Census of Population & Housing
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Demographic, housing tenure, dwelling type, transport, income, and cultural variables. Five-yearly authoritative basis for every dossier.
Last release · 2021SA1 · SA2 · suburb
About Burbfinder · written by the team that built it
One data layer for every Australian suburb. Open. Sourced. Auditable.
Burbfinder ingests every public ABS, state government, and valuer-general feed — refreshed nightly — and exposes them through a single fast query layer for analysts, planners, investors, and council staff.
How it works
Raw observations in. Auditable signals out. No black boxes.
Every metric in the product can be traced back to a source row, a release date, and the SQL that derived it.
01 · Source
Ingest
Pull from ABS Census, ERP, building approvals, plus state Valuer-General, transport, hazard, planning, and crime feeds.
11+ feeds · daily02 · Conform
Geo-align
Reconcile postcode, SA1, SA2, LGA, and SAL boundaries to ASGS 2021. Every row gets a canonical hierarchy.
15K+ suburbs03 · Derive
Compute
Derived signals (CAGR, undersupply flag, hazard overlap %, school catchment) computed by versioned SQL.
v0.4.2 active04 · Serve
Query
Columnar store behind a fast query API. Suburb dossier and Scanner read from the same source of truth.
p95 · sub-secondData sources · 8 feeds
Everything we know is published. We just align it for you.
No proprietary surveys. No scraped listings. Just the feeds public agencies release — meticulously joined.
Census
Estimated Resident Population (ERP)
ABS · series 3218.0
Annual SA2-level population estimates between censuses. Drives population growth, 3-year and 10-year CAGR signals.
To 2025SA2
Building Approvals
ABS · series 8731.0
Local-government dwelling approvals. Leading indicator for supply pressure and developer interest.
Refreshed monthlyLGA
Valuer-General Sale Prices
State Govts · NSW · VIC · QLD · WA · SA · TAS
Settled-sale records from the Land Registry. Median, mean, and percentiles by dwelling type. WA pending licensed access.
To 2025 Q4Suburb
Rental Bond Lodgements
State agencies · NSW · VIC · QLD · WA · SA · TAS
Formal rental bonds lodged with state agencies. Sole basis for median rent — no listings noise.
To 2026 Q1Suburb · postcode
Hazard overlays
State Govts · 13 hazard layers
Bushfire-prone, flood-prone, and cyclone-prone polygons by SAL. Per-suburb overlap percentage and severity band.
To 2026 Q1SAL · severity band
School catchments
State Departments of Education
Primary and secondary catchment polygons matched to suburbs. Distance-to-school and in-catchment list.
Refreshed annuallySuburb
Derived signals
Burbfinder · v0.4.2
CAGR, undersupply flag, affordability ratio, composite score. Versioned SQL — formulas published.
Computed nightly · 04:00 AEDTAll grains
Who uses it
Built for people who treat property as a system, not a vibe.
If you're making a decision worth more than $5K and it depends on where, you're our user.
Property investors
Screen 15K+ suburbs against your thesis in seconds. Watch a saved scan; read a dossier before you make an offer.
- Composite score & ranked Scanner
- Rent–price spread tracking
- 14 free calculators
Urban planners & council staff
Compare your LGA's growth, approvals, and SEIFA trajectory against neighbouring councils — without spending a week in Excel.
- SA2 & LGA peer cohorts
- Approvals trend analysis
- Census 2021 with full slicers
Researchers & analysts
Stop reconciling boundaries. Pull aligned data via the API or read the methodology behind every signal.
- JSON API · sub-second p95
- Full methodology published
- Per-metric source attribution
Methodology FAQ
The questions we get asked most.
Have a question we don't answer here? Check the coverage matrix first — most data-availability questions are answered there.
Why does rent only show bond data?
Listings sites measure asking rent — what landlords would like. Bond lodgements measure achieved rent — what was actually paid and registered. We use bonds because asking-rent series have a 6–12% upward bias in tight markets and produce false signals when listings volume changes.
What's the difference between SA2 and suburb data?
SA2 is the ABS statistical building block — roughly 10K–25K residents per area. Some series (population, approvals) aren't reliably published below SA2, so SA2 signals are inherited by every suburb inside them. We label this on every metric so you can't accidentally treat an SA2 signal as suburb-specific.
Why is some data missing?
Missing-by-design. If a state hasn't released a quarter, we show "Not available" rather than a stale or imputed figure. We never silently impute — if we don't have it, you'll see an explicit empty state with the expected refresh date.
How fresh is “fresh”?
Bond and crime data lag ~45 days; approvals ~30 days; ERP annually. Each metric tile shows its own as-of date so you can see exactly how stale a number is. The coverage matrix is the source of truth for what is loaded today.
Is Burbfinder affiliated with the ABS?
No. Burbfinder is an independent product that uses ABS data under the CC BY 4.0 license, with attribution on every page. We're not endorsed by, affiliated with, or operated by the ABS or any government agency.
What is this NOT?
Not predictive. Not transactional. Not real-time. Descriptive only — we surface what official releases say, refreshed automatically. We don't forecast values or recommend specific properties.
Stop reconciling spreadsheets. Start scanning.
Free during beta. No signup, no credit card. Read a dossier, run a calculator, save a scan.