Buffalo, New York Airbnb Market Data 2026

What does a Buffalo Airbnb earn, and would the city even license the house you have in mind?

Take the second half first, because in Buffalo it decides the first. City Code Chapter 380 keeps short-term rentals out of apartment buildings, co-ops, condos and three-family houses altogether, and no building anywhere in the city may run more than two of them. Then comes the question of whether you live there. If you do, you're allowed as of right across nearly all of Buffalo and you just register. If you don't, the city calls it a non-owner-occupied rental, and you can't have one without a special use permit, which goes to the Planning Board for a recommendation and then to the Common Council for a vote. So the Buffalo property that clears the rulebook without a fight is a one or two family house you actually live in, and every other plan has to pass a political body before it passes a spreadsheet.

Chapter 380 stops at the city line, though, and the city is less than half of this market. Only 44% of the market's listings sit inside Buffalo itself, while the rest spread east and south through Erie County towns like Amherst, Cheektowaga, Hamburg and West Seneca, north into Niagara County at North Tonawanda and Lockport, and down the Lake Erie shore as far as Dunkirk in Chautauqua County. Since each of those towns writes a code of its own, treat the money below as the whole market's, with the city pulled out anywhere a label calls it out, and treat Chapter 380 as Buffalo's alone.

How Much Do Buffalo Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Start in the middle rather than at the average, since a handful of big houses drag an average around. Across the Buffalo market's active listings, the middle one took in about $21,700 across the trailing twelve months, on the back of a median nightly rate of $216 and median occupancy of 29%. Step up to the 75th percentile and that becomes roughly $31,900. Each of those is a median across individual listings, computed from BNBCalc market data as of September 2026, which puts them well under the market-wide averages this page's data module renders. A median tells you what the middle property did. An average tells you what the pool did after the best few pull it upward, which is the number to use when you're comparing markets and the wrong one to use when you're sizing a single purchase.

What separates one Buffalo listing from another is mostly size. Ranked by median annual revenue, one-bedrooms land around $16,300, two-bedrooms around $19,400, three-bedrooms around $25,300, and anything with four or more bedrooms around $43,700. So the median large house earns close to three times the median one-bedroom, and it's the only tier that breaks away from the pack, because the gap between a one-bedroom and a three-bedroom is smaller than the gap between a three-bedroom and a four.

The size gap matters more here than it would elsewhere, given what Chapter 380 allows. The code has already pushed you toward a house rather than a unit in a building, and the revenue data pushes you toward a big one. Where Buffalo's stock helps is that big old houses are exactly what the city has, and where it hurts is that a four-bedroom needs four bedrooms' worth of furniture, linens and turnover before it earns any of that. Keep in mind too that the top quartile of four-bedrooms clears about $61,700, so the upside inside that tier is real, while the bottom of it looks a lot like a two-bedroom.

One more thing worth holding onto before the trends: professional operators run a large share of the listings here, and stays run short, closer to a long weekend than a week. Neither of those is unusual for a northern city market, yet together they tell you what you're actually buying into, which is a high-turnover weekend business rather than a set-and-forget one.

Is the Buffalo Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No. Competition isn't arriving in Buffalo, it's leaving, and that's the clearest signal in the table.

Metric	Change
Average nightly rate	Up about 19%
Active listings	Down about 4%
Occupancy	Down about 2%
Booking lead time	Shorter
Purchase price	Up about 4%

Market-wide across every listing size and performance tier, September 2025 through August 2026 against September 2024 through August 2025, from BNBCalc market data. Each measure is averaged on its own, so they won't multiply out to a revenue figure. Figures are rounded, and the lead-time change is shown as a direction because it isn't stable enough to put a number on.

The rate line is doing the work. Hosts are charging noticeably more per night than they were a year ago, while the count of active listings has come down, so nobody is undercutting their way into this market at the moment.

Now the caveat, because the occupancy line complicates the story. Calendars didn't fill up as supply thinned; average occupancy slipped a couple of points instead. That's the pattern you get when a market prices up faster than demand grows, and it's worth watching rather than panicking about, since a two-point move is small and the rate gain is not. Still, if you're underwriting a purchase on last year's occupancy, shade it down a little. The honest way to keep tabs on this is to pull the occupancy of a handful of comparable listings near the address you're considering and recheck them every few months, which will tell you about your block long before any market-wide average does.

When Is Buffalo's Peak Airbnb Season?

Summer, and not by a little. Buffalo's calendar swings far harder than a year-round market's, which changes how you underwrite it.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	40%	$241
Oct 2025	36%	$233
Nov 2025	34%	$241
Dec 2025	32%	$241
Jan 2026	23%	$191
Feb 2026	23%	$178
Mar 2026	29%	$195
Apr 2026	34%	$206
May 2026	39%	$238
Jun 2026	46%	$262
Jul 2026	55%	$286
Aug 2026	52%	$272

Market-wide monthly occupancy and average nightly rate for the same twelve months, from BNBCalc market data. Compare months against other months in this table only.

July tops both measures at the same time, with occupancy at 55% and the average nightly rate at $286, while February is the floor at 23% occupancy and $178. That leaves a 32-point occupancy spread, and a nightly rate about 61% higher in July than in February, which is a lot of seasonality to carry on a mortgage that doesn't care what month it is.

Two things follow from that shape. Buffalo's summer is short and everybody knows it, so the months that reward pricing discipline are June through August, when you can hold a rate and still fill the calendar. Then there's the long tail, September through December, where occupancy drifts down but the nightly rate barely moves, which suggests hosts are holding their prices into the fall rather than cutting to chase bookings. Whether that's the right call depends on your carrying cost, though it does mean a host willing to discount in October is competing against a field that mostly isn't.

On top of the year's shape, the week carries one of its own. Saturday occupancy runs about 38% above the week's average and Tuesday about 24% below, while Saturday's nightly rate sits roughly 14% above average. That's a hard weekend skew, and it's the practical reason the median occupancy here reads 29% rather than something closer to a hotel's. A Buffalo Airbnb is a weekend business with weekdays attached. If your plan depends on midweek nights, you'll want a reason for them: a hospital, a campus, a plant, or a rate low enough that a contractor picks you over a motel.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Buffalo?

Since the week and the year both concentrate demand, where you buy decides how much of that demand you can reach. The tables below split the market two ways, because the boundaries come from two different sources and can't be ranked against each other.

Inside the City of Buffalo

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Lower West Side	$30,317	$283	31%	$35,859
2	Elmwood Bryant	$25,838	$222	32%	$39,793
3	Parkside	$24,509	$235	32%	$36,347
4	Allentown	$23,477	$182	35%	$30,309
5	West Side	$22,937	$221	29%	$33,354
6	Elmwood Bidwell	$22,694	$209	31%	$30,260
7	North Park	$21,638	$208	28%	$27,095
8	Ellicott	$20,435	$209	29%	$32,415
9	Grant-Amherst	$19,752	$183	30%	$20,838
10	South Park	$17,925	$172	26%	$24,029
11	Upper West Side	$17,785	$185	31%	$31,668

Point-in-polygon against the City of Buffalo's own neighborhood boundaries from its open data portal, September 2026. Neighborhoods too thin to measure reliably are left out.

The Rest of the Market

Rank	Town or city	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	West Seneca	$39,194	$320	36%	$55,524
2	Orchard Park	$29,268	$323	29%	$38,086
3	Amherst	$28,325	$260	30%	$38,322
4	Aurora	$23,801	$216	29%	$28,713
5	Hamburg	$23,445	$249	28%	$30,958
6	Cheektowaga	$22,211	$201	31%	$32,279
7	Dunkirk	$21,829	$229	30%	$27,766
8	Buffalo	$21,736	$210	30%	$31,255
9	Lancaster	$21,286	$196	30%	$30,369
10	Tonawanda (town)	$20,796	$236	29%	$35,775
11	Evans	$20,278	$249	27%	$27,803
12	Tonawanda (city)	$18,229	$201	26%	$24,761
13	Lockport	$18,172	$163	36%	$22,994
14	North Tonawanda	$17,115	$167	30%	$21,480
15	Pomfret	$13,639	$163	26%	$16,165

Point-in-polygon against US Census county subdivisions, September 2026. In New York those subdivisions are the towns and cities themselves. Buffalo appears here as one whole city so you can place it against its suburbs, while the city-neighborhood table breaks that same city apart. Places too thin to measure reliably are left out.

The first thing those two tables say surprised me: the city line barely prices anything. Buffalo's median listing earns about $21,700 and the median listing outside the city earns about $21,600, which is a difference of roughly a hundred dollars a year. Occupancy is a point apart. The suburbs do carry a slightly higher nightly rate, and their top quartile runs a touch ahead, so if there's an edge out there it sits in the bigger houses rather than in the typical one.

The second thing is that the suburban rows with real revenue behind them aren't the ones people expect. West Seneca leads the whole market on median revenue, on a median nightly rate of $320 and one of the fullest calendars in either table, while Orchard Park sits behind it at a similar rate with softer occupancy. Since both of those are family-house territory south of the city, that's roughly what the bedroom data would predict: the further you get from apartment stock, the more four-bedroom houses end up in the mix. Amherst does the same thing on the north side with a deeper pool of listings behind it, and that depth is worth something when you're trying to read comps.

Inside Buffalo, the money sits in the West Side corridor, since Lower West Side, Elmwood Bryant, Parkside and Allentown take four of the top five rows, and those are the walkable, architecturally interesting parts of the city a visitor wants to stay in. Allentown is the interesting one for a first purchase, because it runs the fullest calendars in the city table on the lowest median nightly rate of the top four. Fuller calendars at a softer price is a very different business than the reverse, and it's usually the easier one to run.

Before you use any of these rows, though, remember what a median is: the middle listing, not the one you'd buy, and the thinner rows will shuffle between refreshes. Use the ranking to narrow a search area, then check the actual comps on the street, since two houses four blocks apart in Buffalo can sit in completely different condition. If what you want is the feel of an area rather than the arithmetic, the Buffalo neighborhood guide covers that side of the question, and the Buffalo market page holds where the market sits right now.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Buffalo?

Given how thin January and February look, anything that makes a winter booking possible is worth more in Buffalo than it would be where the calendar stays flat. The strongest published signal here is a hot tub, which BNBCalc's amenity model associates with about 28% more revenue market-wide. That's a big number for a single amenity, and the reason isn't mysterious: a hot tub turns a February weekend in western New York into something a guest will book on purpose, and not much else does.

Buyers looking at the biggest houses should read that differently, though, because once you reach four bedrooms or more a pool takes over at about 18%, and the hot tub's figure at that size is one of the ones held back behind BNBCalc Markets. My read of the swap is that four-bedroom bookings come from summer groups, which is a different guest than the couple driving up for a February weekend.

Several other amenities show a real association in Buffalo but their values are gated, so the honest thing is to name them and leave the numbers alone: sauna, internet, pool, TV, lake access, a barbecue, bicycles, an EV charger, a gym, and allowing pets. Of that group, lake access is what I'd weigh most heavily on a Buffalo purchase, because it's a genuine differentiator on this shoreline and it's not something you can bolt onto a house later.

Cleaning is the other lever, and it scales steeply with size. Where a fee is charged, the average runs about $62 on a one-bedroom and about $195 on a four-bedroom, as of September 2026. Stack that against short stays and a weekend-heavy calendar and you get the real operating problem in this market: you're paying for a lot of turnovers per booked night. That's an argument for a two-night minimum where your zoning already imposes one anyway, and an argument against pricing a large house as though it turns over like a studio.

Is Airbnb Legal in Buffalo?

Yes, so long as you hold a license, and some properties get one far more easily than others.

Chapter 380 treats any paid stay under six months as a short-term rental, then splits every property into owner-occupied or not. If you occupy it, you're allowed as of right across nearly all of Buffalo, with a short list of downtown, industrial and two specific residential districts excluded. If you don't, the code won't permit the rental at all without a special use permit, reviewed by the Planning Board and approved by the Common Council, and it holds those rentals to a two-night minimum stay on top of that. Three limits then apply either way. No short-term rental may operate in an apartment building, co-op, condo or three-family house, no building may have more than two of them, and a property in a local historic district needs extra written findings from the Council before it's approved.

The mechanics are straightforward once you're through that gate. The certificate runs one year, you file for renewal within the 60 days before it expires, and the property gets an inspection against the housing code. The code also bans guest occupancy of basements, attics, sun porches and garages, and it asks for posted exit diagrams inside each bedroom door, working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, a fire extinguisher, emergency contacts filed with the department, and a snow shovel on the premises. As the city posts Chapter 380 today, the first-time fee is $500 for an owner-occupied certificate and $1,000 if you don't live there, with $200 and $400 respectively to renew each year.

Three separate taxes land on a Buffalo stay, and all three go onto the guest's side of the bill instead of yours. The City of Buffalo charges a 3% hotel occupancy tax on the per-diem room rate, which has applied to stays since September 1, 2025 and covers short-term rentals inside city limits. Erie County adds its own occupancy tax under Local Law No. 01-2024, charged at 3% for a short-term rental, and you register with the County Comptroller within three days of opening. On top of both, New York State and local sales tax has applied to short-term rental occupancy since March 1, 2025, at a combined 8.75% in Erie County, though booking platforms that register as sales tax vendors generally collect that piece for you. Add them up and a guest pays 3% plus 3% plus 8.75% on a Buffalo booking. For the filing side of all that, there's the New York short-term rental tax guide.

New York State law is worth a sentence here, because people transplant New York City's rules onto the rest of the state and they don't travel. The state now has its own short-term rental framework in Real Property Law Article 12-D, and it lets a city that already ran a registration system of its own keep running it. Buffalo was already licensing under Chapter 380 well before that framework arrived, so a Buffalo host still registers with the city. Out past the city line the rulebook changes again, and the Erie County guide covers what applies in the towns. For Buffalo itself, the Buffalo short-term rental regulation guide has the application checklist, the enforcement path and the contacts.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Buffalo Airbnb Market?

That guide is where the paperwork lives, and every figure in this article was built out of BNBCalc Markets, which studies whole short-term rental markets for buyers weighing one against another. Each market it tracks breaks out how much of the local inventory belongs to hosts running more than a single listing, and that's the line I'd read first in Buffalo, since a large share of the calendar here sits with people treating this as a business. Knowing it in advance is the difference between planning against a neighbor with a spare room and planning against an operator with a cleaning crew.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Buffalo Property?

Start wide and narrow to the address, in that order. Open the Buffalo market page for the current market-wide levels and seasonality, then see where Buffalo lands among the best Airbnb markets in New York by gross yield so you know whether you're arguing for this metro or against it. Once a specific house is in front of you, run its address through BNBCalc against a real closing number, real financing terms and a furnishing budget that isn't wishful, because a market median can't know what you paid.

Three Buffalo-specific numbers belong in that model before you sign anything.

Start with the winter, and build your pro forma on a year that includes a 23% January and a 23% February rather than on a July number annualized. Plenty of Buffalo deals pencil at summer occupancy and then fall apart at the real one.

Then the bedroom count. The revenue gap between a three-bedroom and a four-bedroom here is wider than the gap between a one and a three, so if your budget can stretch to the larger house and your zoning allows it, that stretch is usually where the return is. Just price the furnishing and cleaning of it honestly.

Finally, the license. If the plan is non-owner-occupied, treat the special use permit as a real risk rather than a formality, and don't close on a Buffalo property whose entire model depends on one until you've talked to the Department of Permit and Inspection Services about that specific address. Outside the city, ask the same question of the town, which will have its own answer.

The wider point holds beyond Buffalo. In a market with a short season, a hard zoning gate and a weekend-shaped week, the property that works is rarely the cheapest one on the list. It's the one whose rules, size and calendar all point the same direction.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a Buffalo Airbnb make per year?

The middle listing in the Buffalo market took in about $21,700 over the twelve months to August 2026. Its median nightly rate was $216, its median occupancy 29%, and the 75th percentile sat near $31,900. Size drives most of the spread: one-bedrooms sit around $16,300 and houses with four or more bedrooms around $43,700. Each figure is a median across individual listings from BNBCalc market data, and medians run below the market-wide averages shown elsewhere on this page.

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

Yes. Buffalo City Code Chapter 380 requires a short-term rental certificate for every property, renewed annually, with an inspection against the housing code. Live in the home yourself and the license is available as of right across most of the city. Otherwise you also need a special use permit that the Planning Board reviews and the Common Council approves. No short-term rental is allowed in an apartment building, co-op, condo or three-family house.

What taxes do Buffalo Airbnb hosts collect?

Three, all charged to the guest. The City of Buffalo levies a 3% hotel occupancy tax on stays inside city limits, applying to stays from September 1, 2025. Erie County adds a 3% occupancy tax on short-term rentals under Local Law No. 01-2024, with registration due within three days of opening. New York State and local sales tax has applied to short-term rental occupancy since March 1, 2025 at a combined 8.75% in Erie County, usually collected by the booking platform.

Is Buffalo a good market for short-term rentals in 2026?

It depends on which property you can legally run. Active listings fell about 4% over the year to August 2026 while average nightly rates rose about 19%, so the market isn't crowded with new competition. Occupancy slipped about two points over the same stretch, which is the number to watch. The harder constraint is Chapter 380, which limits short-term rentals to one and two family buildings and gates non-owner-occupied ones behind a special use permit.

Which Buffalo neighborhood earns the most on Airbnb?

Among the city neighborhoods with enough listings to measure, Lower West Side leads on median annual revenue at about $30,300, on a median nightly rate of $283. Elmwood Bryant, Parkside and Allentown follow. Allentown is worth a look for a first purchase, since it runs the fullest calendars of any city neighborhood here on the softest nightly rate of that group. Outside the city, West Seneca, Orchard Park and Amherst lead on median revenue.

When is the busiest month for Airbnbs in Buffalo?

July, on both occupancy and price. Market-wide occupancy hit 55% in July 2026, against an average nightly rate of $286, with August close behind. February is the trough at 23% occupancy and $178. Saturday outperforms every other night by a wide margin, with occupancy about 38% above the weekly average, while Tuesday runs about 24% below it. Underwrite the winter months rather than annualizing a summer one.