Adelaide Short-Term Rental Nets 3.4% After All Costs

The gross short-term rental premium for a 3-bed house in Adelaide is 124% above what the same property earns as a long-term rental, but after every cost is paid the picture changes substantially. This article runs the numbers for both a 3-bed house and a 2-bed apartment, because Adelaide's cost structures differ materially between the two: apartments add body corporate fees but enter the market at less than half the price of a freestanding house. Both calculations use self-managed short-term rental and agent-managed long-term rental, which is what the dashboard shows by default.

The 3-Bed House: Gross 6.2% Becomes Net 3.4% After Costs

An Adelaide 3-bed house at the median price of $1,434,960 generates around $89,662 a year as a short-term rental at the market average occupancy of 73%, or roughly $39,632 as a long-term rental. The cost stack is what closes the gap between gross and net.

The Airbnb host fee at 15.5% is the single largest cost item on the short-term rental side at roughly $13,898 per year. Other booking platforms charge differently: Stayz takes around 5% and Booking.com around 15%, so a multi-platform strategy can shave a meaningful slice off this figure. Maintenance also runs higher under short-term rental ($13,992) than under long-term rental ($10,045) because higher guest turnover wears furniture, linen and appliances faster, and the figure already includes annualised furnishing replacement.

Utilities are a quieter but persistent cost: short-term rental hosts pay them in full at $4,692, while long-term rental tenants typically cover their own. The result is a short-term rental cost base of around $41,056 versus roughly $20,870 for the long-term rental, leaving net incomes of $48,606 and $18,762 respectively. The 124% gross premium narrows substantially once the cost stack is paid, but short-term rental still wins on net dollars.

The 2-Bed Apartment: Body Corporate Reshapes the Maths

A median Adelaide 2-bed apartment costs $505,452, less than 40% of a 3-bed house. That lower entry price makes the percentage yield look more attractive, but the body corporate (strata) levy is a cost that simply does not exist for freestanding houses.

Body corporate of $3,748 a year appears in both columns because it is a property-level cost that the owner pays regardless of whether the unit is rented short-term, long-term, or sits empty. For an Adelaide investor weighing apartment versus house, that strata levy is the single most important difference in the cost stack and the line that most often surprises first-time apartment buyers.

House vs Apartment: Yield Wins by a Different Margin in Each Strategy

The 3-bed house and 2-bed apartment compete on different terms. The apartment's cheaper entry price ($505,452 versus $1,434,960) means even modest income converts into a respectable percentage yield, while the house produces larger absolute dollars but spreads them across a much bigger capital base. On the long-term rental side, the apartment delivers a net yield of 3.6% against the house at 1.3%. On the short-term rental side, the apartment nets 6.1% against the house at 3.4%.

The body corporate is the wedge between the two property types. A house owner pays no strata levy, so a higher proportion of gross rent flows through to net income. The apartment's lower price pulls the percentage yield up, but the $3,748 annual strata cost pulls it back down. Whether apartment or house wins on net yield therefore depends on the precise ratio of strata to rent in each suburb, which is why the dashboard's per-suburb numbers matter more than city-wide averages: a CBD apartment with high strata fees and modest rent will look very different to a suburban townhouse with low strata and stronger short-term rental demand.

Short-Term Rental Breaks Even at 33% Occupancy, Adelaide Runs at 73%

The 3-bed house needs roughly 33% occupancy for short-term rental gross revenue to match the long-term rental annual rent of $39,632. That is the floor, not the target: at the break-even point the strategies tie on gross dollars but short-term rental still loses on costs because of the higher Airbnb fees, utilities, insurance and maintenance. Adelaide's market average occupancy of 73% sits comfortably above that floor, which is why short-term rental still wins on net dollars at the median, but a poorly located property running at half the city average can quickly slip below break-even on a true cost basis.

View Adelaide in the dashboard → Free preview · every bedroom count and property type

Hiring a Manager Cuts Net Yield by Roughly a Third

The cost tables above assume the owner self-manages the short-term rental: handles bookings, guest communications, cleaning coordination, pricing and listing maintenance personally. For a 3-bed house in Adelaide, hiring a professional short-term rental manager adds around $19,726 a year, which is roughly 22% of gross revenue. That fee covers dynamic pricing, 24/7 guest support, cleaning oversight, listing optimisation and channel management across Airbnb, Stayz and Booking.com. Net yield drops to 2.0% once that cost is included, and total operating costs climb to $60,781.

The trade-off is time versus dollars. Self-management on a single 3-bed house typically takes 5 to 10 hours a week including guest communication, cleaner scheduling, calendar updates and the inevitable maintenance call-outs. For investors with day jobs, demanding family commitments or a portfolio across multiple cities, a professional manager is often the realistic choice even though the percentage yield falls. Long-term rental management at the typical Adelaide rate of around 9% of rent is already baked into the long-term rental column above, because agent-managed is the default and most realistic assumption for the majority of Adelaide investors.

Negative Gearing and Depreciation: The After-Tax Picture Looks Different

Australian tax rules favour long-term rental investors disproportionately through negative gearing. If a long-term rental property generates a cash-flow loss (rent minus interest, insurance, rates, maintenance and depreciation runs negative), that loss can be offset against salary or wage income, reducing the investor's overall taxable income. For an Adelaide 3-bed house at $1,434,960 with a typical investor loan, the interest bill in the early years frequently exceeds the $39,632 of annual rent, producing exactly the kind of paper loss that negative gearing is designed to absorb.

The benefit scales with the investor's marginal tax rate. At the 45% bracket (income above $190,000), each $1 of rental loss saves $0.45 in tax. At the 30% bracket ($45,000 to $135,000 of income), it saves $0.30. So a $20,000 paper loss on an Adelaide investment property could deliver $9,000 of tax relief for a high-income earner, or $6,000 for a middle-income earner. Short-term rental properties that are profitable do not benefit from negative gearing at all, because there is no loss to offset.

Depreciation amplifies the long-term rental advantage. The building depreciation allowance lets investors deduct 2.5% of the building's construction cost each year for 40 years (assuming the building is less than 40 years old), and fixtures and fittings depreciation covers items such as air conditioning units, carpets, blinds, ovens, hot water systems and other plant equipment with shorter effective lives. Together these depreciation deductions can add several thousand dollars of non-cash deductions each year, deepening the paper loss without affecting actual cash flow. The 50% capital gains tax discount applies equally to both strategies for properties held longer than 12 months.

Negative gearing is not free money: it requires a genuine cash loss, and the investor still needs to fund that loss out of pocket each month. But for a high-income Adelaide investor weighing short-term versus long-term rental, the after-tax comparison can tip toward long-term rental even when short-term rental shows higher pre-tax income. The dashboard calculates your after-tax position including negative gearing and depreciation (building allowance at 2.5% of building value) based on your income. Enter your salary to see how the tax treatment changes the short-term rental versus long-term rental comparison for your tax bracket.

Adelaide in Context: A Premium Market Where Yields Sit Below the National Average

Adelaide's median 3-bed house price of $1,434,960 sits well above the South Australia state median of $759,053 and the national median of $833,886. The city's gross long-term rental yield of 2.8% also sits below the national average of 4.0% and the state average of 4.0%, which is the typical pattern for premium capital-city markets where capital growth has historically done more of the heavy lifting than rental income. For investors choosing Adelaide, the case usually rests on long-term appreciation potential and tenant-quality stability rather than headline cash yield.

City-level medians smooth over significant suburb-by-suburb variation. The highest-yielding suburb in the data, Lobethal - Woodside, runs at 4.4% on a sale price of $775,840, while Mallala delivers 4.3% at $634,658. The headline city numbers earlier in the article are city-wide medians; individual suburbs diverge significantly from them. The dashboard shows suburb-level data for every bedroom count and property type across all 16 Adelaide suburbs, so you can find the specific cost and yield profile for the location and property type you are actually considering.

Regulation: Adelaide Permits Short-Term Rental With Minimal Restrictions

The City of Adelaide permits short-term rentals with minimal regulatory restrictions. The South Australian state framework, the Short Term Holiday Rental Accommodation Bill 2021, sets the broader regulatory backdrop, and planning approval requirements vary by development plan. Verify current state and council rules before investing; this is an active legislative area in Australia. The full source is linked from the dashboard's regulation panel for each suburb.

For a comparison with how the same numbers play out in different Australian markets, South Australia Rental Investment Insights covers a similar real-costs breakdown, and Lobethal - Woodside Leads Adelaide Yields at 4.4% drills into the highest-yielding suburb within Adelaide. The methodology and data sources behind every figure in this article are documented at data sources and market score methodology.

Data reflects market conditions as of April 2026.

This information is for educational purposes only and should not be considered financial or legal advice. Regulations and market conditions change frequently. Verify current rules with local authorities before making investment decisions.