Portland edges ahead of Newark on higher occupancy (60% vs 30%), stronger RevPAR (£32 vs £16).
Head-to-head metrics
| Newark | Portland | |
|---|---|---|
| Median occupancy | 30% | 60% |
| Median daily rate | £77 | £80 |
| Median RevPAR | £16 | £32 |
| Active listings | 1,455 | 3,143 |
| YoY occupancy | — | +14 pts |
| YoY daily rate | — | +2% |
| Regulation risk | — | — |
| Annual night cap | None | None |
| License required | No | No |
Full analysis: Newark vs Portland
On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — Portland finishes decisively ahead of Newark. Revenue per available night — rate and occupancy combined, the figure that actually reaches an owner — is 96.1% higher in Portland: £32 against £16. Portland sells 30 more points of its calendar — 60% median occupancy against 30% in Newark. That is not a rounding difference, and it compounds over a hold period.
Portland takes both halves of the yield equation, which is less common than it sounds. It charges more per night — £80 against £77 — and still fills more of the year, 60% 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 £32 against £16.
That verdict needs a caveat, because Newark is not simply the weaker market of the two. Newark's calendar is the flatter of the two — 22.2 points between its best and worst month against 28.1 in Portland — which makes debt service easier to underwrite. Newark is the less crowded of the two — 1,455 active listings to 3,143 — so a well-run property has fewer near-identical rivals to out-rank. If your model leans on that dimension, the ordering above can reasonably flip.
Neither Newark nor Portland 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. Newark peaks in September at 43.5% and bottoms in February at 21.3%; Portland runs from 55.9% in November down to 27.8% in January. Newark is the steadier of the two at 22.2 points peak-to-trough against 28.1 — easier to underwrite against a mortgage — while Portland 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. Newark suits buyers who want a conventional, lightly regulated entry. Portland 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 818 active Newark listings and 1,114 in Portland.
Frequently asked questions
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