New Brunswick vs Ottawa: which is better for Airbnb investment?

Head-to-head metrics

Full analysis: New Brunswick vs Ottawa

On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — Ottawa finishes decisively ahead of New Brunswick. Revenue per available night — rate and occupancy combined, the figure that actually reaches an owner — is 35.3% higher in Ottawa: £24 against £18. Ottawa sells 18 more points of its calendar — 60% median occupancy against 42% in New Brunswick. That is not a rounding difference, and it compounds over a hold period.

The two markets reach their revenue by different routes, which is what makes this pairing worth reading rather than just tabulating. New Brunswick is the rate market: £87 a night against £64, some 36.4% more, but it converts fewer of those nights at 42% occupancy. Ottawa is the volume market, filling 60% of its calendar at a lower headline price. Revenue per available night settles it: £24 in Ottawa against £18. Rate is what you advertise; RevPAR is what you bank.

That verdict needs a caveat, because New Brunswick is not simply the weaker market of the two. New Brunswick commands 36.4% more per night, £87 against £64. New Brunswick's calendar is the flatter of the two — 11.9 points between its best and worst month against 24.2 in Ottawa — which makes debt service easier to underwrite. If your model leans on nightly rate rather than volume, the ordering above can reasonably flip.

Neither New Brunswick nor Ottawa 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. New Brunswick peaks in July at 51.1% and bottoms in June at 39.2%; Ottawa runs from 53.8% in September down to 29.6% in February. New Brunswick is the steadier of the two at 11.9 points peak-to-trough against 24.2 — easier to underwrite against a mortgage — while Ottawa 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. New Brunswick suits buyers who want a conventional, lightly regulated entry and who can hold rate through the shoulder season rather than discounting to fill the calendar. Ottawa answers to the same regulatory profile, so the split between them is operational rather than legal: it is the market for an owner whose economics survive high turnover — more bookings, more cleans, more guest contact per pound of revenue. It is also the momentum side of this pair. Every figure above comes from the same Inside Airbnb snapshot pipeline on both sides, dated 2025-09, filtered to listings with at least one booking in the last twelve months. Occupancy medians are drawn from 2,122 active New Brunswick listings and 707 in Ottawa.

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