Clarkson vs Epping vs Coomera: One Scores 97/100

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Three suburbs, three very different rent-cycle stories, and one clear winner. In this Suburb Showdown, the real lesson is not just who scored highest — it is how rent, vacancy, supply and price interacted to push one suburb to 97/100, another to 93/100, and one to 70/100.

For investors, that matters. A suburb can look strong on price alone and still be weighed down by a frozen rent line, or it can look expensive and still keep improving because vacancy is tight and asking prices are being worked through.

The four-layer method behind the scores

Every suburb in this episode was assessed the same way:

• Macro: the national picture
• LGA: the council area, where jobs and approvals sit
• Suburb: the market you are actually buying into
• Street: because two houses 800 metres apart can behave very differently

That street-level layer is where the money is often made. Most people stop at layer three. The data does not.

Clarkson: the rent freeze has broken, but the recovery is still forming

Clarkson, Western Australia, postcode 6030, sits in Wanneroo City Council and scored 70. On the surface, there is a lot to like: the median sold price hit $915,000 in July, vacancy tightened to 1.1%, and the yield is 4.21%.

But the reason Clarkson’s score collapsed earlier is clear in the rent chart. Rent sat at $650 a week from October 2024 through May 2025 — eight consecutive months with no movement — while price kept rising. That pushed yield from 4.83% down to 4.21%.

The good news is that the freeze has now broken:

• Rent is $740 a week in July
• Vacancy tightened from 1.6% in June to 1.1% in July
• The R-score has recovered to 70 after falling to 50 in March 2026

The suburb is not “back” in a full sense, but it is clearly in repair mode.

Epping: the 15-month freeze ended, and the score jumped

Epping, Victoria, postcode 3076, scored 93 and sits in Whittlesea City Council. This is the strongest council layer in tonight’s episode, with the council R-score in the 99th percentile nationally.

Epping’s most important signal is the rent chart. Rent held at $550 a week for 15 consecutive months from March 2025 through May 2026. Then it moved to $565 in June and $575 in July.

That mattered because the yield had been compressed by rising price and frozen income:

• Median sold price peaked at $800,000 in February
• It eased to $762,000 in July
• Yield is now 3.92%, down from 4.23% in October 2024
• Vacancy is 2.0%, within a tight and stable 1.6% to 2.8% band over 12 months

The suburb’s score is now at its highest since April. The trigger was not a price surge — it was the rent freeze finally ending.

Coomera: the fortress still looks intact

Coomera, Queensland, postcode 4209, took top spot with a score of 97. It is in Gold Coast City Council, where the council R-score is also in the 99th percentile, but the mechanism is different to Epping.

Coomera combines manageable supply with strong demand:

• Supply is in the 11th percentile at 26.57 approvals per 1,000 existing dwellings
• Population growth is in the 86th percentile, up 10.36% over five years
• Employment diversity is in the 97th percentile
• Vacancy is 1.7%, the tightest in 22 months

The price staircase is the cleanest in the episode. Median sold price rose from $842,000 in October 2024 to $1.11 million in July 2026, a gain of 31.8%. Rent also climbed, from $750 a week to $830 a week over the same period.

That is why Coomera earns the description “fortress”: the rental market kept tightening while price advanced.

What the asking-vs-sold gap is telling you

The asking price data adds another layer.

In Clarkson, July asking price was $859,000 against $915,000 sold — asking $56,000 below sold.

In Epping, sellers asked $749,000 in July while buyers paid $762,000 — asking $13,000 below sold.

In Coomera, sellers were asking $1.05 million in July while buyers paid $1.11 million — asking $60,000 below sold.

That does not mean weakness in Coomera. It means sellers moved down to the clearing price after overshooting it. Buyers were still paying above the advertised number.

Street-level patterns matter more than suburb averages

The suburb averages tell you the direction. The street-level data tells you where the opportunity sits.

• Clarkson: stronger price growth in the northern and eastern pockets near the Mitchell Freeway and Ocean Quay shopping centre; higher yields in cheaper streets; owner occupation strongest in the newer southern estates
• Epping: sold price peaks in the western corridors near High Street and Cooper Street; yield is strongest in older units and townhouses to the east near the hospital precinct
• Coomera: price peaks around Coomera Waters and the town centre precinct; yield peaks in older sections near Hope Island Road; investor demand is strongest near the station precinct

This is why professional research matters. Suburb averages can hide the best buying opportunities.

The Ripehouse Advisory take

The ranking is clear: Coomera 97, Epping 93, Clarkson 70. But the investor takeaway is not simply “buy the highest score”. It is to understand what is driving the score.

• Clarkson is a recovery story: yield is improving, vacancy is tightening, but the market is still working through the damage from a frozen rent line.
• Epping is a repair story: the 15-month rent freeze has ended, but yield remains compressed.
• Coomera is the cleanest growth story: price, rent and vacancy are all pointing in the same direction.

That is exactly why we use the four layers — macro, LGA, suburb and street — before making a move.

Download our no-cost Top Five Markets Report 2026 → https://ripe.house/showdown-ep27