In September 2025, the U.S. short-term rental market saw slower growth as demand dipped slightly year-over-year and supply expansion eased to its lowest level of the year. Rising nightly rates kept revenue steady, while strong holiday pacing points to a potential rebound heading into year-end.

U.S. Review September 2025: Demand Softens as Supply Growth Hits Lowest Point of the Year

Demand declined slightly year-over-year in September (–0.1%), marking the first negative change since April 2024.

Supply growth slowed to 3.3% year-over-year (the lowest rate of 2025) while new listings fell by –4.4%.

Average daily rates (ADR) increased by +4.5%, helping lift RevPAR by +0.5% to $143.25 despite occupancy dropping –3.9% year-over-year.

Strong holiday pacing gives hope for the end of the year, with Thanksgiving weekend bookings up +14.7% compared with 2024 and the prior weekend up nearly +19.7%.

September performance in the U.S. short-term rental (STR) market was muted, marking the first year-over-year decline in demand (–0.1%) since April 2024. 

However, there is good news. Like April, results were skewed by a calendar shift that moved one day of the Labor Day weekend from September into August. Adjusting for this shift (by comparing September 2025 with September 2–October 1, 2024) demand growth comes in at +2.0%, a modest but steady rate of expansion.

This adjustment also halves the apparent occupancy loss, reducing it from –3.9% to –2.0%, bringing it closer in line with the small monthly declines observed since May. Year-to-date occupancy remains level with 2024, supported by slower supply growth and strong holiday pacing. With demand expected to firm up through the remainder of the year, occupancy could still close 2025 slightly higher than last year.

At a Glance: Key U.S. STR Performance Metrics for September 2025

Revenue per Available Rental (RevPAR) increased 0.5% year-over-year (YOY) to $143.25

Available listings reached 1.76 million, a 3.3% increase year-over-year

Demand nights were essentially flat, down -0.1% compared to September 2024, but up 2.0% when shifting from September 2024 one day forward.

Occupancy averaged 48.1%, down 3.9% year-over-year, but down only 2.0% when shifting from September 2024 one day forward.

Average Daily Rates (ADR) climbed to $297.79, up 4.5% from last year

The Repeat Rent Index (RRI) rose 3.8% year-over-year

Total nights booked were up 3.0% from September 2024.

The U.S. economic picture grew more uncertain in September as the recent government shutdown halted publication of official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Before the shutdown, the BLS had already reported a sharp slowdown in hiring, with only 22,000 jobs added in August, one of the weakest monthly gains in recent years.

Private-sector estimates have since filled the gap, though they paint an equally subdued picture. The Carlyle Group, using data from its portfolio companies, estimated a gain of just 17,000 jobs in September, while payroll processor ADP reported a loss of 32,000 jobs. Together, these figures suggest that labor market momentum has stalled, reinforcing concerns of a broader economic cooling.

In response, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates in September (the first reduction of 2025) as signs of labor market weakness outweighed lingering inflation concerns. Inflation had hovered near 3% before the shutdown, but policymakers are now expected to prioritize employment stability. Most economists anticipate two to three additional rate cuts before the end of the year, a move that could begin to thaw the housing market and stimulate STR investment in 2026.

Cooling Labor Market and Lower Rates Temper Supply

In May and June, supply growth accelerated to above 5%, causing concern that a reinvigorated STR supply could further weaken occupancy. Since June, however, supply growth has slowed each month. In September, available listings grew 3.3% year-over-year, down from 3.8% in August and marking the lowest rate of 2025.

The difficulties in the labor market have led many economists to predict that rates will be cut more quickly than anticipated earlier in the year, with two or three cuts now seeming almost certain. Mortgage markets responded to this new trajectory by falling to their lowest level since October 2024, briefly touching 6.26% before settling at 6.3% by the end of September. This may signal a looser housing market and more STR investment in the future, but such a reversal is unlikely to occur until well into 2026. It takes considerable time for the Fed’s target rate to filter through to longer-term interest rates, the housing market, and ultimately the STR sector.

New listings also showed a temporary resurgence earlier in the year, with year-over-year growth improving from –16.3% in January to –3.3% by June. Since then, however, growth has stalled and declined  again, with new listings down –4.4% year-over-year in September.

Labor Day Timing Distorts September STR Performance

The calendar shift dragged down demand to essentially match 2024 levels, dipping slightly at –0.1% year-over-year. When adjusting the September 2024 comparison to account for the Labor Day weekend change, demand rises modestly to +2.0%, which is still slower than August’s +3.7%. Bookings, an indicator of future demand, held steady at +3.0%, down only slightly from 3.1% in August. This suggests that September may represent a bottoming out of demand growth.

Occupancy saw a sharper decline, falling –3.9% year-over-year. Adjusting for the calendar shift reduces the decline to –2.0%. This aligns more closely with the moderate drops seen from April onward, when occupancy declined between –1% and –1.2%. Year-to-date occupancy remains even with 2024 at 56.6%, supported by strong early-year performance.

Across location types, none recorded an increase in occupancy in September. Only Small City/Rural and Coastal resort destinations saw growth in demand.

At the market level, the number of top 50 markets posting occupancy gains fell from 16 in August to just 8 in September. While demand softened, supply growth remained widespread, with 35 markets expanding their available listings. 

Of those, only four achieved year-over-year occupancy increases: 

Santa Rosa/Rosemary Beach, Florida (+0.2%)

Average daily rate (ADR) growth slowed for the second month in a row. Despite steeper occupancy losses compared to August, the slowdown in rate growth was modest. ADR rose +4.5% year-over-year in September, down slightly from +5.1% in August.

ADR has now increased for nineteen consecutive months. The high inflation rates of 2022 and 2023 squeezed consumer budgets and pushed STR prices down. Since then, ADRs have recovered and are generally outpacing inflation.

The Repeat Rent Index (RRI), which measures pricing changes among existing operators and excludes the effect of new listings entering the market, also slowed slightly in September. RRI rose +3.8%, compared with +4.1% in August. The convergence between RRI and ADR reflects that new listings are being priced similarly to existing stock. The slowdown in overall supply growth has reduced the impact of listing mix changes on rate trends.

Since ADR has been the main driver of RevPAR growth in 2025, it’s no surprise that stronger rates have translated into steady revenue gains. RevPAR has now increased for twelve consecutive months, showing that pricing strength continues to support top-line growth even amid softening occupancy.

Without reliable rental comps, you're making pricing decisions in the dark. Use real data to compare your listing performance to similar properties and discover your true market position.

Holidays Are the Best Hope for the Rest of 2025

Looking ahead, on-the-books demand pacing suggests modest growth for October, with stronger gains expected in November and December. Travel demand that may have been deferred earlier in the year due to economic uncertainty following the April tariff announcements and the labour slowdown appears likely to resurface over the holiday season.

Thanksgiving weekend, in particular, is pacing exceptionally well, up as much as +14.7% compared with 2024. The preceding weekend also shows strong growth, with bookings up nearly 19.7%.

As expected, the biggest increases are in Suburban areas, where many families gather for the holidays. Small City/Rural destinations and Coastal resorts are also seeing healthy pacing, suggesting continued interest in quick getaways and late-season beach trips.

At the market level, several locations are experiencing significant swings tied to college football schedules. The relocation of major rivalry games is contributing to sharp weekend demand spikes around November 29. This includes Florida vs. Florida State in Gainesville, South Carolina vs. Clemson in Columbia, and Ohio State vs. Michigan in Ann Arbor, is contributing to sharp weekend demand spikes around November 29.

Finally, the Fall leaf-peeping season is well underway. Although a great opportunity to showcase the natural beauty surrounding rentals, the timing of the season transpires quickly. In the first half of October, northerly markets such as the Maine Coast; Burlington, Vermont; the White and Green Mountains, and Boston have a significant occupancy advantage. Michigan's Upper Peninsula also sees interest.

As the month wears on, New England loses significant occupancy. The exception is Boston, which retains elevated occupancy. The second half of October sees demand spread South and West, with Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; the Shenandoah Valley; and the Red River Gorge, Kentucky seeing uplift. Occupancy also heats up in the North Georgia mountains and North Carolina mountains.

By November, peeping North of Maryland is essentially over, as demand continues moving South to markets such as Lynchburg and Charlottesville in Virginia and Nashville and Chattanooga in Tennessee. Gatlinburg/ Pigeon Forge is also popular throughout this entire period.

Gain insights into the revenue and occupancy trends in your market.

U.S. short-term rentals in September 2025 saw slower demand and supply growth, steady revenues from higher rates, and strong holiday bookings signalling year-end recovery.

Airbnb Occupancy Rate: Insights and Tips

Key Takeaways
The Airbnb occupancy rate is a vital metric for success and is calculated by dividing the number of booked nights by the available nights. The occupancy rate reflects how often your property is rented out compared to its availability.
Understanding and monitoring your occupancy rate is key to maximizing earnings, as it indicates property performance and influences pricing and marketing strategies.
How you interpret your occupancy rate is essential; high and low occupancy rates don’t always mean what you think.

Successful Airbnb hosts are obsessed with bookings, and for good reason—it’s the name of the vacation rental game.

When hosts talk about Airbnb bookings, they're really talking about occupancy rate: the percentage of available nights that guests book. Monitoring your occupancy rate is important because it shows how well your Airbnb stacks up against the competition. The occupancy rate can also indicate whether you need to switch up your strategy or pricing to boost your rental income.

Whether you’re new to short-term vacation rentals or an industry expert, it’s important to understand the methodology and best practices behind your occupancy rate. 

Learn about short-term rental data

What is Airbnb Occupancy Rate?

In its simplest form, the occupancy rate is the percentage of time a vacation rental property is booked compared to the time it is available for bookings. 

To make understanding occupancy rate easier, let's use a straightforward example.

Imagine you own a cabin that's available for guests all year. That means it could potentially be booked for 365 nights. Throughout the year, guests book your cabin for 90 of those nights. We can use that number to calculate the occupancy rate and see how often your property was rented out compared to its availability. 

By dividing the booked nights (90) by the total available nights (365) and multiplying by 100 to get a percentage, we find an occupancy rate of approximately 25%. This means your cabin was rented out for about a quarter of the year.

Reasons Why Your Occupancy Rate Matters
Maximize Revenue Potential: Physical products can be sold at any time if they’re not immediately purchased. However, a vacant vacation rental represents a unique challenge. If a property goes unbooked for a night, it's impossible to "sell" that night again. Each unbooked night directly translates into a tangible loss of potential income. That’s why the occupancy rate is crucial for owners looking to maximize their earnings. 
Reveal Property Performance Insights: Consider two similar properties in the same location. Property A consistently achieves an 80% occupancy rate, while Property B struggles to reach 50%. This stark difference signals that Property A might be better aligned with guest preferences or have better marketing. Analyzing occupancy rates helps identify performance gaps and areas for improvement, whether that's improving your listing or adjusting pricing strategies to meet market demand.
Determine Market Demand and Inform Pricing Strategies: High Airbnb occupancy rates indicate strong market demand, while low occupancy rates can reflect lower demand. This information informs your pricing strategy. Let’s consider an apartment near a convention center that has high occupancy during events but low occupancy rates otherwise. This trend suggests that you may want to consider adjusting your rates in relation to the convention center’s event calendar. Dynamic pricing takes into consideration trends like this and uses them to optimize revenue during peak and off-peak times.
Guide Investment and Enhancement Decisions: Evaluate occupancy rates before and after making upgrades, like installing high-speed internet or renovating the kitchen, to assess the return on investment (ROI). This analysis is crucial for prioritizing property improvements that make your listing more appealing and, subsequently, improve the occupancy rate.

Learn about Dynamic Pricing

How to Calculate the Airbnb Occupancy Rate

Understanding the occupancy rate of your Airbnb property is pivotal for optimizing your rental strategy. Yet, it all comes down to a single equation.

Airbnb Occupancy Rate Calculation

Reserved Days / Available Days x 100 = Occupancy Rate

With that in mind, here's a simple guide on how to find Airbnb occupancy rates:

Step-by-Step Calculation
Determine the Total Number of Reserved Days: Start by counting how many days guests booked your property over a specific period of time, usually 12 months. 
Identify the Total Number of Available Days: Calculate the total days your property was available for booking over the same time period, excluding any days you blocked off for personal use.
Calculate the Occupancy Rate: Divide the total number of reserved days by the total number of available days, then multiply the result by 100 to convert it into a percentage. These steps represent AirDNA’s version of an Airbnb occupancy rate calculator.

Example Calculation:

Imagine you own a house on the water in North Carolina and you're evaluating its performance on Airbnb over the last 12 months. The property was available for 340 days and booked for 240 days within this timeframe.

Reserved Days: 240

Available Days: 340

Occupancy Rate Calculation: 240/340 x 100 = 70.58%

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Interpreting Your Occupancy Rate

While a 70% occupancy rate may seem ideal, signaling guest satisfaction and consistent revenue, it's essential to delve deeper. High occupancy could indicate underpricing, meaning you might be missing out on potential income. It's crucial to balance occupancy with your average daily rates (ADRs) to maximize revenue. 

Think about it: A property with a 50% or 60% occupancy rate could earn more revenue than one that’s booked 70% of the time. It’s all relative to pricing. A property booked more often at $100 per night may not outearn a property that’s booked less often at $300 per night.

It’s important to ask yourself: Do I want higher occupancy or higher average daily rates (ADRs)? An accurate data tool can help you sort out which strategy is best for your bottom line. (Why guess when you can know exactly what you should be charging guests?)

What is a Good Airbnb Occupancy Rate?

Average Airbnb occupancy rates vary from market to market and year to year. You can see how the national average occupancy rate has fluctuated:

Trailing twelve months (TTM), March 2023 to February 2024: 55.1%
2023: 55.4%
2022: 58.6%
2021: 60.3%

The occupancy rate in 2022 reflects a recovery trend in the industry after the pandemic brought the average occupancy rate into the low fifties in 2020.

Determining a "good" rate is less about finding a universal number and more about understanding local market conditions, historical performance, and your personal goals for the property. Knowing your market's average helps inform decisions on pricing, marketing, and operations.

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Average Airbnb Occupancy Rates by City: Top 10 Highest Occupancy Rates

If you’re new to the short-term rental market, understanding the average airbnb occupancy rates by city can help you choose a location that’s likely to generate a healthy revenue.

These markets had the highest trailing twelve-month short-term occupancy rates (March 2023 to February 2024):

Kauai, Hawaii: 74.4%
Oahu, Hawaii: 73.4%
Maui, Hawaii: 72.4%
Maine DownEast/Acadia Coastal: 67.7%
Big Island, Hawaii: 67.1%
New York City: 65.5%
Denver: 65.3%
Anaheim, California: 65.2%
Boulder, Colorado: 64.3%
 Outer Banks, North Carolina: 64.3%

Many of the markets with the highest occupancy rates are located in Hawaii. However, seeing as the vacation rental market in Hawaii is subject to fairly heavy restrictions, let’s consider the markets with the highest occupancy rates in the contiguous U.S.

Maine DownEast/Acadia Coastal: 67.7%
New York City: 65.5%
Denver: 65.3%
Anaheim, California: 65.2%
Boulder, Colorado: 64.3%
Outer Banks, North Carolina: 64.3%
San Diego: 64.2%
Sarasota, Florida: 64.1%
Lincoln City/Newport, Oregon: 64%
Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, Tennessee: 63.9%

Average Occupancy Rates by City: Top 10 Lowest Occupancy Rates

The average Airbnb occupancy rates by city in the following areas leave hosts wanting more. These markets currently have the lowest trailing twelve-month occupancy rates:

Oxford, MS: 34.9%
Big Bear, CA: 39.6%
Southbend, Indiana: 40.4%
Texas East Area: 41.4%
College Station, Texas: 41.8%
Mississippi area: 42.1%
Augusta, Georgia/South Carolina: 42.8%
Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania: 43.2%
California South area: 43.7%
 Louisiana area: 43.9%

If you’re looking to invest in vacation properties, avoid these markets because you likely won't get a good ROI. Property managers and hosts in these markets may need to lower their rates to encourage guests to book with them rather than other Airbnbs.

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Why Airbnb Occupancy Rates Differ from Hotels 

Hotels offer a consistent product and pricing strategy, but STRs vary widely in terms of property type, location, amenities, and host engagement. It’s crucial to assess STR occupancy differently than traditional hotel occupancy in order to accurately reflect performance in the vacation rental market.

AirDNA only considers active listings in its occupancy rate calculations, whether it’s for a specific market or when someone uses our Airbnb calculator. We define active as having at least one calendar day classified as reserved or available during the reporting period. If we included every available night from every available listing in our occupancy calculation, it would return a falsely low occupancy rate. This is due to variations in vacation rental host behaviors and motivations. We’re talking about host attentiveness in managing listing calendars and their responsiveness to reservation requests.

Here are three host cases that would falsely skew occupancy downward if we included them in the occupancy rate calculation: 

Event-Based Hosts: Hosts who list properties temporarily to take advantage of specific events, causing temporary market fluctuations that don’t reflect regular hosting activity.

"Make Me Move" Hosts: Hosts who set their prices significantly above the market rate, using Airbnb as an opportunistic platform rather than a committed hosting venue.

Dormant Listings: Properties that appear available but haven't seen a booking for months, often due to a shift in host priorities or property usage.

AirDNA ensures that its occupancy rate calculations reflect genuine market activity and trends by focusing on active listings. We stand by the accuracy of our data and use this methodology to help stakeholders understand the true dynamics of the STR market. Our insights are distinct from those that can be gleaned from hotel occupancy data.

How to Get High Occupancy on Airbnb

Occupancy rate may not be a complete picture of your property’s performance, but it’s still important. After all, you’re only making money if guests are staying at your property. If your occupancy rate is falling short of expectations, take these data-driven steps to learn how to increase occupancy rate on Airbnb. 

Increase Your Airbnb Occupancy Rate

Occupancy Rate is Just the Beginning  

According to ou annual best places to invest report, most of the destinations at the top of the list have occupancy rates of 60-70%. If you're interested to learn more about a market's occupancy rate, visit the AirDNA app.

While Airbnb occupancy rates are important, you need to track a range of metrics to assess how your Airbnb is performing overall. Our insights can help you optimize your properties for the best possible occupancy rate, average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available rental (RevPAR), and overall profitability.

Frequently Asked Questions:
What is a good occupancy rate for an Airbnb?

There is no universal “good" occupancy rate. Determining whether your occupancy rate is optimized requires understanding local market conditions, historical performance, and your personal goals for the property. Keep in mind that lower occupancy rates don’t necessarily indicate lost revenue. If you are charging a higher average daily rate, you might not need as many bookings to make as much money as a competitor with higher occupancy but a lower nightly rate.

Where can you see Airbnb occupancy rates?

You can see the occupancy rate for your listing as well as that of competitors in the area on your AirDNA dashboard. 

Find out what “Airbnb occupancy rate” refers to, how to calculate it, and tips for improving your occupancy rate and increasing your STR income.

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U.S. Review September 2025: Demand Softens as Supply Growth Hits Lowest Point of the Year

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