New Brunswick vs Vancouver: which is better for Airbnb investment? (2026)

Bottom line

Vancouver edges ahead of New Brunswick on stronger RevPAR (£36 vs £18).

Head-to-head metrics

	New Brunswick	Vancouver
Median occupancy	42%	42%
Median daily rate	£87	£85
Median RevPAR	£18	£36
Active listings	3,390	3,993
YoY occupancy	+22.3 pts	-7.3 pts
YoY daily rate	+0%	-2%
Regulation risk	—	—
Annual night cap	None	None
License required	No	No

Full analysis: New Brunswick vs Vancouver

On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — Vancouver finishes narrowly ahead of New Brunswick. Revenue per available night — rate and occupancy combined, the figure that actually reaches an owner — is 103.9% higher in Vancouver: £36 against £18. Across a full year the median Vancouver listing grosses £13,207 against £6,473 in New Brunswick. The margin is thin enough that a single strong year in New Brunswick would close it, so treat the ordering as a lean rather than a verdict.

On the mechanics of the yield the two are hard to separate. New Brunswick runs 42% occupancy at £87 a night; Vancouver runs 42% at £85. That leaves RevPAR almost level too — £36 against £18 — so operating quality, not market selection, is what will decide your return between these two.

That verdict needs a caveat, because New Brunswick is not simply the weaker market of the two. The twelve-month direction favours New Brunswick too: occupancy there moved +22.3 points while Vancouver moved −7.3 points. New Brunswick's calendar is the flatter of the two — 11.9 points between its best and worst month against 23.9 in Vancouver — which makes debt service easier to underwrite. If your model leans on that dimension, the ordering above can reasonably flip.

Neither New Brunswick nor Vancouver 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%; Vancouver runs from 62.3% in September down to 38.4% in January. New Brunswick is the steadier of the two at 11.9 points peak-to-trough against 23.9 — easier to underwrite against a mortgage — while Vancouver 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. It is also the momentum side of this pair. Vancouver answers to the same regulatory profile, so the split between them is operational rather than legal. It is the contrarian side: buying it means buying a market that has cooled. 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 2,122 active New Brunswick listings and 1,206 in Vancouver.

Frequently asked questions

Is New Brunswick or Vancouver better for Airbnb investment?

Vancouver, on the data we track. It leads on stronger RevPAR (£36 vs £18), higher median annual revenue (£13,207 vs £6,473), and a standout submarket in Downtown. New Brunswick is not the weak side of this pair, though — it wins on the better occupancy trend (+22.3 points vs −7.3 points year over year).

Which has higher occupancy, New Brunswick or Vancouver?

Effectively neither — they are level. New Brunswick sits at 42% and Vancouver at 42%, a 0-point difference that is inside the noise of a median drawn from a listings snapshot. Over the last twelve months New Brunswick gained 22.3 points and Vancouver shed 7.3 points, so the gap is widening.

Which has higher nightly rates, New Brunswick or Vancouver?

New Brunswick, at £87 a night against £85 in Vancouver — roughly 2% more. The nightly rate is not the whole story, though. On revenue per available night — rate multiplied by how often the room actually sells — Vancouver comes out ahead at £36 against £18, so Vancouver's cheaper nights are more than repaid by how often they fill.

Which has stronger year-over-year growth, New Brunswick or Vancouver?

New Brunswick, on occupancy: +22.3 points over the last twelve months against −7.3 points in Vancouver. Nightly rates held flat in New Brunswick and fell 2% in Vancouver over the same window. One year of movement is a direction, not a trend — weigh it against the regulation picture before treating it as momentum.

Which is the bigger Airbnb market, New Brunswick or Vancouver?

Vancouver, with 3,993 active listings against 3,390 in New Brunswick. Size cuts both ways: a deep market gives you comparables, contractors and an exit, while a thinner one means fewer near-identical rivals competing for the same search results.

How much can you earn from an Airbnb in New Brunswick vs Vancouver?

Vancouver earns more: roughly £13,207 a year for a median listing against £6,473 in New Brunswick. Those are gross booking revenues before cleaning, management, platform fees, furnishing amortisation and tax — budget for a meaningful share of them, and note that a median listing is a median operator, not a good one.

Go deeper on each city

Market guide

Airbnb in New Brunswick →

Occupancy, ADR, neighborhoods, regulation

Market guide

Airbnb in Vancouver →

Occupancy, ADR, neighborhoods, regulation

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