Property tools love to hide their methodology behind branded "scores" and "ratings". We don't. Every number Quokka shows you comes from an official government dataset, and the maths behind the personalised score is plain enough to fit on this page.
Quokka gives each suburb a personalised score from 0 to 100 based on how well it matches what you've told us you care about. Scoring is available on the House Hunter plan — all suburb data is visible free. Six categories feed the score:
Your budget is a real cap, not a slider. Suburbs inside your budget score highest. Over budget falls off proportionally.
Total reported offences from state police data, scored on a logarithmic scale so moderate-crime suburbs aren't unfairly punished.
Average ICSEA score across all schools in the suburb. Anchored against the national mean of 1000.
Most recent quarterly price growth from the Valuer General. Rewards rising areas without forecasting.
Bushfire-prone area zones from state spatial data. Discrete bands: none, general, medium, high.
If you tell us your target median age, suburbs with closer median ages from Census 2021 score higher. Optional.
Most tools rank suburbs against each other. The problem: in a list of two similar suburbs, one ends up at 0 and one at 100 even when they're nearly identical. Quokka uses absolute scoring with sensible thresholds, so two similar suburbs produce two similar scores. The maths matches what you'd expect.
Every number Quokka shows you traces back to one of these official sources. Click any of them to see the original.
Demographics, age distribution, household tenure, income, mortgage and rent medians. Suburb-level (SAL).
Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas - IRSAD, IRSD, IEO, IER scores plus national deciles. The "affluence score" you see on suburb pages is just IRSAD, with its real name.
ICSEA scores and locations for every Australian school. Updated annually.
Suburb-level reported offences from SA Police, NSW BOCSAR, Victoria's Crime Statistics Agency, and the Queensland Police Service. Updated quarterly.
Quarterly median sale prices and growth rates per suburb, sourced from official Valuer General offices. Free for SA, VIC, and NSW; paid in QLD/WA/TAS so coverage is partial.
Bushfire Protection Area boundaries from state spatial data portals. Currently SA only, with VIC/NSW/QLD on the roadmap.
Your account, your shortlist, your preferences - none of it gets sold, shared, or fed to a CRM.
No banner ads, no sponsored suburbs, no "featured" placements. Suburbs are ranked the way your preferences say they should be.
Quokka has no real estate agent CRM, no lead capture pipeline, no industry partnerships that monetise your house hunt.
Predicting where prices will go in 5 years requires either a paid data partnership or a crystal ball. We have neither, so we don't pretend.
Census data is from 2021. The next Australian census is in August 2026, with data published in late 2027. Until then, demographic numbers are 4–5 years old.
Crime data is reported, not actual. Crime statistics reflect what's reported to police, not what actually happens. A suburb with low reporting rates may look safer than it is.
State coverage varies. Property prices are free for SA, VIC, and NSW (~65% of Australia's population). QLD, WA, TAS, NT, and ACT either charge for sales data or don't publish it. We're working on it.
Bushfire risk is currently SA-only. The other states publish their own bushfire-prone-area data and we're rolling them out one by one.
Browse any suburb free. Scoring and property tracking with House Hunter — $19 once.
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