Rental vacancy is usually one number for a whole suburb. We break it down to small areas, right across Australia, so you can see roughly how many rental homes are likely empty where you are actually buying.
By Luke Metcalfe · Founder, Microburbs ResearchEarly preview, now nationwide. This covers every small area in Australia (331,624 of them). It is still new research: today it reliably shows which streets are tighter than others, but the exact vacancy figure tends to read low and is still being calibrated. Use it to compare streets, and check your own area.
When you weigh up a rental, you want to know how easily it will find a tenant. The vacancy figure you can find is for the whole suburb. But a quiet street of houses and a tower full of apartments in the same suburb are nothing alike. One suburb-wide number hides which streets are tight and which have empty rentals sitting around.
Deep dive: the full research paper →
Vacancy really does change street by street, and now we can see it everywhere in the country. In most small areas, none or maybe one rental home is likely empty at any given moment; a few — usually big apartment blocks — have more. When we add our small-area figures back up to the whole suburb and compare against the suburb vacancy the market already trusts, the street-by-street ranking holds up. The exact figure currently reads low for a typical suburb, which we are calibrating. So today the reliable use is comparing streets, not quoting an exact rate.
Deep dive: how accurate it is →
Each map breaks a suburb into its small areas and shades them by how tight the rentals are. Same suburb, genuinely different streets.
Which streets in Subiaco (Perth) have the tightest rentals
Each shape is a small area, shaded over the real streets. Greener means fewer rental homes likely empty right now; redder means more. Hover for the likely number empty; click to list the homes in that area. Early estimate, as at mid-2025.
Which streets in Bondi (Sydney) have the tightest rentals
Each shape is a small area, shaded over the real streets. Greener means fewer rental homes likely empty right now; redder means more. Hover for the likely number empty; click to list the homes in that area. Early estimate, as at mid-2025.
These two are just to make it concrete. Deep dive: full results →
Instead of trusting one number for a whole suburb, you can ask a sharper question: how tight is the rental market on this block, compared with the next one? Tighter rental demand — fewer empty rentals — tends to support rents and yields and lowers the risk of carrying an empty property. It does not directly tell you capital growth, and we do not pretend it does. It tells you which streets rent faster, which is what a landlord feels first.
Deep dive: what this means for investors →
This is early-stage research by Microburbs, now covering every small area in Australia. It is checked by adding the small-area figures back up to the suburb and comparing against established suburb vacancy across thousands of suburbs. Today the street-by-street ranking is reliable while the exact rate is being calibrated; sharper handling of apartment-heavy and very sparse areas is the next step. Read the full research paper →
Check your own area. The small-area rental view is built into Microburbs' suburb tools — look up the exact area you are considering rather than relying on a single suburb-wide vacancy number. Explore your suburb →
