Asheville, North Carolina Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much does an Airbnb in Asheville, North Carolina make, and can you legally run one there? Asheville, in Buncombe County, only allows whole-home rentals in its Resort zoning district and in two expansion districts it grants through conditional zoning, so everywhere else in the city your legal option is a homestay, where you rent up to two guest rooms in the home you live in. Inside the city limits, a private-room listing, the nearest match in BNBCalc's data to a homestay room, brought in about $11,000 over the past year, while a typical entire-place listing brought in about $24,100, and keep in mind that BNBCalc's data can't sort those whole-home listings into ones the city allows and ones it doesn't.

Asheville has no market of its own in BNBCalc. It sits inside one BNBCalc calls Hickory, and judging by where its listings are, it's really the western North Carolina mountains: Buncombe County holds about 30% of them, Watauga County, home to Boone and Blowing Rock, 18%, and Catawba County, where Hickory itself sits, just 1.5%. Only about 7% sit inside Asheville's city limits, roughly one listing in 14. So the data panel beside this article, the Hickory market page in BNBCalc Markets and even the Markets page titled Asheville all describe that whole mountain market rather than the city.

So I've split the numbers two ways. The earnings, bedroom and neighborhood figures I give are Asheville's own, counted inside the city line, while the trends, the seasons and the amenity values are measured across the whole Hickory market and labeled that way every time they appear. After that, the legal section explains which of those numbers a buyer can actually use.

How Much Do Asheville Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Inside Asheville's city limits, the middle Airbnb took in about $24,100 over the past 12 months. It charged a median $216 a night and was booked on about 32% of the year's nights, while a listing three-quarters of the way up the range took in about $41,300. Across the rest of the Hickory market, the middle listing earned about $25,700 at $251 a night and was booked on roughly 30% of the year's nights, so at first glance the city earns a little less than the mountains around it.

Where	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th percentile revenue
Inside Asheville's city limits	$24,116	$216	31.9%	$41,258
Rest of the Hickory market	$25,703	$251	29.5%	$37,936

BNBCalc listing data, past 12 months as of October 2026. Medians of entire-place listings that were open for bookings at least a third of the year and booked on at least 30% of the nights they were open; occupancy here is booked nights over every day of the year. City line: the US Census place for Asheville.

Read the table as two typical listings side by side, one inside the city and one out in the mountains. The city's listing charges less per night but fills a slightly bigger share of the year, while the city's top quarter pulls ahead of the mountains' top quarter. Remember that private-room listings aren't in these figures, and that's a real gap here, since an Asheville homestay is often a room in the host's own house. Counted on their own, with the same filter, private-room listings inside the city took in a median of about $11,000 at $105 a night, which is the closest thing in BNBCalc's data to a homestay room. The entire-place figures, on the other hand, take in every whole-home listing inside the city, wherever it sits on the zoning map.

That first glance turns out to be misleading, because the two groups aren't renting the same kind of home.

Bedrooms	Asheville median revenue	Asheville median nightly rate	Rest of Hickory market median revenue	Rest of Hickory market median nightly rate
Studio	$17,055	$168	$15,846	$155
1	$18,540	$160	$17,552	$161
2	$36,132	$314	$21,982	$209
3	$48,377	$472	$28,649	$284
4+	$53,530 (thin)	$706 (thin)	$45,510	$473

Same listings and period as the table before it, split by bedroom count. Asheville's four-bedroom-and-up row is thin and will move between data updates.

Size for size, though, Asheville wins: an Asheville two-bedroom took in about $36,100 against $22,000 or so for a two-bedroom elsewhere in the market, roughly 1.6 times as much, and an Asheville three-bedroom about $48,400 against $28,600 or so, roughly 1.7 times. Studios and one-bedrooms, meanwhile, land within about $1,200 of each other. The city's overall median still comes in lower because half of Asheville's listings are one-bedrooms, against roughly a fifth of the listings outside it, and only about one in nine has three bedrooms or more, while out in the mountains half of them do.

So where are all those bigger homes? Mostly in the counties BNBCalc groups with Asheville, which is easier to see by county than by town.

County (towns in it)	Share of the Hickory market's listings	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy
Buncombe (Asheville, Black Mountain, Weaverville)	29.6%	$27,299	$244	32%
Watauga (Boone, Blowing Rock, Beech Mountain)	18.1%	$30,474	$319	28%
Haywood (Waynesville, Maggie Valley)	10.2%	$24,269	$232	30%
Avery (Banner Elk)	7.8%	$23,783	$258	27%
Henderson (Hendersonville)	5.2%	$22,838	$208	31%
Ashe (West Jefferson)	4.4%	$22,867	$233	28%
Catawba (Hickory)	1.5%	$20,557	$171	33%

BNBCalc listing data, same population and period, placed in counties by listing location: the six largest counties by share of listings plus Catawba for Hickory, while a small slice of the market reaches into Tennessee and Virginia.

Between them, Buncombe, Watauga, Haywood and Avery hold about two-thirds of the market, and a similar share of all its listings sit outside any incorporated town. Watauga's listings post the highest median of the big counties at $30,500, on the highest nightly rate, while Catawba, the county the market is named for, has the lowest rate on the list. A large share of the Hickory market sits with professional hosts who run several listings each. A homestay host has to live there and be home overnight, so the help that fits is a cleaner or someone to answer guest messages; for a whole home in the Resort district or out in the county, the Asheville property management guide lays out who manages rentals locally.

Is the Asheville Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

The data can't settle it yet, at least not across the Hickory market, which is where BNBCalc measures trends. Comparing January through September 2026 with those months in 2025, the market averaged about 7% more active listings, and nightly rates averaged about 21% higher. Occupancy is the piece that would tell you whether those extra listings are finding guests, and it hasn't moved clearly in either direction, so I won't call it.

Hickory market, market-wide	January to September 2026 against the same months of 2025
Active listings	Up about 7%
Average nightly rate	Up about 21%
Booking lead time	Longer (direction only)

BNBCalc market data for the whole Hickory market, January to September 2026 against the same months of 2025. Changes are relative, a percentage of the 2025 figure, not percentage points. Each measure is averaged on its own, so they don't multiply together. Occupancy is left out because its direction isn't clear.

Put together, rates rose by about a fifth even as more listings competed for guests, who also booked further ahead. That shows travelers were still willing to pay more, but a higher rate on its own can't tell you whether the extra listings are filling their calendars. Inside the city line, my count of Asheville's own listings shows them booked on about 32% of the year's nights against about 30% across the rest of the market, a small edge from a single year rather than a trend. What I'd track instead is a short list of listings that match the one you'd buy, checking their occupancy every quarter or so, since crowding reaches homes like yours before it moves a market-wide average.

When Is Asheville's Peak Airbnb Season?

Those calendars fill in two waves, and you can see both in the monthly figures across the Hickory market. BNBCalc doesn't keep a month-by-month series for the city on its own, so these are the whole mountain market's seasons, and you'll want to check a downtown unit's own comps before assuming it keeps the same calendar.

Month	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
October 2025	42.4%	$288
November 2025	33.5%	$297
December 2025	35.5%	$328
January 2026	27.7%	$303
February 2026	26.1%	$290
March 2026	25.3%	$269
April 2026	27.9%	$272
May 2026	27.8%	$276
June 2026	34.4%	$310
July 2026	44.7%	$330
August 2026	33.6%	$297
September 2026	32.7%	$284

BNBCalc market data, Hickory market, market-wide, October 2025 to September 2026.

July and October are the two busy months, both above 42% occupancy, and July's average nightly rate of $330 topped every other month. December's rate came within about $2 of it, even though fewer of its nights booked. The slow stretch runs from January through May, when occupancy sat between 25% and 28%, and March had the year's lowest rate at $269, with July's running about 23% higher. These monthly figures are market-wide averages, whereas the earnings medians measure each listing's bookings against the full calendar year, blocked days included, so the two aren't meant to match: from June through December every month sits above the earnings medians, while January through May sit below them.

The swings inside a single week are even bigger. Across the Hickory market, Saturday nights fill nearly twice as often as Tuesday nights, and prices follow the same shape: Friday and Saturday nights cost roughly a tenth more than an average night that week, and Tuesday nights about 6% less. If you're running a homestay, plan on being home most Friday and Saturday nights, since the code requires you to stay overnight whenever guests do and those are the nights guests want most.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Asheville?

Inside the city, the biggest dividing line is how close you are to downtown.

Neighborhood (City of Asheville)	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th percentile revenue	Typical bedrooms
South Slope	$49,556	$458	32%	$70,877	2
East End Valley Street	$44,369	$303	35%	$52,285	2
The Block	$42,223	$357	34%	$51,411	1
Downtown	$39,223	$344	32%	$50,730	1 to 2
North Downtown	$38,074	$377	28%	$54,045	2
Montford	$21,650	$181	33%	$33,361	1
Grove Park/Sunset	$20,153	$169	31%	$24,516	1
Beaverdam Valley	$18,532	$190	29%	$25,601	1
East West Asheville	$18,430	$169	32%	$22,571	1
Kenilworth	$18,018	$141	32%	$23,517	2
Five Points	$17,345	$148	30%	$23,672	1
Falconhurst	$15,653	$144	28%	$21,433	1
Haw Creek	$14,237	$147	32%	$21,450	1
Rhododendron Creek and Horney Heights	$12,299	$124	30%	$15,987	1

BNBCalc listing data, past 12 months as of October 2026, same listing filter as the earnings tables (typical bedrooms is the median listing's size), with boundaries from the City of Asheville's registered-neighborhood map for listings inside the city limits; those polygons don't cover the whole city, and neighborhoods too thin to measure reliably are left out.

When I lined the neighborhoods up, the split was sharper than I'd expected. The five rows at the top all sit within half a mile of the center of downtown, and their middle listings took in about $38,100 to $49,600 at median rates between $303 and $458 a night. Everywhere else on the list, from Montford down to Rhododendron Creek and Horney Heights, the middle listing earned between $12,300 and $21,700 at $124 to $190 a night, and part of that gap is the kind of unit, since the typical listing in eight of those nine rows is a one-bedroom. Make sure to read the downtown rows as what's listed today, not as a target. The Resort district isn't downtown at all, and downtown's expansion-district sites add up to about 11 acres, so for almost all of downtown a new whole-home rental isn't an option.

If a whole house is what you're after, the rest of Buncombe County outside the city line is the natural comparison. It holds about 23% of the Hickory market's listings, its middle listing earned about $28,100 at $252 a night, and its typical home has three bedrooms. Those homes are outside the city limits, so check what the county or the town there allows before you buy, and the Buncombe County guide covers the county's rules.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Asheville?

Out in those county homes, one amenity stands apart. Across the Hickory market, a hot tub lifts revenue by about 24% over a comparable listing without one, according to BNBCalc's amenity model, and about a quarter of the market's listings already have one. I'd treat that figure as a cabin number, though, because it's pooled across the whole market, and a downtown condo or a homestay room doesn't compete for the same guest as a cabin with a view.

BNBCalc Markets also puts values on a sauna, an EV charger, internet, pet-friendly stays, a grill and bicycles in this market, and those sit behind a subscription, so I haven't quoted them.

Is Airbnb Legal in Asheville?

Yes, but outside three zoning districts only as a homestay, and that rule decides which of the earnings figures you can use. Asheville's development code defines a homestay as a lodging use inside a home where a resident lives, with up to two guest rooms rented for stays of less than 30 days, and it allows homestays in every residential district. The person running it has to be at least 18, live there full-time as their one primary residence, and stay overnight while guests are there. If the owner doesn't live there, the owner and the full-time resident apply together.

The code treats a whole-home rental as a different use, a short-term vacation rental, and its table of permitted uses allows one in only three districts: the Resort district and two expansion districts. The city's own homestay page names the Resort district alone, and in practice that's the one that counts, because an expansion district only exists where City Council has approved a conditional rezoning for a specific large development, and that rezoning lists the uses the site may have. The Resort district itself covers about 1% of the city's land, in two pockets within about two miles of downtown, one to the north around Grove Park and Sunset and one to the west near Emma. For everyone else, a few more limits narrow the homestay route:

• One per person and one per lot. Homestay permits are limited to one per person, immediate household or legal entity, and even a 5% stake in an LLC or trust counts as owning it.
• Not in a detached unit. A homestay can't go in a detached accessory building unless it was permitted there before December 14, 2021.
• A permit and a yearly review. Every homestay needs a permit, is reviewed every year and inspected for compliance, and has to carry liability insurance that covers the guests.

Enforcement has teeth on paper, too. The code sets a civil penalty of $500 a day for breaking its rules on using a home for lodging, which covers renting a home for less than a month where lodging isn't allowed and covers homestays as well.

Guests pay lodging taxes on top of the nightly price. In Buncombe County, state and local sales tax adds up to 7%, and the county adds a 6% occupancy tax on the rental, cleaning fees included, so a guest pays about 13% on top of the price. State law treats both taxes the same way: whoever collects the guest's payment owes the tax on what it collects, so a booking platform that takes the payment owes both. The county still tells owners that it's on them to make sure its tax gets paid and to prove it in an audit, so don't forget to keep the platform's statements. The North Carolina tax guide covers the state side. For the permit application itself, step by step, read the Asheville regulation guide.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Asheville Airbnb Market?

The city publishes rules but no earnings figures, so the trends, monthly seasons and hot tub value in this article are drawn from the same market data that powers BNBCalc Markets, BNBCalc's market research platform. The Asheville-only medians are a different matter: I counted those from BNBCalc's listings inside the city limits, so they aren't something Markets displays. Its Hickory page opens on typical earners rather than every listing, so its figures won't line up exactly with these, but its monthly revenue chart for each bedroom count still makes it easy to see whether the July and October peaks hold for a home the size of the one you're weighing.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for an Asheville Property?

Give the BNBCalc Calculator the address first. It builds the estimate from as many as 50 nearby comps, giving you revenue, a nightly rate and occupancy for that home, before running the expenses, the financing and your returns. Comps matter a lot here, because a market-wide figure blends downtown condos with Watauga cabins, and when there are at least four comps around a US address, the AI Underwriter picks out the comps that match the home most closely. Then check the result against three Asheville facts:

1. Zoning comes first. If the address isn't in the Resort district or one of the two expansion districts, model the one or two guest rooms you'd rent while living there, not the whole house; a private room inside the city took in a median of about $11,000.
2. Use the city's bedroom figures only where a whole home is allowed. If the address is in the Resort district, or in an expansion district whose rezoning lists whole-home rentals, compare against Asheville's own medians: a two-bedroom earned about $36,100 and a three-bedroom $48,400, against $22,000 and $28,600 or so for the same sizes elsewhere in the market.
3. Plan for the slow stretch. Across the Hickory market, occupancy sat between 25% and 28% from January through May, so the plan has to carry the house through those months.

Already hosting a homestay here? Point the Airbnb Listing Optimizer at your live listing, and it combs through as many as 100 of the listing's guest reviews and ranks which fixes to tackle first. For a lender or investor screening lots of western North Carolina addresses, the BNBCalc API sends the Calculator's analysis of each property into the software they already use, and it's billed by usage. Still choosing between markets? BNBCalc Markets lines US markets up by gross yield, and North Carolina's gross yield rankings put the Hickory market ninth of the state's 16, just ahead of Charlotte.

Is an Asheville Airbnb a Good Investment in 2026?

An Asheville Airbnb can be a good investment if the numbers you plan on belong to a unit you can legally run. Outside the Resort district and some rezoned sites, Asheville's route for renting out a home is a homestay, and the middle private-room listing in the city earned about $11,000 a year. The bigger whole-home figures, about $36,100 for a two-bedroom and $48,400 for a three-bedroom, only apply where a whole home is allowed, so for most buyers a whole-house plan means looking across the city line, where the typical listing elsewhere in Buncombe County earned about $28,100 under county or town rules. Before any offer, put that exact address into the BNBCalc Calculator.

A market's headline figure describes whatever mix of homes happens to be listed there. The closer you can cut the data to the unit you're actually allowed to run, the more it's worth.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in Asheville?

BNBCalc's listing data puts a private-room listing inside Asheville's city limits, the closest match to a homestay, at a median of about $11,000 over the past 12 months. Entire-place listings in the city earned about $24,100, a two-bedroom about $36,100 and a three-bedroom $48,400, but the city only allows a whole home in the Resort district and some rezoned sites, and the data can't tell which listings sit there. For a single address of your own, the BNBCalc Calculator builds an estimate from as many as 50 nearby comps.

Which BNBCalc market covers Asheville?

BNBCalc Markets groups much of the western North Carolina mountains into one market it names Hickory. Only about 7% of that market's listings sit inside Asheville's city limits. Buncombe County holds about 30%, Watauga 18%, Haywood 10% and Avery 8%, while Catawba County, where Hickory sits, holds about 1.5%. That's why BNBCalc's market-wide figures for Hickory describe mostly mountain homes, and why Asheville's own medians differ from them.

What is the busiest month for Airbnbs around Asheville?

BNBCalc's market data for the whole Hickory market, every listing included, shows July and October as the two busiest months, both above 42% occupancy, and July's $330 average nightly rate was the highest of any month. December's rate came close behind at $328. January through May is the slow stretch, with occupancy between 25% and 28%, and March had the lowest average rate, $269.

Which amenity adds the most revenue near Asheville?

BNBCalc's amenity model finds a hot tub lifting revenue by about 24% over a comparable listing without one across the Hickory market, and about a quarter of the market's listings have one. BNBCalc Markets also values a sauna, an EV charger, internet, pet-friendly stays, a grill and bicycles in this market for subscribers. Because the hot tub figure is pooled across mountain cabins and city units alike, check it against comparable listings near your address.

Are more Airbnbs opening around Asheville?

BNBCalc market data shows about 7% more active listings across the Hickory market in January through September 2026 than in those months of 2025, with average nightly rates up about 21% and guests booking further ahead. Occupancy hasn't moved clearly in either direction, so BNBCalc's data can't yet say whether the added listings are crowding the market. Tracking occupancy on a few listings like yours, quarter by quarter, is the better signal.