El Paso, Texas Airbnb Market Data 2026

Can you run an Airbnb in El Paso without asking the city for permission first, and what does one actually bring in? Well, yes you can, and 2026 is the year the city finally said so in its own code. On February 3, 2026 the City Council adopted an ordinance adding a short-term rental definition to Title 20, the zoning code, so a house, duplex, accessory unit, apartment or condo rented out for fewer than 30 consecutive days is now a named residential use in El Paso, El Paso County, Texas. There's no permit to apply for and no zoning hearing to clear, which puts El Paso in unusual company among the big Texas cities. As for the money, a middle-of-the-road El Paso listing brought in $16,055 over the twelve months through August 2026, going by BNBCalc's September listing release.

What did change this year is the tax, since El Paso had gone roughly a decade without charging hotel tax on short-term stays, and Council closed that gap in two moves: a resolution on June 9 telling staff to start collecting, then an ordinance on September 1 that rewrote the Hotel Room Tax chapter so a short-term rental counts as a hotel and the booking platform collects from the guest. Keep in mind that the money sits on the guest's bill and not on yours, though it still lands in the total a guest sees at checkout, which is the part worth pricing around.

One more thing shapes everything below. About 88% of the listings BNBCalc measures in this market sit inside the El Paso city limits, which is unusually concentrated for a market this size, so the city's rulebook really does cover almost the whole thing. Inside those limits, occupancy barely moves from one side of town to the other, while median revenue runs from about $11,600 in the center of the city to about $20,600 on the Westside. That whole spread is nightly rate and house size, which makes "where should I buy" a question about what you can charge rather than about whose calendar fills.

How Much Do El Paso Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Start with the middle. Market-wide, the median came to $16,055 for the year; inside the city limits it was $15,839, and beyond the city line it rose to $17,704. The top quarter of the market opens at $21,545, so a listing has to clear that figure to sit in the better half of the better half.

Every one of those is a median rather than an average, which matters more here than it would in a resort town, since a handful of very large homes would drag an average around. Break the market up by size and the steps are steep:

Bedrooms	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
Studio	$9,128	$77	32%	$11,551
1	$10,102	$85	33%	$12,106
2	$13,030	$118	31%	$16,559
3	$18,855	$163	32%	$22,152
4+	$24,170	$213	33%	$34,270

Medians and 75th percentiles computed from BNBCalc's El Paso listing data, September 2026 release.

Read the occupancy column first, because it's the strange one. A studio and a four-bedroom house fill almost exactly the same share of their nights, and across all five sizes barely two points separate the highest from the lowest. Revenue still climbs about 2.6 times from a studio to a four-plus, so every bit of that climb is nightly rate. In most markets you can argue about whether small units fill better than big ones; in El Paso you can't, because they don't.

What changes with size is how much the operator matters. At three bedrooms the 75th-percentile listing earns about 17% more than the median one, the tightest gap on the board, whereas at four-plus bedrooms it earns about 42% more. So a three-bedroom is close to a commodity here and a bigger house isn't, which is the argument for buying the extra rooms only if you're willing to run the place properly.

Professional hosts hold a large share of this market rather than people renting out a spare room, and stays here run long by short-term rental standards, closer to a relocation market than a weekend one. If you're used to two-night city bookings, that changes your cleaning schedule, your minimum-stay setting and how much of your revenue arrives as a cleaning fee.

Is the El Paso Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Honestly, the data can't settle that yet, and I'd rather say so than pick a side. Here's what does hold up across both of the windows I can test:

Measure	January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025
Average nightly rate	up about 13%
Occupancy	up
Booking lead time	up about 33%

Market-wide across every El Paso listing BNBCalc measures. Occupancy and nightly rate are averaged separately, so they won't multiply out to anything.

The measure that would actually answer the question, whether more listings are competing than a year ago, doesn't hold still. Recompute it a different way and the direction flips from slightly up to down, so publishing either version would be pretending to a confidence I don't have. When rates and occupancy climb together, demand is usually running ahead of the beds available to meet it, yet without a trustworthy listing count I can't tell you whether that lasts.

The lead-time move is the one I'd actually act on. Booking lead time means how far ahead of arrival the typical reservation lands, and a third more of it means guests are committing earlier than they were, which gives you a longer runway to price into and punishes you harder for leaving rates flat until the last minute.

So what should you watch instead? Pick eight or ten listings that are genuinely like the one you're considering, same side of town and same bedroom count, and track what share of their nights they fill. Check it again every few months. If comparable listings are filling less of the calendar while new ones keep appearing around them, that's your crowding signal, and it'll show up there long before it shows up in any market-wide average.

When Is El Paso's Peak Airbnb Season?

Seasonality here is mostly a pricing story, which follows on from what the bedroom counts already showed. Occupancy moves less than you'd expect and rate moves more:

Month (2026)	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
January	40%	$122
February	40%	$126
March	49%	$136
April	58%	$138
May	48%	$153
June	50%	$153
July	50%	$152
August	41%	$137

This year's month-by-month figures, market-wide.

The short answer is May through July, and it's a rate peak rather than an occupancy one. January and February are the floor on both measures, and they're the two months where a rate you set in July will quietly cost you bookings. From there rates climb steadily and then sit on a plateau of about $153 across those three months before easing back in August. Spring and summer also fill better than winter does, although the gaps between the individual spring and summer months are small enough that I wouldn't crown one of them.

Practically, that means your pricing calendar has two jobs rather than twelve. Get the winter discount deep enough that you're not staring at empty midweeks in January, then hold your nerve through May, June and July, when the market is paying about a quarter more per night than it pays in January and plenty of hosts still leave money on the table by anchoring to their own winter rates.

The week has its own shape on top of that. Saturday fills around 45% more often than Tuesday and charges around a third more, with Friday close behind it, while Monday through Wednesday is where El Paso goes quiet. Because stays here run long, though, a single midweek discount often buys you a longer booking rather than just a cheap Tuesday, so I'd test a length-of-stay discount before I cut the midweek rate outright.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in El Paso?

The City of El Paso splits itself into five planning areas, and because close to nine listings in ten here fall within the city limits, those five areas cover most of what you could actually buy. Here's how they earn:

City planning area	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
Northwest (the Westside)	$20,593	$182	33%	$27,224
East	$18,994	$167	32%	$24,202
Northeast	$16,791	$145	32%	$22,516
Mission Valley (the Lower Valley)	$12,518	$114	31%	$15,826
Central	$11,628	$100	33%	$14,953

Listings placed inside the City of El Paso's own planning-area boundaries. Medians from BNBCalc's September 2026 listing data.

How to read it: the occupancy column is almost a flat line, so the $9,000 between the Westside and Central is nightly rate and house size doing all of the work. The three areas at the top have a median listing of three bedrooms, while Mission Valley and Central run to two, and the rate follows the rooms. Central is the clearest example of why a revenue ranking can mislead you, because it fills its nights as well as anywhere in the city and still finishes last on revenue, purely because its typical listing is smaller and cheaper.

The market also reaches past the city line, into the smaller towns around it and across the state line. That's a different boundary method, so read the two rankings separately and never merge them into one list:

Place	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
Sunland Park, NM	$21,311	$188	33%	$22,654
Socorro, TX	$17,326	$134	34%	$21,337
Horizon City, TX	$17,034	$149	32%	$19,664
El Paso, TX	$15,839	$138	33%	$21,516

Listings placed inside US Census place boundaries across the Texas and New Mexico sides of the market.

The gap between those two tables is worth a second look, because a median listing beyond the city boundary took in $17,704 against $15,839 within it, and it did that on a lower median occupancy of about 30%. Out there you're buying a bigger, pricier house on a quieter calendar, and you're buying it under whichever town's rules apply, so the extra $1,865 a year isn't free money. Only about one listing in nine sits outside the city limits at all, which is also why those rows stay thin.

Two of those rows deserve a warning before you act on them. Sunland Park sits in Doña Ana County, New Mexico, so El Paso's zoning definition and El Paso's hotel tax don't reach it and New Mexico's own lodging rules apply instead, which is a different filing life than the one described further down. Socorro and Horizon City are thin rows that will move between data releases, so treat them as a hint about where the bigger houses are rather than as a ranking you'd bet on.

If I had to pick, I'd start on the Westside for a three-bedroom or larger, since it earns the most per night and its top quarter reaches furthest, and I'd look at the East side for the same house at a lower entry price. Central is the one I'd only buy into with a specific plan, because a two-bedroom there fills beautifully and still has to be bought cheaply to work. For what each part of town is actually like to stay in, the El Paso neighborhood guide scores Chelmont, North Park, the Lower Valley and the East Side on convenience and attractions, and the El Paso city guide walks Downtown, Kern Place, Mission Valley and Sunset Heights as places rather than as rows. Those answer the character question; the tables here answer the money one.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in El Paso?

Once you've settled on an area, the next question is what to spend the renovation budget on, and in a desert city the answer isn't subtle. A pool is associated with about 30% more revenue in El Paso once similar listings are compared against each other, which is the largest single amenity effect BNBCalc measures in this market. That's an association rather than a promise, so keep in mind that some of the gap is the kind of house that tends to have a pool in the first place.

Below the pool sits a run of amenities that measurably move revenue here without a published number attached: an EV charger, a hot tub, on-site parking, a sauna, a barbecue, a gym, bicycles and allowing pets. Lake access registers too, which is more a reminder that the model is scored the same way everywhere than a suggestion for the Chihuahuan Desert. The model deliberately ignores the fittings that almost every listing already carries, because an amenity sitting on every single listing can't separate the good ones from the rest.

Cleaning fees are the part hosts underthink here. The average cleaning fee where a host charges one runs about $85 across the market, and it scales hard with size, from roughly $42 on a studio to about $127 at four bedrooms and up. In a market where stays run long, that fee is spread across a week or more rather than two nights, which means it barely dents your conversion and it quietly funds a better turnover than most El Paso listings are getting. Make sure to price the fee against the real cost of a deep clean rather than against what the listing down the street charges.

Is Airbnb Legal in El Paso?

Yes, and as of 2026 it's legal in the plainest way available to a Texas city, because three separate Council actions this year settled it between them.

Start with zoning. On February 3, 2026, Council adopted an ordinance that added section 20.02.870.5 to Title 20, Chapter 20.02. It defines a short-term rental as any residential use rented out for lodging for fewer than 30 consecutive days, and it names the shapes that covers: a single-family home, a duplex, an accessory structure, or a unit in an apartment, mixed-use or condominium building. The ordinance then says two things beyond the definition: a short-term rental isn't a bed and breakfast, and the zoning standard for the base residential use applies to it. In practice that means if the lot is zoned for the house standing on it, you can rent that house out by the night. There's no short-term rental permit, no density cap, no requirement that you live there, and no separate inspection.

The gate that's left is private. A homeowners association covenant or a deed restriction can still forbid short-term renting on a specific lot even though the city doesn't, so read those before you make an offer rather than after.

The second and third actions are the tax. On June 9, 2026, Council approved a resolution directing the City to begin collecting hotel occupancy tax on short-term rentals no earlier than 90 days and no later than 180 days from that date, which puts the start somewhere between September 7 and December 6, 2026. Then on September 1, 2026, Council adopted the ordinance that makes it work, rewriting the Hotel Room Tax chapter so that a short-term rental counts as a hotel and so that the booking platform, rather than you, takes the tax from the guest when they reserve and pays it straight to the City.

That last detail is the one that changes your day-to-day, because if every booking comes through a platform that pays the tax over for you, there's no separate City filing to make. You do still have to keep records good enough to show what the platform collected, and anything booked direct or through a channel that doesn't pay over is yours to collect and hand in. The ordinance also tells operators to meet whatever registration and reporting the City sets up, so treat today's clean slate as this year's answer rather than a permanent one.

Here's the whole stack a guest pays on a stay under 30 days, according to the El Paso County Tax Assessor-Collector's own published schedule:

Tax	Rate	Collected by
State of Texas hotel occupancy tax	6%	Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
City of El Paso hotel room tax and venue project tax	9%	City of El Paso, or the booking platform on its behalf
Combined, inside the city limits	15%

The state's 6% applies to any stay under 30 consecutive days where the room costs $15 or more per night, and the major platforms already collect it and hand it over on their own bookings. The City's 9% is two levies stacked, a 7% hotel room tax plus the 2% venue project tax El Paso voters approved in 2012 for the ballpark, and the September ordinance requires every bill subject to the venue tax to say so in writing. All of it sits on the guest's side of the transaction, so it isn't a cost you carry, although do expect the total a guest sees at checkout to climb once the City's share switches on.

Enforcement is lopsided, and worth understanding before you plan around it. On the zoning side there's almost nothing to enforce, since the city issues no permit it could revoke, and a complaint about noise, parking or trash travels the same route it would for any house on the block. On the tax side the City has audited hotel occupancy tax compliance for more than a decade, publishes a quarterly delinquency report, and the Hotel Room Tax chapter carries penalties, interest and the option of legal action. So the light touch El Paso is known for is a zoning light touch, and it doesn't extend to the money. For the current filing calendar, the forms and the contacts, the El Paso short-term rental regulation guide keeps the paperwork side, and the Texas short-term rental tax rules cover how the state's share is registered and filed.

How Does BNBCalc Track the El Paso Airbnb Market?

Filing dates belong in that guide. Measuring the market is a separate job, and it happens in BNBCalc Markets, where an entire market gets sized up before anyone narrows the search down to a single house. Alongside what listings earn, it reads the local housing market itself: how long homes sit before they sell, how often they go for more than the asking price, and which type of home gives you the most space for the money. In a market where occupancy hardly moves and the bedroom count does nearly all the work, what you pay per bedroom is the number that decides your return, so I'd read that side before the earnings side.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for an El Paso Property?

Every figure so far describes thousands of homes at once, while your money goes into a single address. What bridges that?

Take it in that order, market first and address last. The El Paso market page is where today's earnings, occupancy and seasonality sit, and Texas markets sorted on gross yield shows whether this city or somewhere else in the state gives you more back for the purchase price. If El Paso survives both of those, put the actual address through BNBCalc using your real offer, your real financing and your real running costs, because a median is a description of a market and never a forecast for a house.

Three El Paso thresholds belong in your head while you're doing that.

Bedrooms are the first. The median jumps about $5,800 between a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom here, so if you're weighing a cheaper two-bedroom, the purchase price has to be far enough below the three-bedroom to cover that gap every year, not just once. Occupancy is the second. The middle of this market fills around a third of its nights, and while a well-run listing beats that, a pro forma built on 50% or 60% is describing a different city. The third is the tax switch. From late 2026 a guest comparing your listing against a hotel is comparing prices that both carry the same tax, so the competitive question changes even though your own take doesn't.

Do that and you'll end up with a number you can defend to a lender, which is a different thing from a number you like. Any market rewards the buyer who works out which lever is doing the moving, and in a city where every calendar fills at much the same rate, that lever isn't demand at all. It's what you bought and what you can charge for it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in El Paso?

Across the El Paso market the median listing brought in $16,055 over the twelve months through August 2026, going by BNBCalc's September data release, with the top quarter opening at $21,545. Size drives most of the difference: a median two-bedroom took in $13,030 and a median four-bedroom-or-larger took in $24,170. Within the city limits that median came to $15,839, while listings beyond the city line ran a little ahead at $17,704.

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in El Paso?

No. There is no short-term rental permit in El Paso, no license and nothing to register. On February 3, 2026 the City Council adopted an ordinance defining a short-term rental in the Title 20 zoning code as a residential use rented for fewer than 30 consecutive days, and the zoning standard that already applies to the property applies to the rental. What can still stop you is private: a homeowners association covenant or a deed restriction can prohibit short-term renting on a specific lot.

What taxes do El Paso short-term rental guests pay?

A stay under 30 days inside the city limits carries 15% in combined hotel occupancy tax, of which the State of Texas takes 6% and the City of El Paso 9%. A property outside the city limits owes a county hotel occupancy tax alongside the state's share rather than the city's, and the rate the county publishes and the rate the state's records carry for it don't match, so confirm the current figure with the El Paso County Tax Assessor-Collector before you price a listing out there. The City's share is new for short-term rentals, added by a resolution on June 9, 2026 and an ordinance on September 1, 2026, and the ordinance makes the booking platform collect it from the guest and remit it to the City.

Which part of El Paso earns the most?

The Northwest planning area, known locally as the Westside, leads the city's five areas on median annual revenue at $20,593, with the East behind it at $18,994. Central finishes last at $11,628 despite filling as many of its nights as anywhere in the city, because its typical listing is a two-bedroom at a $100 median nightly rate. Across the whole market, Sunland Park just over the New Mexico line posts the highest place-level median.

Is occupancy the same everywhere in El Paso?

Close to it, which is unusual. Median occupancy across the city's five planning areas runs between 31% and 33%, a span of about two points, and it varies just as little between bedroom counts. That means the revenue gaps between areas and between house sizes are almost entirely nightly rate and the number of rooms you're renting, so an area that looks weak on revenue isn't necessarily an area where calendars go empty.

Is a two-bedroom or a three-bedroom the better buy in El Paso?

On the data, three bedrooms is the safer starting point. The median three-bedroom took in $18,855 against $13,030 for a median two-bedroom, a gap of about $5,800 a year that a cheaper purchase price has to cover every single year, not once. A three-bedroom is also the tightest size in the market, with its top quarter only about 17% above its median, so you're less dependent on running it brilliantly to hit the typical number.

Does El Paso enforce short-term rental rules?

On zoning, barely, because there's no permit to revoke and complaints about noise or parking follow the same route as they would for any house. Tax is the other story. The City has audited hotel occupancy tax compliance for over a decade and publishes a quarterly delinquency report, and the Hotel Room Tax chapter carries penalties, interest and the option of legal collection, so the tax side is the part of El Paso's system that actually bites.