Chesapeake, Virginia Airbnb Market Data 2026

If you're thinking about an Airbnb in Chesapeake, Virginia, there's one thing to check before any revenue figure: Chesapeake's zoning ordinance has no short-term rental use in its definitions. Chesapeake is an independent city in southeastern Virginia, so there's no county above it, and the only way it lets a house take paying overnight guests is as a bed and breakfast or tourist home, and only with a conditional use permit from City Council in the A-1 agricultural district or the historic and cultural preservation overlay. Outside those two districts, the ordinance gives you no route in.

So what do the earnings figures below describe? They cover the short-term rental listings BNBCalc can see inside the city line, and when I set those listings against the city's own zoning map and its historic-district boundaries, roughly four in five sit outside both of the places where the code allows the use. Nothing in BNBCalc's listing data says which of them hold a permit, so I'm not calling any of them unlawful, but it does mean the figures describe the market around you rather than a plan for a permitted bed and breakfast. BNBCalc tracks Chesapeake as part of the Norfolk market, which runs from Virginia Beach and Norfolk across the water to Hampton and Newport News, and roughly 4% of the listings BNBCalc can measure there are inside Chesapeake's city limits. I've labeled every figure below as either Chesapeake's own or the wider market's, because the two tell different stories.

Read as market context, the short version is that a typical listing inside the city earned about $25,700 over its last 12 months, roughly a fifth less than the rest of the market, since it charges a lot less a night even though it books a slightly bigger share of its nights. A permitted bed and breakfast has to run under council's bedroom and guest caps and the ten-day stay limit, so if you're applying, plan around those limits rather than around that median.

How Much Do Chesapeake Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

A typical listing inside Chesapeake's city line brought in about $25,700 over its last 12 months, going by BNBCalc market data as of October 2026, and it got there on a median nightly rate of $226 and a median occupancy of 33%. Those are the listings BNBCalc can see, whatever their permit status, so read them as what the local market pays rather than as what a permitted bed and breakfast would make. Across the rest of the Norfolk market, by comparison, the same three medians come to about $32,800, $319 and 30%. So Chesapeake hosts fill a few more of their nights, yet they charge about $93 less for each one, and the rate gap wins out: the city's median lands roughly $7,100 below everyone else's.

To me, the top of the range makes the point more bluntly. A Chesapeake listing at the 75th percentile earned about $31,600, which still falls a little short of what the middle listing elsewhere in the market brought in. Fewer than one in four Chesapeake listings reached the median for the whole Norfolk market, Chesapeake included, of about $32,300, whereas about half of the listings outside the city line did.

City	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Virginia Beach	$38,251	$404	28%	$55,820
Norfolk	$30,123	$259	34%	$41,732
Hampton	$29,459	$278	32%	$45,635
Chesapeake	$25,726	$226	33%	$31,578
Portsmouth	$24,732	$219	33%	$32,891
Newport News	$24,617	$219	35%	$31,785
Suffolk	$22,155	$219	27%	$30,157

Listings inside each city's limits (US Census place boundaries), BNBCalc market data as of October 2026, each listing's last 12 months. Smaller towns in the market are too thin to measure reliably and are left out.

Read across a row and you get one city's typical listing; read down a column and you can rank them. Chesapeake sits fourth of the seven on its median, in the middle of the pack, but its top quartile is the second-lowest of the seven, so the upside here is narrower than the median alone suggests. I'd treat that top-quartile figure as the realistic ceiling for a well-run listing in this city, rather than anything the metro's best listings earn. Virginia Beach holds a little more than half of the market's listings and sets the pace with nightly rates well above anyone else's, so it lifts the market-wide averages on the Norfolk market page well above what a typical Chesapeake host sees. BNBCalc's Chesapeake market page shows those same Norfolk figures under Chesapeake's name, so don't read them as the city's own.

Is that gap just a matter of which homes are for rent? Partly, because inside the city studios and one-bedrooms make up a bit over a third of listings and four-bedroom-plus homes fewer than one in ten. Elsewhere in the market those two groups come out about even, at roughly a fifth each, and the big homes are the ones that earn the most. So I'd expect Chesapeake's overall median to trail even if a house here earned exactly what the same house would earn elsewhere in the market. The bedroom rows show that isn't the whole story, though.

Bedrooms	Chesapeake median revenue	Rest of the Norfolk market
1 bedroom	$17,049	$22,024
2 bedrooms	$28,993	$29,455
3 bedrooms	$27,804	$37,656

Median annual revenue by bedroom count, inside Chesapeake's city limits against the rest of the Norfolk market, BNBCalc market data as of October 2026. Chesapeake's studio and four-bedroom-plus rows are too thin to measure reliably.

Two-bedrooms are the one size where Chesapeake holds its own, running about level with the rest of the market, although it's also the thinnest of the three rows, so don't lean on it too hard. The three-bedroom row matters more, because that's the size Chesapeake has the most of. A typical Chesapeake three-bedroom earned about $9,900 less than one elsewhere in the market, and since its median nightly rate is $255 against $350 outside the city, it's the rate again rather than the mix doing the damage. Keep in mind, though, that Chesapeake is a small slice of the market, so its medians rest on a modest group of listings and will move more between data updates than the metro's do.

When I want to compare Chesapeake with the rest of the state rather than the rest of the metro, I start with BNBCalc's ranking of Virginia markets by gross yield, which puts the Norfolk market beside its peers. Across the whole Norfolk market, professional hosts run a large share of the listings, and if you do hold a bed and breakfast permit and would rather someone else ran the place day to day, the Chesapeake property management companies are a good place to start.

Is the Chesapeake Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No. BNBCalc can only measure change over time across the whole Norfolk market, and from January to September 2026 that market had fewer active listings than in those nine months of 2025, while occupancy climbed about 7% and nightly rates about 20%. Fewer competitors filling more of their nights at higher prices is, to my mind, close to the opposite of a crowded market.

Norfolk market, January to September 2026 against the same nine months of 2025	Change
Active listings	Down
Occupancy	Up about 7%
Nightly rate	Up about 20%
Booking lead time	Up about 31% (guests booking further ahead)

Market-wide figures for the whole Norfolk market, all bedroom counts, BNBCalc market data through September 2026. Changes are relative, so occupancy up about 7% means about 7% above its earlier level, not 7 percentage points, and only changes that held up when checked over a shorter run of months are shown. Every row compares those nine months only, so it won't line up with a twelve-month figure.

The comparison runs January to September 2026 against the same nine months of 2025. The listings row carries a direction with no number because the size of the drop moves a lot depending on which months you measure it over, even though the drop itself holds either way. Guests are also booking further ahead, which fits with calendars filling up.

What can Chesapeake add on its own? Not a trend, unfortunately, because the Chesapeake-only figures describe today's listings over their last 12 months, with no earlier Chesapeake version to hold them against. What those figures do show is that the city holds a small slice of the market, about 4% of its listings, and that those listings fill a little more of their calendars than the rest of the market's do (33% against 30% at the median), with nearly two in three at or above the market's median occupancy. I don't read that as a glutted corner of the market.

If you want an early warning, watch how full listings like yours inside the city line are, and recheck every few months, since a slide there would show up well before any market-wide number moved. The Norfolk Airbnb market-data post covers the wider metro if you want more on how the market as a whole behaves.

When Is Chesapeake's Peak Airbnb Season?

Summer, and July above all, at least across the Norfolk market. BNBCalc doesn't keep a separate month-by-month series for Chesapeake, so every seasonal figure in this section is metro-wide, and I'd expect a Chesapeake listing to follow the same shape at lower rates.

Month	Occupancy, Norfolk market	Average nightly rate, Norfolk market
October 2025	32%	$252
November 2025	30%	$240
December 2025	28%	$231
January 2026	26%	$191
February 2026	28%	$197
March 2026	40%	$256
April 2026	41%	$278
May 2026	41%	$351
June 2026	51%	$455
July 2026	58%	$483
August 2026	49%	$437
September 2026	43%	$335

Market-wide occupancy and average nightly rate for the whole Norfolk market, October 2025 to September 2026, BNBCalc market data.

One thing to know before reading it: the market's monthly occupancy is worked out over the nights hosts left open for booking, while the listing medians earlier in this article divide booked nights by the full 365 days, blocked ones included, which is why the months run higher. With that in mind, I'd look down the occupancy column first, because that's where the shape is plainest. July filled 58% of nights at an average of $483, while January filled 26% at $191, so the peak month more than doubled the slowest one on occupancy and charged roughly 2.5 times January's average rate. Spring brings the first big jump, with March and April both around 40%, and rates keep climbing through May and June, while the fall months at the top of the table (October 2025 onward) show occupancy easing into a quiet winter.

On top of the seasons, the week has its own rhythm. Across the Norfolk market, Saturday and Friday nights run about 28% and 25% above the week's average occupancy, while Tuesday sits about 18% below it. Weekend nights also cost about 10% more than the weekly average, while Tuesday comes cheapest. So if a Chesapeake listing sits empty midweek in February, that's the market's calendar and not necessarily a problem with the listing, and I'd price those nights to fill rather than to match a summer Saturday.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Chesapeake?

I'd start with the zoning on the parcel, before you look at a single borough figure, because a strong median won't help a house that can't take nightly guests. With that settled, Chesapeake's own six boroughs make a useful map for comparing what listings earn inside the city.

Borough	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Deep Creek	$31,766	$306	27%	$37,294
Washington	$28,099	$208	36%	$31,149
Pleasant Grove	$24,876	$186	39%	$36,381
Western Branch	$20,469	$236	32%	$30,389

City of Chesapeake borough boundaries, listings inside the city limits only, BNBCalc market data as of October 2026; South Norfolk and Butts Road are too thin to measure reliably. Read this table on its own rather than as one ranking with the city-by-city table, since the two use different boundaries.

As I read the rows, Deep Creek leads by charging the highest nightly rate of the four while filling the fewest nights, and its median comes within about 3% of the rest of the market's. Pleasant Grove runs the other way, with the busiest calendars and the lowest rate, yet its top quartile earns almost half as much again as its median, which suggests that how you run the place counts for a lot there. Western Branch trails the table, even though its median nightly rate is the second-highest of the four. Every one of these rows rests on a small group of listings, so a gap of a few thousand dollars between two boroughs could flip at the next data update, and I'd read the order loosely.

Don't forget that a borough isn't a zoning district. The A-1 agricultural district and the historic overlay are zoning designations drawn separately from these lines, so the table can tell you what listings in an area earn but not whether a particular house there could get a permit. For the judgment calls on where in the city to look, the best places to invest in Chesapeake guide goes street by street, while this article sticks to the numbers.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Chesapeake?

Across the Norfolk market, a hot tub carries the largest revenue lift that BNBCalc publishes openly: listings with one earn about 21% more than comparable listings without one, with all bedroom counts pooled. That's a metro figure, measured across the whole market. Several other amenities show a measurable lift as well, including a pool, lake access, a sauna, EV charging, allowing pets and a gym, and you'll find their values in BNBCalc Markets, since the public page shows just the top one.

For a Chesapeake host, I think the more useful finding is how rare hot tubs are here. They show up in only a sliver of the city's listings, an even smaller share than elsewhere in the market, while pools appear in about 15% of Chesapeake listings against 23% elsewhere. Should you add one, then? If you hold a permitted property, I think it's one of the few upgrades that would set it apart from nearly every other listing in the city.

Cleaning fees run lower here as well. Among listings that charge one, the median fee is $127 inside Chesapeake against $150 elsewhere in the market. Don't just copy that number, though, because what matters is what each turnover really costs you, and I'd set the fee from there.

Is Airbnb Legal in Chesapeake?

Unfortunately, for a house in any of the city's ordinary residential districts, the answer is no. The definitions in Chesapeake's zoning ordinance don't include a "short-term rental" use at all. The only way the ordinance lets a single-family house take paying overnight guests is as a "bed and breakfast/tourist home establishment", which Section 3-403 defines as a dwelling that hosts guests for no more than ten days within any thirty-day period, and Section 13-1601 permits that use as a conditional use in the A-1 agricultural district and the historic and cultural preservation overlay "only".

The two districts work quite differently, though. In A-1, the bed and breakfast can be the property's main use or run alongside it, and the owner doesn't have to live there, whereas in the historic overlay the house has to be the owner's principal residence, the owner-occupant needs at least a 50% record interest or joint ownership with family, and the building has to predate November 15, 2001.

Either way, you'll need a conditional use permit, which means a Planning Commission recommendation and then a City Council vote. Article 17 also starts from the presumption that a conditional use is out of place in its district, so approval is up to council's discretion rather than something you're owed for filing the paperwork. On top of that, Section 13-1602 voids the permit on a sale, which means your approval can't pass to whoever buys the house. Section 13-1603 then layers standards on top of whatever conditions council writes in, so council sets the maximum number of bedrooms and the share of the floor area you can use, you keep a register of every guest for at least a year, and you provide one off-street parking space per guest bedroom behind the front building line, screened from the street and the neighbors.

The clearest picture I found of what that looks like in practice is the council record from April 15, 2025, when council approved a hosted bed and breakfast on a 12-acre A-1 parcel in southern Chesapeake, capped at three rentable bedrooms and six guests, by nine votes to none. In the same discussion, the city's planning administrator told council that an Airbnb, meaning someone renting out an entire house, isn't something the city currently allows.

If you do get a permit, Chesapeake's lodging tax is 8% of the room charge plus a flat $2.00 for each night, and the guest pays it in addition to the room rate. When Airbnb or another platform handles the booking, the platform collects the tax and sends it to the city. For a direct booking you do that yourself, and the return for each month is due by the 20th of the next. Virginia sales tax applies to the stay too, at the 6% Hampton Roads rate, and the state side is laid out in the Virginia short-term rental tax guide.

Before you list anything, there's one more rule I'd want you to know about. The city code requires booking platforms to send Chesapeake the property address and gross receipts for every place they book guests into in the city, every month, so the city gets a running list of where those listings are. For the application file, the fees and the hearing calendar, read the Chesapeake short-term rental regulation guide next, especially if your parcel is A-1 or sits in the historic overlay.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Chesapeake Airbnb Market?

The permit side lives in the guide, while the market side of this article has two sources. The trends and the July peak come from BNBCalc's figures for every listing in the Norfolk market, the data that sits underneath BNBCalc Markets, BNBCalc's workspace for sizing up short-term rental markets and ranking them against each other, while I worked out the city and borough medians myself from BNBCalc's listing data, cut to Chesapeake's boundary. If you open the Norfolk page there, keep in mind that it leads with average-performing listings instead of the whole market, so its trend and monthly numbers will differ from these, though its amenity values and day-of-week pattern line up. Switch the Markets map to the revenue heatmap and each listing takes a color for where its revenue potential lands against the rest of that market, so you can zoom into Chesapeake's corner and see whether the stronger listings bunch together or spread out before you shortlist anything.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Chesapeake Property?

Once you know the parcel can qualify, the BNBCalc Calculator is where I'd start the estimate. Give it a Chesapeake address and it finds as many as 50 comparable listings, projects the home's revenue, nightly rate and occupancy from them, and then follows those figures through your costs, the loan and your returns. On a US property with enough comps to work with (four is the floor), the AI Underwriter can choose the best-matched ones.

If I were checking a Chesapeake estimate, I'd hold it against three local details. Check the comps' locations, since Chesapeake's median nightly rate runs $93 below the rest of the market's, and a comp set drawn mostly from across the city line describes a different market from the one your house sits in. Then read the result against this city's own medians as context rather than as a target: a Chesapeake three-bedroom's median of about $27,800 sits well below the $37,700 or so that a three-bedroom earns elsewhere in the market, and most of the listings behind the Chesapeake figure sit outside the two places a bed and breakfast is allowed. And if you're applying for a permit, model the operation council is likely to approve rather than the house as it stands. The April 2025 approval capped a rural home at three rentable bedrooms and six guests, and with no guest allowed to stay past ten days in any thirty, I'd run the numbers on that smaller footprint.

If you haven't settled on Chesapeake at all yet, BNBCalc Markets ranks US markets by gross yield and shows what a listing in each could bring in if it were bookable all year, which is a quicker way to build a shortlist than reading city by city.

Already hosting legally? The Airbnb Listing Optimizer reads as many as 100 guest reviews on your listing, sets it against up to 50 listings nearby, and ranks the changes worth making before any others. And if you lend or invest at volume and vet addresses inside your own software, the BNBCalc API sends that same property analysis, with its revenue, nightly rate, occupancy, comparable listings and cash flow, straight into that software, priced on usage.

Is an Airbnb in Chesapeake Worth It?

For a house in one of Chesapeake's ordinary residential districts, the answer is no, because the city's code has no permit that would let it take nightly guests. The listings BNBCalc measures inside the city, where a typical one earned about $25,700 a year against $32,800 elsewhere in the Norfolk market, are context rather than a plan, since roughly four in five sit outside both places the code allows it. If your parcel is A-1 or in the historic overlay, run it through the BNBCalc Calculator at a scale like the one council approved in April 2025 (three rentable bedrooms, six guests), with no stay past ten days in any thirty.

A market-wide figure counts every listing that's out there, and it can't tell you which of them a city would approve today. Where the zoning map does most of the deciding, that map comes before any revenue figure.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb in Chesapeake, Virginia make?

BNBCalc market data puts the typical listing inside Chesapeake's city line at about $25,700 over its last 12 months, as of October 2026, charging a median $226 a night and booking a median 33% of its nights, against about $32,800 elsewhere in the Norfolk market. Treat that as market context, not a forecast for a permitted operation, since the city only allows paying guests in a house as a council-approved bed and breakfast in two zoning areas. To model a specific address under those limits, run it through the BNBCalc Calculator, which projects revenue from up to 50 comparable listings.

Can you rent out a house in Chesapeake on Airbnb?

Only in narrow cases, going by BNBCalc's review of the city's zoning code. Chesapeake allows paying overnight guests in a house only as a bed and breakfast or tourist home, approved by City Council through a conditional use permit, in the A-1 agricultural district or the historic and cultural preservation overlay, with no guest staying more than ten days in any thirty. A house in an ordinary residential district has no route. In BNBCalc's listing data, roughly four in five listings inside the city sit outside both of those places, and BNBCalc's Chesapeake regulation guide covers the application itself.

Does BNBCalc have a separate market for Chesapeake?

No. BNBCalc Markets tracks Chesapeake as part of the Norfolk market, which also covers Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News and Suffolk, along with a few smaller towns. Chesapeake's city limits hold about 4% of that market's measurable listings, and the Chesapeake market page in BNBCalc shows the Norfolk market's figures under Chesapeake's name. The Chesapeake-only figures in this article come from BNBCalc's listing data, filtered to the city's boundary.

Which part of Chesapeake earns the most on Airbnb?

In BNBCalc market data as of October 2026, Deep Creek tops Chesapeake's boroughs on median annual revenue, at about $31,800, on the highest median nightly rate. Pleasant Grove has the busiest calendars, at a median occupancy of 39%, but the lowest rate, and Western Branch has the lowest median revenue. South Norfolk and Butts Road are too thin to measure reliably, and the other rows rest on small groups of listings that move between data updates. Check a parcel's zoning before comparing boroughs, since only some districts allow guest stays.

When do Airbnbs around Chesapeake book best?

BNBCalc's market data for the whole Norfolk market puts July as the peak month, with 58% occupancy at an average nightly rate of $483, and January as the slowest, at 26% and $191. Friday and Saturday nights fill roughly 25% to 28% more often than the average night, and Tuesday is both the quietest and the cheapest night. These figures are market-wide, because BNBCalc doesn't keep a separate monthly series for Chesapeake.

What does a three-bedroom Airbnb in Chesapeake earn?

BNBCalc market data puts the median Chesapeake three-bedroom at about $27,800 a year, as of October 2026, against about $37,700 for three-bedrooms elsewhere in the Norfolk market. Chesapeake two-bedrooms came in at about $29,000 and one-bedrooms at about $17,000. Chesapeake's studio and four-bedroom-plus rows are too thin to report, so for those sizes the BNBCalc Calculator's comparable listings are the better guide.