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Rental demand, vacancy and yield

Why a rental median reflects new lettings, not every tenancy — and gross versus net yield, vacancy and tenant demand for investment research.

Rental medians describe new lettings, not every tenancy

Victoria's Rental Report publishes suburb and LGA rental statistics based on rental-bond lodgements (Homes Victoria / Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, verified 29 Jul 2026) — meaning the published median typically reflects new lettings during the period, not the rent every existing tenant is currently paying. A suburb with many long-term tenancies can have a published median well above what most current tenants actually pay. The data also excludes student housing, rooming houses, caravans, multiple bonds for share houses, and rooms in dwellings — genuine parts of the rental market that simply aren't captured by this figure.

Gross yield versus net yield

Gross yield is annual rent divided by purchase price — a quick, comparable figure, but not what you actually keep. Net yield subtracts owners corporation fees, council rates, insurance, maintenance, land tax and management fees before dividing — a materially more realistic figure, and one that can rank properties differently to gross yield alone. See the investment-property-suitability guide in the Decide What to Buy hub for the full calculation.

Vacancy and tenant demand

A high yield paired with high vacancy or weak tenant demand can leave you worse off than a lower yield in a tightly held market — periods without a tenant reduce actual annual income regardless of the advertised rent. Check how many similar properties are currently advertised for rent nearby: a market flooded with near-identical listings generally means softer rents and longer vacancies. "Vacancy rate" also isn't measured one universal way — a commonly-cited source like SQM Research counts online listings advertised for three weeks or more against total rental stock, a different approach from ABS Census data, which measures dwelling occupancy at a point in time. Different methodologies can show different figures for the same area, so check which one you're actually looking at before comparing vacancy across areas.

What Delora's own data shows

Gross yield varies enormously across Melbourne — Delora's full ranking of 147 suburbs with reliable price and rent data spans from around 4.2% down to 0.5%, with a metro-wide median around 2.5%. The pattern is mostly about price, not rent: weekly rents cluster fairly tightly across suburbs, while purchase prices range from under $600,000 to several million, so outer growth-corridor suburbs generally out-yield the inner-east by a wide margin. See the full suburb-by-suburb yield ranking — and note the highest-yield suburbs aren't automatically the highest-growth ones, so check both rather than assuming they move together.

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Practical checklist

Assessing rental evidence

• Check whether a rental figure reflects new lettings or all existing tenancies
• Calculate net yield, not just gross yield, using realistic ongoing costs
• Check how many similar properties are currently advertised for rent nearby
• Check which methodology a vacancy-rate figure uses before comparing it across sources or areas
• Weigh vacancy risk for the specific property type and area, not a suburb-wide average

Questions for a professional

Official resources

• Homes Victoria: Rental Report

Sources and methodology

• Rental report — Homes Victoria / Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (retrieved 29 Jul 2026). Reuse terms: see the publisher's site
• What does rent cost in Victoria? — Homes Victoria (retrieved 29 Jul 2026). Reuse terms: see the publisher's site

Figures on this page are drawn from Delora's local knowledge graph, refreshed from these primary sources and checked for changes on a regular schedule. If a figure here looks out of date, the official source above is always the authority — please let us know.