Anchorage, Alaska Airbnb Market Data 2026

You're looking at a place in Anchorage and you want to know two things: what it would bring in over a year, and whether you're still allowed to rent it by the night. You are, and the Municipality has never said otherwise, but since May 2026 you also need a registration number from the Municipal Clerk before the listing goes up anywhere.

Anchorage is a consolidated city and borough, so the same government that zones your street runs the registry, collects the room tax and fields the neighbor's complaint. One rulebook, which is more than most cities its size can offer.

The second thing to get straight is what "Anchorage" means once you start reading market figures. About two thirds of its listings sit inside the Municipality itself, while the rest sit north of it in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, out in Wasilla, Palmer, Big Lake and Talkeetna, where the Clerk's registry doesn't reach and the Borough charges its own bed tax instead. So if you're comparing a condo in Midtown against a cabin outside Palmer, you're comparing two legal regimes as well as two properties.

What changed this year is worth saying plainly, because it decides how you underwrite. Anchorage paid its hosts in rate, not in nights: the average nightly rate ran about 23% ahead of the same stretch of 2025 while occupancy sat within a point of where it was, so the gains came from charging more for the same calendar rather than filling more of it.

How Much Do Anchorage Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Right across the market, the median listing took $24,055 over the twelve months to August 2026, at a median nightly rate of $226. Move up one quartile and the figure becomes $32,911, which is a useful mental floor for "a good one rather than an exceptional one," since the top of this market runs a very long way past it.

Most of the gap between those two numbers is size, and size here behaves the way it does in ski and fishing country rather than the way it does in a business-travel city.

Bedrooms	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Studio	$16,056	$148	31.1%	$20,152
1	$18,717	$172	30.4%	$23,547
2	$23,836	$225	31.4%	$30,535
3	$31,964	$308	30.3%	$39,120
4+	$47,433	$499	28.9%	$68,186

Medians of individual listings in the Anchorage market over the trailing twelve months to August 2026, computed from listing-level data rather than from market-wide averages.

A four-plus-bedroom's $47,433 comes to roughly 2.5 times the $18,717 a one-bedroom brings in, and every figure in that table is a median, so you can read the steps against each other without converting anything.

The step that pays best is the one from two bedrooms to three, where $23,836 becomes $31,964, a third more revenue for a single extra room. Going from a studio to a one-bedroom only moves you from $16,056 to $18,717, which is real money but not the kind that changes a deal.

Notice that occupancy barely moves down the column while the nightly rate nearly triples. What you're buying with bedrooms in Anchorage is price, not calendar.

The city-versus-valley split works the same way, though it's subtler than people expect. Inside the Municipality the median listing took $24,435 at $223 a night, while outside it, in the Mat-Su communities, the median took $22,900 at $231 a night.

So the valley charges slightly more per night and sells fewer of those nights, which is what you'd guess from a market where the guest is driving out to a lake rather than flying in to a conference.

Is the Anchorage Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Honestly, the listing data can't settle this one yet, and I'd sooner tell you that than hand you a number that won't hold. Anchorage's stored history was rebuilt partway through this year, and the listing count moves in opposite directions depending on which stretch of the series you measure it on, so there's no direction in it I'd stand behind.

What survives that problem is occupancy and rate, and both are steady enough to read.

Measure	January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025
Average nightly rate	up about 23%
Occupancy	roughly flat, down about 1%

Market-wide across every listing in the Anchorage market. The comparison runs eight months rather than twelve because the underlying series switched to a new set of definitions at the start of 2025, so a full-year baseline would put two different rulers side by side, and since occupancy and nightly rate are averaged separately, multiplying them together won't give you revenue.

Occupancy holding flat while rates climbed 23% is not what a flooded market looks like. When too much supply arrives the first thing that breaks is occupancy, because the new listings take their nights from somebody, and the second thing that breaks is rate, because the losers discount to win those nights back.

Neither happened here. That's an absence of evidence rather than proof, though, so treat it as such and keep in mind that a market can tighten inside a single summer.

The check I'd run, and re-run every few months, is narrower than any market-wide figure: pull the occupancy of ten or fifteen listings that match the property you're considering on bedrooms and on neighborhood, then watch whether their summer is filling earlier or later than it did last time you looked.

Current levels by bedroom sit on the Anchorage market page, and to see how Anchorage stacks up statewide, the page that ranks Alaska's markets by gross yield puts them all in order.

When Is Anchorage's Peak Airbnb Season?

Seasonality decides everything else about an Anchorage purchase, so it's worth more than a sentence. The market earns its living between June and August, and the winter isn't a softer version of the summer, it's a different business.

Month, 2026	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
January	26.4%	$198
February	27.4%	$203
March	37.3%	$215
April	32.0%	$206
May	41.0%	$258
June	57.4%	$317
July	62.6%	$321
August	58.9%	$310

Market-wide monthly figures for 2026 to date, compared against each other within this year only.

July fills 62.6% of available nights at $321, while January fills 26.4% at $198. So the peak month sells more than twice the nights the trough month does and charges about 62% more for each one, which means any model resting on a single year-round figure misses high in winter and low in summer.

Make sure your carrying costs survive February on their own, because February will not carry them for you.

The climb isn't smooth either, and the kink is worth knowing before you sign anything. March runs ahead of April on occupancy, 37.3% against 32.0%, which is the opposite of what a simple spring ramp would do.

March still has snow, the Iditarod and a dark enough sky for aurora trips. April has breakup, the local word for the weeks when the snow turns to mud and nobody comes to look at it. So if you're modeling a shoulder season here, April is the month to be pessimistic about, not February, because February at least knows what it is.

Days of the week matter less in Anchorage than almost anywhere else, and that surprises people coming from a weekend-getaway market. Friday and Saturday run about 15% and 14% clear of the week's average on occupancy, yet Thursday already sits above that average and Sunday only 3% under it, which leaves Monday and Tuesday as the week's only quiet nights at roughly 11% below.

The price premium is milder still, since Friday and Saturday ask about 8% more than the week's average while every weekday stays within 4% of it. A summer visitor here books a week in one go, so a weekend-only pricing strategy leaves money on the table.

That same guest shows up in how far ahead they book, and the pattern is stable enough to plan against. Take the full run of 2025, measured the same way from January through December: the booking window sat between three and four weeks from October through March, then stretched to nearly seven weeks at the June peak.

That pattern is the shape of the season rather than a change over time, and the edge in it is simple enough. Summer gets booked in spring, so if you wait until June to think about July, you're pricing a calendar somebody else already filled.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Anchorage?

Because the market crosses a municipal line, the neighborhood question is two questions, and mixing them produces nonsense. About 67.7% of the market's listings sit inside the Municipality of Anchorage, so the first ranking below uses the Municipality's own community council boundaries.

Community council	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
South Fork	$39,953	$378	28%	$46,225
Eagle River Valley	$34,879	$344	31%	$48,857
Bear Valley	$30,633	$364	31%	$38,958
Rabbit Creek	$29,554	$282	30%	$46,408
Old Seward / Oceanview	$29,543	$274	31%	$37,981
Birchwood	$28,424	$227	29%	$72,347
Huffman / O'Malley	$27,692	$221	33%	$34,750
South Addition	$27,682	$259	32%	$37,574
Bayshore / Klatt	$27,014	$234	32%	$31,930
Rogers Park	$26,596	$254	29%	$40,714

Medians of individual listings assigned by point-in-polygon to the Municipality of Anchorage's official community council boundaries, trailing twelve months to August 2026, with councils too thin to measure reliably left out; the thinnest rows that remain will still move between refreshes.

The shape of that ranking is the hillside and the valleys, not the city core. South Fork, Bear Valley, Eagle River Valley and Rabbit Creek are large-lot, view-heavy, mountain-adjacent addresses, and they earn through the nightly rate rather than through occupancy, which is the bedroom-count pattern playing out geographically.

The core comes in lower and tighter: South Addition at $27,682 is the strongest of the close-in neighborhoods, while Downtown takes $23,974, Midtown $22,520, Spenard $20,785 and Fairview $20,040.

Midtown is the interesting one, because it earns the least per night of any council measured at $148 while running the highest occupancy at 41%. That's the profile of a place where the guest is a contractor or a visiting family rather than a tourist.

Birchwood deserves its own sentence, since its top-quartile revenue of $72,347 runs far clear of a median of $28,424. A gap that wide means a handful of large properties are doing something the typical listing there isn't, so a median there tells you almost nothing about the property you'd end up buying.

When you see a spread like that, underwrite the specific address rather than the area.

One gap you should know about before you use any of this for a Girdwood purchase: the listing data behind this market barely reaches Girdwood or Turnagain Arm, even though both sit legally inside the Municipality and fall under the same registration ordinance. A resort community with a rental economy of its own is effectively missing from the Anchorage figures, so don't read any of these medians as a Girdwood benchmark.

For the feel of an area instead of its arithmetic, the Anchorage neighborhood guide works through them one at a time.

The other third of the market is the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, and it earns differently enough to deserve its own table. It also needs one, since a valley town is a different kind of place from a city neighborhood and the boundaries come from a different source, so a single merged ranking would be comparing apples with orchards.

Mat-Su community	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Lazy Mountain	$35,830	$500	25%	$57,772
Butte	$34,832	$324	28%	$41,428
Palmer	$31,843	$262	32%	$37,822
Gateway	$31,261	$296	28%	$35,900
Meadow Lakes	$28,701	$231	32%	$37,487
Wasilla	$25,090	$269	27%	$33,227
Big Lake	$24,425	$237	28%	$30,775
Tanaina	$23,449	$232	30%	$33,695
Farm Loop	$22,711	$187	31%	$27,731
Susitna North	$22,207	$234	26%	$33,222

Medians of individual listings assigned by point-in-polygon to US Census places and designated places lying outside the Municipality of Anchorage boundary, trailing twelve months to August 2026, with places too thin to measure reliably left out.

Even so, Lazy Mountain at $500 a night and 25% occupancy is the clearest statement of what the valley sells: a big property, booked hard for a short season and empty for a long one. Palmer and Meadow Lakes trade some of that rate for steadier nights, which is usually the safer underwrite if you're financing the purchase.

And Talkeetna, the jumping-off point for Denali flightseeing, sits well down the list at $18,331 on 25% occupancy. A name visitors already know and a number that pays aren't the same thing here.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Anchorage?

Amenities work on the same logic as bedrooms do, lifting what you can charge rather than how often you fill, and in Anchorage one of them dominates. Market-wide, listings with a hot tub show about 17% more revenue, the strongest single amenity signal in the market, and the effect grows with the size of the property.

At one bedroom a hot tub is worth about 13%, at two bedrooms about 16%, and at three bedrooms about 32%, which is roughly double the market-wide figure.

That three-bedroom number is the one I'd act on, since a three-bedroom is already the best step on the revenue ladder and the hot tub compounds it. At four-plus bedrooms the pattern changes, because the hot tub's value there sits behind BNBCalc Markets and the amenity that shows openly is a pool, at about 14%.

Studios get essentially nothing from any of it, with the best signal a barbecue at about 1%, so if you're fitting out a small unit, spend the money on the listing photos instead.

A handful of others register a signal you can't put a number to, since their values are held behind Markets: a sauna and a gym, an EV charger, lake access, internet, a pool at the smaller sizes, bicycles and a TV.

Of those, a sauna is what I'd weigh most seriously for a valley property, since it reads as a normal Alaskan fixture rather than a luxury add-on, and it shows a signal at several bedroom counts.

The practical read is that in a market with a three-month season, the amenities that pay are the ones that make a cold, dark month tolerable or make a summer week feel like an event. That's also why a hot tub earns more attached to a house with room for a family than attached to a studio downtown.

Before you spend money on any of that, make sure the property can carry the install, because a hot tub on a lot with its own well and septic system pulls you into the Municipality's wastewater rules.

Is Airbnb Legal in Anchorage?

Yes, and the Municipality made that explicit rather than leaving it to interpretation. Ordinance AO 2025-115(S-2) passed the Anchorage Assembly 10 votes to 2 on December 16, 2025 and took effect on May 1, 2026.

It did two separate things. It wrote short-term rental into the zoning code as a permitted use in every residential district and several commercial ones, and it created a registration requirement where none had existed.

That registration is the part tripping people up. Under the new Anchorage Municipal Code chapter 10.90, nobody may own a short-term rental in the Municipality without registering it with the Municipal Clerk, who then issues a registration number that has to appear on the listing itself and on any other advertisement.

Registering costs nothing and runs a year, from May 1 to April 30, and at renewal you either update your details or affirm they're unchanged. On top of that, a change of address, unit type, ownership, local contact or owner-occupancy has to be reported within 30 days.

The enforcement mechanism is unusual, and worth understanding, because it doesn't depend on an inspector finding you. The ordinance stops a hosting platform taking a fee for any booking on an unregistered rental, or on one that doesn't display its registration number.

In other words the pressure lands on Airbnb and Vrbo rather than on your door, which is why the deadline stuck. Fines couldn't be issued until 90 days after May 1, and after that an owner served with a notice of violation gets 14 days to comply before they start.

The Assembly softened the landing on top of that, asking enforcement staff in July 2026 to allow up to 30 days to register through the end of September rather than fining straight away. That grace runs out with the month, so if you're reading this unregistered, don't count on it.

One requirement sits buried in the zoning language, and the highest-earning neighborhoods are exactly the ones it catches. If a short-term rental sits on a lot with its own well and wastewater system, it has to meet the Municipality's wastewater rules and get a one-time health authority certificate.

Rabbit Creek, the Eagle River valleys, Bear Valley, South Fork and much of the hillside run on well and septic, so if you're buying into the high end of the community council ranking, budget for that certificate and the weeks it takes. On the other hand, where the building's previous main use was residential or another kind of visitor accommodation, you don't need a land use permit for the change of use, which removes a step people often expect.

Tax is simpler here than in most American cities, because Alaska has no state sales tax and no state lodging tax at all. The whole burden is the Municipality's 12% room tax under AMC chapter 12.20, charged on any stay under 30 consecutive days, and your guest covers it on top of the rent, so it never comes out of what you take home.

If you rent only through platforms registered with the Municipality's Treasury, and Airbnb and Vrbo both are, the platform collects the 12% and sends it in, and your own liability is treated as satisfied. Book a guest directly, though, and you're the one who registers with Treasury, collects the tax and files the returns. The Alaska short-term rental tax guide covers the filing side properly.

Then again, 12% nearly became 17%. The same December 16 meeting also took up AO 2025-97, an ordinance that would've asked voters in April 2026 to amend the Charter and authorize a further 5% tax on each short-term rental transaction, and the Assembly rejected it by 4 votes to 8.

So 12% is still the whole number. Four more members would've sent it to the ballot, though, and the idea clearly has supporters, so I wouldn't model the next decade on 12% holding forever.

Cross the municipal line into the Mat-Su Valley and none of the Anchorage rules follow you. There's no Clerk's registry up there, and the Borough levies its own bed tax of 5% on overnight accommodation, which the operator collects and pays over every quarter.

That rate comes from the Borough's own code and its own tax page, both of which I could only reach through archived captures, so check it yourself before you rely on it. For the full Anchorage picture, including the paperwork sequence and who to call when a step stalls, the Anchorage short-term rental regulation guide is the deeper treatment.

Where Does BNBCalc Get Its Anchorage Airbnb Data?

Where that guide tracks the rules, the figures throughout come from BNBCalc Markets, which measures short-term rental markets against each other so you can weigh one up before committing money to it. It also tracks how far ahead guests are booking in a given market, broken out by bedroom count, and with a season this short that number works more like a deadline than a curiosity. Find out when your best month gets filled and you'll know when your pricing has to be right.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for an Anchorage Property?

Start from the bedroom median rather than from a market average, because market-wide averages here get pulled upward by a small number of very large properties. A two-bedroom starts at $23,836 and a three-bedroom at $31,964, and those are the numbers to put in the first cell of the model.

From there, three things move an Anchorage property off its median.

Location first, since a hillside or valley address with a view earns through nightly rate while a Midtown or Spenard address earns through occupancy, and the two want different pricing. Size second, because the two-to-three-bedroom step is worth about a third more revenue and the studio-to-one-bedroom step is worth far less. Amenities third, where a hot tub on a three-bedroom is the clearest single lever in the market.

Costs are where Anchorage punishes an optimistic model. Heat runs through a long winter whether or not anyone is in the building, snow removal is a contract rather than an afterthought, and a well-and-septic property carries maintenance a city-sewer property doesn't.

Set those against a calendar that earns most of its money in three months, and the question stops being "what does it make" and becomes "what does it make between September and May."

Professional managers take a cut on top, and if you're weighing that against self-managing from out of state, the Anchorage property management comparison covers what local firms charge and what they take on. Home values in the market rose about 4% over the past year, which is a real but modest tailwind and not something to lean on.

Run the specific address rather than the area, especially anywhere the top quartile runs far clear of the median. BNBCalc's calculator takes an address and applies comparable listings to it, which is the version of this exercise that survives contact with an actual property.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a license to run an Airbnb in Anchorage?

You need a registration, not a license. Since May 1, 2026, Anchorage Municipal Code chapter 10.90 requires every short-term rental owner in the Municipality to register with the Municipal Clerk and display the resulting registration number on the listing and on any other advertisement. It replaced the old bed and breakfast permit, which the same ordinance struck out of the code.

How much does it cost to register a short-term rental in Anchorage?

Nothing. The Municipal Clerk's registration carries no fee. It runs for a year, from May 1 through April 30, and has to be renewed annually, with any change to the address, unit type, owner, local contact or owner-occupancy reported within 30 days.

Who collects the 12% room tax on an Anchorage short-term rental?

The guest pays it, and who hands it to the Municipality turns on how the booking was made. Anchorage's 12% room tax under AMC chapter 12.20 applies to stays under 30 consecutive days. If you book only through platforms registered with the Municipality's Treasury Division, which includes Airbnb and Vrbo, those platforms collect and remit it for you. For direct bookings you register with Treasury yourself, collect the tax and file the returns.

Do Anchorage's short-term rental rules apply in Wasilla or Palmer?

No. Wasilla, Palmer and the rest of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley sit outside the Municipality of Anchorage, so the Clerk's registration requirement doesn't reach them. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough instead levies a 5% bed tax on overnight accommodation, collected by the operator and paid over quarterly. Individual cities in the valley may add requirements of their own.

Is a hot tub worth it for an Anchorage rental?

For a three-bedroom the evidence is about as strong as amenity data gets: listings with a hot tub are associated with roughly 32% more revenue at that size, against about 16% at two bedrooms and 13% at one. Studios show no meaningful effect. If the property sits on its own well and septic system, factor in the Municipality's wastewater requirement and the one-time health authority certificate before you price the install.

What does a two-bedroom Airbnb earn in Anchorage?

The median two-bedroom in the Anchorage market took $23,836 over the twelve months to August 2026, at a median nightly rate of $225 and 31.4% median occupancy. The top quartile of two-bedrooms took $30,535. These are medians of individual listings, so half the two-bedrooms in the market earned less than the first figure.

Does an Anchorage Airbnb make money in winter?

Not much, and the calendar is the main risk in this market. Occupancy ran 26.4% in January 2026 at $198 a night against 62.6% in July at $321, so a property that only works on an annual average will spend half the year short. The workable winter plays are longer stays, which fall outside the room tax past 30 consecutive nights, and a property whose fixed costs a slow month can cover on its own.

Every market has a season, but few of them are as blunt about it as this one. A calendar with three good months and a long quiet stretch doesn't reward the buyer who finds the highest headline revenue, it rewards the one who can sit through February without flinching.

Work out what the quiet half of the year costs you before you fall in love with what the loud half pays.