Cleveland, Ohio Airbnb Market Data 2026

What does a Cleveland Airbnb bring in, and can you still buy one and run it without living there?

Two answers shape everything below, and neither is about Cleveland alone. The market people call Cleveland stretches roughly a hundred miles along Lake Erie, from the islands off Port Clinton east past Mentor, and inland to Akron and Canton, so only about three in ten of its listings sit inside Cleveland's own city limits. Meanwhile the city is replacing its rulebook wholesale, since the licensing chapter enacted by Ordinance No. 561-2026 takes effect on November 28, 2026 and the zoning rule everyone runs on today disappears with it.

So treat the money below as northeast Ohio's rather than Cleveland's, except where a table says otherwise, and treat every rule as Cleveland's alone, stopping dead at its border. Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Sandusky, Put-in-Bay and Akron all write their own, and nothing the city does in November reaches them.

How Much Do Cleveland Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Market-wide, the middle listing took in $22,508 over its own trailing twelve months, counted across the individual listings in BNBCalc's 2026 data. Split that on the city line and the halves come apart: inside Cleveland the middle listing brought in $20,113, while outside it the figure runs $23,484. The city is the cheaper half of its own market, which is the opposite of how most metros work.

Size moves the number further than geography does. The middle two-bedroom in the market earned $19,772, the middle three-bedroom $26,373 and the middle four-bedroom-or-larger $38,533, so stepping up one size does more for a year's revenue than crossing any boundary in this article. Studios are the exception that's worth knowing about, since the middle studio took in $17,109 against $15,842 for the middle one-bedroom, and a studio is usually the cheaper thing to buy.

Gross yield then turns most of that order around. One-bedrooms lead on typical yield, three-bedrooms sit under a point behind them, two-bedrooms trail by about two and a half points and four-plus homes by about four. Nothing here pays you to buy big, so size is really a question of what you can afford to carry through a winter.

A large share of what's listed around here belongs to professionals, so the people setting prices on your street already buy cleaning and software by the dozen. Guests don't linger either, so whichever size you buy commits you to a year of changeovers rather than a handful of long bookings, and a four-bedroom takes that harder than a studio does.

At the upper end, a quarter of the market's listings clear $32,440 a year, and among four-bedroom-plus homes that top quarter starts at $59,280. Those are real properties, so aim at them if you like. Just don't underwrite on them.

Is the Cleveland Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Mildly, yes, although the crowding is nothing like the word usually implies. Listings grew about 7% over the past eight months while occupancy slipped about 3%, which is what it looks like when new listings arrive a shade faster than guests do, and the gap is small enough that a well-run house still has room.

Metric	Change
Active listings	+7%
Occupancy	−3%
Average nightly rate	+13%
Booking lead time	+8%
Purchase price	+3%

BNBCalc data across every listing BNBCalc tracks in the market. Listings, occupancy, nightly rate and booking lead time compare January through August 2026 with the same months of 2025, as relative changes, rounded. Those eight months are used rather than a full year because Cleveland's stored history changes measurement basis at the start of 2025, so a twelve-month baseline would compare two different rulers. Purchase price is the exception: it's a full twelve-month figure from a separate home-price series that tracks homes rather than listings.

Nightly rates did the work this year, rising about 13% while calendars got slightly emptier, which says hosts have been testing what the market will pay rather than cutting to fill nights. It also says the next booking is getting harder to win, since a 3% slip across thousands of listings adds up to a lot of unsold nights even where no single host notices one.

None of it settles your own deal, though. The number that does is far narrower: how full the comparable homes near your address are keeping their calendars this season, at your size, under the same council. Check those before you make an offer.

Guests are also booking about 8% further ahead, and across the last year the typical reservation came in around thirty days before arrival. Keep that in mind when your calendar looks bare in early spring, because a month of runway is normal here rather than a warning.

When Is Cleveland's Peak Airbnb Season?

Summer, and not by a small margin. This is a lake market with a city attached, and the calendar behaves accordingly.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	33%	$223
Oct 2025	34%	$206
Nov 2025	32%	$190
Dec 2025	29%	$192
Jan 2026	27%	$152
Feb 2026	27%	$156
Mar 2026	32%	$188
Apr 2026	35%	$192
May 2026	42%	$244
Jun 2026	48%	$291
Jul 2026	51%	$316
Aug 2026	44%	$291

BNBCalc market data across every listing in the market, one row per month from September 2025 through August 2026. Occupancy and nightly rate are averaged independently of each other, so read each column on its own.

July is the peak on both measures, selling 51% of its available nights at an average of $316, and January is the floor at 27% and $152. That's a rate swing of better than two to one inside a single year, because the summer business here is the water, Cedar Point, the islands and the lakefront towns, none of which you can sell in February.

A swing that steep is brutal for an annual model if you ignore it, since a house that looks fine on a blended yearly average can still lose money from November through March. Budget the winter as the hole it is, and be honest about carrying a mortgage on four months of real trade.

The week matters as much as the month. Saturdays run about 35% ahead of an average day on occupancy and Fridays about 29%, while Mondays land about 20% below it and Tuesdays about 18% below. Rates follow the same curve but travel less far, peaking around 22% above average on Saturday and 21% on Friday. Since demand is already lopsided, widening your weekend premium is the cheapest pricing change you have.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Cleveland?

Before you settle on a street, work out which government you'd be dealing with, because in this market that question has more than thirty answers.

Only about 30% of the market's listings sit inside the City of Cleveland. The rest spread across the inner suburbs, the lake towns of Lorain, Erie and Ottawa counties, the islands and the Akron side to the south, none of which the legal section further down covers. Since that split decides which rulebook you're buying into, the ranking below splits with it. Cleveland's own neighborhoods come first, then the municipalities around them, and because each ranking is drawn on a different boundary system, a row in one tells you nothing about a row in the other.

Inside the City of Cleveland

Cleveland draws 34 official neighborhood boundaries of its own, so the ranking asks what a typical listing inside each one earned over the past year.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Detroit Shoreway	$24,886	$237	30%	$41,578
2	Fairfax	$24,450	$190	36%	$29,900
3	Hough	$23,867	$177	38%	$39,390
4	Ohio City	$23,460	$242	30%	$39,374
5	Glenville	$23,319	$239	28%	$35,550
6	Jefferson	$23,077	$192	36%	$29,405
7	Kamm's Corners	$23,073	$219	30%	$28,155
8	Edgewater	$21,244	$169	36%	$37,051
9	Cudell	$20,763	$156	26%	$24,508
10	Tremont	$20,427	$195	33%	$42,245
11	Old Brooklyn	$20,369	$199	28%	$25,737
12	University Circle	$19,679	$201	32%	$28,885
13	Downtown	$18,000	$182	27%	$25,830
14	West Boulevard	$17,858	$157	36%	$25,021
15	Brooklyn Centre	$17,313	$129	33%	$20,463
16	Goodrich-Kirtland Park	$15,119	$128	28%	$19,721
17	Buckeye-Shaker Square	$14,770	$138	34%	$22,672
18	Broadway-Slavic Village	$14,445	$116	26%	$17,246
19	North Shore Collinwood	$12,363	$150	31%	$20,642
20	Bellaire-Puritas	$12,044	$111	30%	$14,692

BNBCalc 2026 listing data inside the City of Cleveland's own neighborhood boundaries, trailing twelve months. Revenue, rate and occupancy are medians, and the last column is the 75th percentile, the point where a neighborhood's top quarter of listings begins. Each column is worked out separately, so they don't multiply. These twenty are every Cleveland neighborhood with enough listings to rank; the rest are too thin to say anything about, and the thinnest of the twenty will still move between refreshes.

Detroit Shoreway leads at $24,886 and Ohio City sits fourth at $23,460, which will surprise nobody who has walked either, since the city spent twenty years rebuilding both. Tremont is where I'd spend my own time, though. Its median sits mid-table at $20,427 while the top quarter of its listings starts at $42,245, and no other neighborhood here separates its ordinary houses from its good ones by anything close to that much. Whether that's bigger homes or sharper operators, the data won't say.

The table also keeps offering the same choice. Hough fills 38% of its nights, the best occupancy on the list, on a $177 median rate near the bottom of it, while Ohio City and Glenville charge among the highest rates and fill the fewest nights of the leaders. Neither shape is wrong, although they're different businesses: one is turnovers and volume, the other fewer guests paying more. Know which you're signing up for before you buy.

Downtown deserves its own warning. More listings sit inside it than inside any other Cleveland neighborhood, and it still lands thirteenth on median revenue at $18,000, which is what a crowded submarket looks like. Keep in mind that the density rule below counts units in your building, so a downtown apartment is where you're most likely to find the cap already taken.

One warning about the occupancy column: those percentages aren't comparable with the monthly table further up, because each is one middle listing's own occupancy inside that neighborhood. They rank neighborhoods against each other and do nothing else.

What a table can't give you is what these places are like to live in or to stay in, and the best Cleveland neighborhoods for Airbnb goes at that question instead.

The Rest of the Market

Here's the market beyond the city, cut along municipal lines and sorted the same way. Cleveland and Akron carry their own ranks so you can find them.

Rank	City	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Streetsboro	$39,287	$363	28%	$72,470
2	Chagrin Falls	$35,457	$301	31%	$41,594
3	Avon Lake	$32,862	$288	33%	$41,099
4	Huron	$32,549	$357	28%	$48,358
5	Peninsula	$28,901	$295	34%	$39,892
6	University Heights	$27,341	$246	30%	$30,831
7	Vermilion	$27,136	$260	31%	$38,013
8	Sandusky	$26,410	$301	27%	$36,573
9	Put-in-Bay	$25,510	$449	22%	$35,826
10	Parma Heights	$24,405	$242	34%	$40,786
11	Cuyahoga Falls	$24,197	$207	31%	$31,260
12	Kelleys Island	$24,069	$349	25%	$32,231
13	Parma	$23,870	$209	35%	$33,649
14	Mentor	$23,550	$218	32%	$33,697
15	Berea	$23,164	$226	32%	$33,719
27	Cleveland	$20,113	$185	31%	$28,048
34	Akron	$17,684	$169	31%	$25,729

BNBCalc 2026 listing data inside US Census place boundaries, trailing twelve months. Thirty-eight places in the market carry enough listings to rank; these are the fifteen highest medians, plus Cleveland at twenty-seventh and Akron at thirty-fourth. Columns are medians except the 75th percentile, and each is worked out separately. Rows near the bottom of the listing threshold are thin and will move between refreshes, which is worth remembering about the very top of this table.

Look at the rate column on rows eight, nine and twelve and you can see the lake doing the work. Put-in-Bay charges a $449 median nightly rate, the highest in the market by a distance, and fills 22% of its nights, the lowest occupancy in the table. Kelleys Island does something similar at $349 and 25%. Those are island businesses that make their whole year between Memorial Day and Labor Day, so buying one means buying a summer, a ferry schedule and a mortgage that runs all twelve months.

Sandusky at $26,410 is the interesting middle, because nowhere outside Cleveland has more listings on it, it earns above the market median on a $301 nightly rate, and Cedar Point next door drives a season you can forecast. The seasonality is real there too, just nothing like as extreme as on the islands.

Then the suburbs do something quieter and, I think, more useful for a first purchase, because Parma fills 35% of its nights, Avon Lake 33% and Parma Heights 34%, all of them above Cleveland's own 31% and all at prices a normal buyer can reach. Nobody tells a great story at a dinner party about owning a rental in Parma, although you might sleep rather better in February.

Cleveland's own row is the one to read carefully. Twenty-seventh sounds like a verdict, and it isn't quite, because a large stock of cheap one and two-bedroom units holds the city's median down, and at three bedrooms and above it closes most of the gap to its suburbs. What the row does say is that the Cleveland name buys you nothing on its own. If you're looking at Akron near the bottom of the same table, BNBCalc's Akron short-term rental guide covers a separate set of rules, as does every other city here.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Cleveland?

A hot tub is worth about 20% more revenue here in BNBCalc's current amenity model, and it's the one figure the public market page shows outright. That makes sense to me in a market whose whole problem is the cold months, since a hot tub is one of the few things that will sell a February weekend on this lake.

So that's the number you can act on. Seven others register a real effect in the same model, though their values sit behind the product: a pool, a sauna, internet, a TV, a barbecue, an EV charger and lake access. That last one tells you what this market really is, since lake access only surfaces as a revenue signal where enough listings genuinely have it. Beyond those eight, the model deliberately ignores a handful of everyday fixtures, on the grounds that almost every listing already has them.

Cleaning fees average about $107 where a host charges one, and spread over every listing in the market, the ones charging nothing included, cleaning brings in roughly $1,320 a year. Almost none of that is yours to keep once the cleaner has invoiced, so the fee belongs in your model as a recovered cost and not as earnings.

Is Airbnb Legal in Cleveland?

Yes, and until November 28, 2026 it's about as easy as American cities get. After that date it gets considerably harder, so the answer depends on when you're reading this.

Start by confirming the address is actually in Cleveland, because a Cleveland mailing address doesn't settle it. The city is ringed and pocketed by separate municipalities, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, East Cleveland, Bratenahl and Brooklyn among them, each with its own council and its own code. If the parcel sits in one of those, or anywhere out along the lake, nothing below applies to you.

Today the city runs on Codified Ordinances Section 337.251, "Limited Lodging in Residence Districts," which is a zoning rule rather than a licensing program. Cleveland doesn't issue a short-term rental license at all under it. The constraint is that limited lodging runs for fewer than 91 days in a calendar year, with no single guest staying more than 30 consecutive days, alongside smoke and carbon monoxide detector requirements. Those figures come from the replacement ordinance's own description of what full compliance with the old rule means, which is the best enacted source available while the code publisher blocks automated access to the section itself.

That rule disappears on November 28. Ordinance No. 561-2026, sponsored by Council Members Davis, Santana, Polensek and Harsh and passed on June 1, 2026, repeals Section 337.251 and enacts a new Chapter 686B in its place, with the repeal and the new chapter both taking effect 180 days after passage. Under Chapter 686B, any home let to a guest for 30 consecutive days or less counts as a short-term rental, and it makes no difference whether the owner arranges the booking, an operator does, or a platform does it for them, because every one of them needs a license.

For an investor, the good news arrives here: nothing in Chapter 686B asks you to live in the property. An owner can hold the license, and so can a tenant whose lease lets them sublease, with a lease that forbids subleasing being grounds for outright denial. The ordinance also adds short-term rentals to the list of uses permitted in One-Family Districts, so the use itself is allowed rather than tolerated.

The real gate is density, because in any residential district no more than 10% of a block's residential units can run as short-term rentals, or 10% of a building's own units wherever that building holds three dwellings or more, although the code guarantees at least one either way.

Go past that cap and you need a variance from the Board of Zoning Appeals, and the Board looks at whether the block is already over the limit, whether the property has off-street parking of its own, and in a building, whether most of the residents are behind you. One exemption survives the changeover, since a unit that ran as limited lodging for at least a year before the effective date, in full compliance and with no recorded complaints against it, escapes the density cap, though it still needs the license like everyone else.

The license itself costs $150 to apply for and $150 to renew. It runs on a fixed calendar, starting December 1 and expiring November 30 the following year, with the first year prorated from whenever it's issued, and renewals filed between September 1 and November 1. A license doesn't transfer to another person or another property, so buying a house that already has one gets you nothing. Your application lands with the Commissioner of Assessments and Licenses, and from there it goes out to Building and Housing, City Planning, Public Health and Public Safety, all four of which have to approve it. If the answer comes back no, you have ten days to appeal to the Board of Zoning Appeals.

What the application asks for is where the work is. You'll be carrying liability insurance with a floor of $500,000, either your own policy or a booking agent's with you named on it, together with a dimensioned floor plan marking bedrooms, safety equipment and evacuation routes, and a parking plan alongside it. Then come the documents that take time: a certificate of occupancy, proof your property and lodging taxes are current, and proof the dwelling is certified lead safe, which catches a great deal of Cleveland's housing stock.

Hardest of all, you'll need a local contact who can be reached at any hour a guest is in the house and can physically be there within an hour of the call, with authority to make decisions rather than just pass messages along. Unless you live nearby, that's a person you'll be paying.

Once you're operating, the standards are specific. Overnight guests are capped at two per bedroom plus two more, so a three-bedroom tops out at eight. Bedrooms need interior access to a bathroom, below-grade rooms only count as bedrooms if they meet the habitability standard, and you need smoke alarms by each sleeping area, carbon monoxide detection and an A/B/C fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Before your first paying guest, you have to give written notice of your local contact's name and number to every property adjacent to, directly and diagonally across from, and directly and diagonally behind yours. The license goes up inside the main entrance. One more thing worth knowing before you plan the purchase: a dwelling operating as a short-term rental isn't eligible for tax abatement, which matters a lot in a city where abatement is part of many buyers' math.

Revocation is where Chapter 686B stops being gentle. Three nuisance activities at the property inside twelve months costs you the license, and so does a single occurrence of assault, disorderly conduct, a listed weapons offense or any offense of violence under Ohio law. The ordinance says plainly that no conviction, citation or arrest is needed for something to count as having happened. If your license is revoked and the revocation holds on appeal, you wait a year to reapply, and the Commissioner can pull your licenses on other properties too. Operating without a license draws a $5,000 civil penalty and a first-degree misdemeanor on top; advertising one, completing a reservation on one, or failing to display it each run $1,000, with every day counted separately.

Taxes land on the guest's bill, and inside Cleveland most of them are handled for you. The city charges 3% on lodging, and Cuyahoga County charges a 6.5% lodging tax that's been at that rate since January 1, 2020, after the county resolved back in 2004 to stretch the state's definition of a hotel down to places with fewer than five rooms, which is how an ordinary house ends up owing it. Airbnb names Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland among the three places in Ohio where it collects the tax and pays it over for you, on any reservation of 29 nights or under, so inside the city that 9.5% is already handled. Step outside the county, though, and it isn't: Erie County charges 4% and Ottawa County 3%, both cover vacation homes explicitly, both want you registered with the county auditor, and neither appears on Airbnb's Ohio list. If you're buying in Sandusky or on the islands, that's a filing you'll be doing yourself. The Cuyahoga County short-term rental guide covers the county layer, while state filings are handled in the Ohio short-term rental tax guide.

Forms, contacts and the application itself are set out in the Cleveland short-term rental regulation guide.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Cleveland Airbnb Market?

That's the paperwork dealt with. Every market figure above came from BNBCalc Markets, where BNBCalc measures a market end to end rather than pricing one address inside it, and one of its views drops every Airbnb and Vrbo listing it tracks onto the market's own map. Open Cleveland there before you shortlist anything, because the first thing a map of this market tells you is how little of it is Cleveland.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Cleveland Property?

Everything so far describes groups of houses, whereas one address takes a few more steps.

The Cleveland market page holds what the market is doing now on revenue, occupancy and season, and for anyone still weighing one market against another, the best Ohio markets by gross yield puts this one in order against the rest of Ohio. When you have an address in hand, feed it into BNBCalc using the actual asking price, your own financing and the monthly running costs, then test what comes back against three local facts.

Pin the municipality down from the parcel record rather than from what the mail says, since the rules and the taxes both change at lines a map won't draw for you. If the answer is Cleveland, count the residential units on the block and work out whether 10% of them are already short-term rentals, because from November 28 that count decides whether you can be licensed at all, and add the $150, the insurance and the lead-safe certification to your first-year costs. Then take July out of your own average before you believe it, and satisfy yourself the winter can be carried on whatever's left.

Stretch a market across a hundred miles and a property listing will happily tell you a house is near Cleveland while saying nothing about whose council writes its rules or whose auditor collects its tax. Settle that at the parcel record before anything else, because every other number you build sits on top of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in Cleveland?

Take every listing BNBCalc tracks in the Cleveland market, line them up by what they earned, and the one standing in the middle took in $22,508 over its last twelve months of trading, on BNBCalc's 2026 data. Inside the City of Cleveland that figure is $20,113, and outside it $23,484. A median sits lower than a straight average here, because a handful of big earners drag an average up on their own. Size matters more than location: the middle three-bedroom in the market earned $26,373 and the middle four-bedroom-or-larger $38,533.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in Cleveland in 2026?

It can be, provided you underwrite the winter honestly and clear the density rule. Line January through August 2026 up beside 2025's January through August, and listings across the market rose about 7% while occupancy fell about 3%, with average nightly rates up about 13% and purchase prices about 3%. That's mild crowding rather than a saturated market. Whether one particular house works still comes down to the price on it, the bills behind it, and whether eight decent months will carry four thin ones.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Cleveland?

July, on both measures. It sold 51% of its available nights at an average $316, with June close behind on 48% and $291. January is the low point at 27% and $152, so the peak month's average rate runs better than twice the trough's. This is a summer lake market, which makes the swing structural rather than a one-off, and an annual model built on a blended average will overstate the winter badly.

Do You Need a License to Run an Airbnb in Cleveland?

Not today, but yes from November 28, 2026. Cleveland currently operates under a zoning rule, Section 337.251, that issues no license and caps limited lodging at fewer than 91 days a calendar year. Ordinance No. 561-2026, passed June 1, 2026, repeals that section and enacts Chapter 686B, which takes effect 180 days after passage and requires a license for every short-term rental. The license costs $150 a year, runs December 1 to November 30, and doesn't transfer with a sale. Every other city in the market sets its own requirements.

Can You Buy an Investment Property in Cleveland and Run It as an Airbnb?

Yes. Chapter 686B contains no requirement that you live in the property, and it adds short-term rentals to the uses permitted in One-Family Districts. The binding limit is density: in any residential district, a block may have no more than 10% of its residential units operating as short-term rentals, or a building holding three dwellings or more no more than 10% of its own, with at least one always allowed. Exceeding that needs a variance from the Board of Zoning Appeals. A unit that ran as limited lodging for at least a year before the effective date, in full compliance and without recorded complaints, is exempt from the cap but still needs the license.

Which Cleveland Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

That depends on which trade-off suits you. Detroit Shoreway posts the highest median at $24,886, with Fairfax at $24,450 and Hough at $23,867. Hough also fills the most nights of any Cleveland neighborhood at 38%, on a below-average $177 median rate, while Tremont has the strongest top quarter, starting at $42,245 against a $20,427 median. Those figures are 2026 medians and 75th percentiles drawn from BNBCalc listing data inside the city's own neighborhood boundaries, and every column is worked out separately, so they don't multiply.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in Cleveland?

A guest in the City of Cleveland pays a 3% city lodging tax plus a 6.5% Cuyahoga County lodging tax, and Airbnb collects both and pays them over on reservations of 29 nights or under, so inside the city that 9.5% is handled without you doing anything. Outside Cuyahoga County it isn't. Erie County charges 4% and Ottawa County 3%, both apply to vacation homes, both require registration with the county auditor, and neither is on Airbnb's Ohio collection list. Check what any other booking platform collects before assuming it does the same.