regulation risk | — | — |
| Annual night cap | None | None |
| License required | No | No |
Full analysis: Brisbane vs Western Australia
On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — Western Australia finishes clearly ahead of Brisbane. Western Australia turns its rate and occupancy into £25 per available night against £22 in Brisbane, a 14.8% edge on the only yield figure that nets the empty nights out. Western Australia's listings run at 42% occupancy against 36% in Brisbane, worth 6 extra points of booked calendar every year. Those gaps are wide enough to survive a normal year's variance.
Western Australia takes both halves of the yield equation, which is less common than it sounds. It charges more per night — £110 against £97 — and still fills more of the year, 42% against 36%. 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 £25 against £22.
That verdict needs a caveat, because Brisbane is not simply the weaker market of the two. Brisbane is the less crowded of the two — 4,968 active listings to 10,674 — so a well-run property has fewer near-identical rivals to out-rank. Brisbane sits at the cheaper end at £97 a night against £110, which lowers the bar for filling shoulder-season dates and usually tracks a lower purchase price too. If your model leans on that dimension, the ordering above can reasonably flip.
Neither Brisbane nor Western Australia 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%; Western Australia runs from 53.6% in June down to 33.8% in September. Western Australia is the steadier of the two at 19.8 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. Western Australia 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 5,885 in Western Australia.
Frequently asked questions
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