Fresno, California Airbnb Market Data 2026

Can a short-term rental in Fresno, California still pay its way in 2026, and does the city let you run one at all? The short answer is yes on both counts: the median listing in BNBCalc's Fresno market took in $23,979 in the year to September 2026, and the city allows short-term rentals as long as you have a city permit, or at least a filed application for one, before you rent the place or so much as advertise it. That permit only covers the City of Fresno, though, and 61.5% of the market's listings sit inside the city limits. The remaining listings sit in Clovis, on unincorporated county land (some of it in islands inside the city's outer boundary) or in a few smaller towns nearby, and the city's rules don't follow you there.

The market itself has been getting smaller. Fewer listings were active in the first nine months of 2026 than in the first nine months of 2025, yet occupancy rose about 4% and guests paid about 14% more a night, so the hosts who stayed are competing against fewer listings and charging more for each night they book.

Inside that smaller market, where you buy matters far more than which side of the city line you're on. The median listing inside Fresno and the median listing outside it earned within about $60 of each other, while the City of Fresno's own planning areas run from $15,366 at the median Downtown to $34,696 in Woodward Park.

How Much Do Fresno Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

In the year that ended in September 2026, the median listing across the Fresno market earned $23,979. The market's median nightly rate was $203 and its median occupancy 33.5%, while a 75th-percentile listing took in $32,741. These are medians, and they'll run below most of the averages you see quoted for Fresno, since a few very strong listings can drag an average up without moving a median much.

Size is where the spread opens up:

Bedrooms	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Studio	$13,887	$128	30%	$17,120
1 bedroom	$13,984	$125	33%	$17,066
2 bedrooms	$18,728	$157	35%	$23,570
3 bedrooms	$25,876	$217	34%	$32,724
4+ bedrooms	$34,618	$312	33%	$45,045

Fresno market, all listings, twelve months to September 2026, from BNBCalc market data.

Start with occupancy, since it hardly changes from row to row: every size books somewhere between 30% and 35% of its nights at the median. That means the gap between a one-bedroom at $13,984 and a four-bedroom at $34,618, about two and a half times, comes almost entirely from what guests pay per night.

Two other things stand out. A studio and a one-bedroom land in the same place, around $14,000, so the extra room doesn't buy you anything until you reach two bedrooms. Past that point, every added bedroom is worth more than the one before it: about $4,700 at the median going from one bedroom to two, about $7,100 from two to three, and roughly $8,700 more from three to four or more. A top-quartile three-bedroom ($32,724) comes within about $1,900 of a typical four-bedroom, which tells you a well-run three can do the work of a bigger house here.

Dollars aren't the whole picture, though, since smaller places cost less to buy. If return on the purchase price matters more to you than the revenue figure, BNBCalc's ranking of California markets by gross yield can be filtered by bedroom count, which shows you whether a cheaper one- or two-bedroom makes up for earning less.

The city line hardly matters at the median. Listings inside Fresno's city limits earned $24,021 and those outside them $23,961. Smaller units are the exception, since one- and two-bedrooms outside the city did noticeably better than those inside it, by about 18% ($14,638 against $12,455 for a one-bedroom, and $20,899 against $17,665 for a two-bedroom), while three- and four-bedrooms earned about the same on either side.

You'll also be up against professionals. They run a large share of the Fresno market, which matters most when you're deciding whether to manage the place yourself or hand it to a company, and BNBCalc's guide to Fresno property management covers that choice.

Is the Fresno Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No. Fewer listings were active in Fresno from January through September 2026 than over the same stretch of 2025, and the ones still operating filled more of their nights and charged more for them, the opposite of what an oversupplied market looks like.

Measure	First nine months of 2026 vs first nine months of 2025
Active listings	Down
Occupancy	Up about 4%
Nightly rate	Up about 14%
Booking lead time	Longer
Typical purchase price (12 months to September 2026)	Roughly flat, up less than 1%

Fresno market, all bedroom sizes, BNBCalc market data as of October 2026. Every change is relative to the earlier figure, so occupancy "up about 4%" means about 4% higher than in 2025, not 4 percentage points.

Read those rows as two halves: supply went down, while occupancy and the nightly rate both went up. Guests are also booking further ahead than they were, which gives you more time to price each stay.

I've left the size of the listings drop out on purpose. Depending on exactly which months you measure, it moves by several points, so the direction is solid and a precise figure isn't. Part of the decline came in a single step between August and September 2025, and it held rather than bouncing back, but even with that month set aside the market still shrank.

So if you buy here, you're not walking into a crowd. Then again, my guess is that rates this healthy will pull new hosts in sooner or later, and the best early warning when they do isn't a citywide average. It's the occupancy of the comparable listings around your own address, which you'll want to recheck every few months.

When Is Fresno's Peak Airbnb Season?

Higher rates are only half of the story, since Fresno's year runs hot and cold.

Month	Occupancy	Nightly rate
October 2025	38.2%	$202
November 2025	35.3%	$206
December 2025	33.7%	$200
January 2026	29.4%	$184
February 2026	34.3%	$189
March 2026	39.1%	$194
April 2026	43.6%	$198
May 2026	47.1%	$212
June 2026	46.1%	$216
July 2026	45.3%	$222
August 2026	39.0%	$209
September 2026	38.1%	$199

Fresno market, all bedroom sizes, October 2025 to September 2026, from BNBCalc market data.

These monthly figures count only the nights hosts left open to book, which is why they sit above the 33.5% annual median from the earnings section. That median divides each listing's booked nights by all 365 days of the year, blocked nights included, and the typical Fresno listing blocked about 115 of them.

The year bottoms out in January, at 29.4% occupancy and $184 a night. From there spring does most of the climbing, with occupancy reaching 43.6% by April and holding in the mid-40s from May through July, while nightly rates keep rising until they top out in July at $222, about 21% above January. August and September give a good part of that back.

So your calendar has a shape. Schedule repairs and deep cleans for November through February, since each of those months ran roughly ten points or more below the May-to-July stretch on occupancy. Your pricing is a separate job, and you'll want it finished before spring arrives, because that's when the run of strong months starts.

The week has a shape too, since Saturday nights book about 55% more often than Mondays, with Friday and Saturday nights combined about 39% fuller than Monday through Thursday. Saturday also carries the highest rate, roughly 27% above Tuesday, the week's cheapest night, and if you want to see how the newest months compare, the Fresno market page in BNBCalc Markets carries the current month-by-month levels.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Fresno?

The season tells you when the money comes in; the location tells you how much of it you'll see. Inside the city, the clearest way to slice Fresno is by the City of Fresno's own Community Plan Areas, the planning districts the city itself draws.

Plan area (inside Fresno)	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Woodward Park	$34,696	$279	32%	$37,436
Hoover	$32,754	$251	35%	$41,804
Bullard	$25,887	$240	35%	$35,677
West	$25,675	$251	28%	$36,695
McLane	$23,723	$200	34%	$29,876
Roosevelt	$23,183	$206	32%	$32,669
Fresno High-Roeding	$19,848	$159	35%	$23,567
Downtown	$15,366	$126	28%	$18,224

Listings inside Fresno's city limits, grouped by the City of Fresno's Community Plan Areas, over the twelve months to September 2026 (BNBCalc market data); Southwest Fresno is too thin to measure reliably.

Read across the rows and you'll see occupancy staying in a narrow band, 28% to 35%, while the median nightly rate more than doubles from Downtown to Woodward Park. Once again, the price guests pay is what separates the top of the table from the bottom.

Woodward Park, the plan area farthest north of downtown at about nine miles out, has the highest median in the city. Hoover, about five and a half miles north, sits just behind it on the median but has the strongest top end, with top-quartile listings at $41,804, so if you're confident you'll run a better-than-typical listing, I think Hoover's upper range is the more interesting one.

Lower in the table, size explains a lot. Fresno High-Roeding takes in nearly all of the Tower District, and its typical listing has two bedrooms, so it's fairer to set its $19,848 against the two-bedroom median of $18,728 than against Woodward Park. Downtown's typical listing is a one-bedroom, and its median sits a little above the market's one-bedroom figure. Downtown and West are the thinnest rows here, so expect them to move between data updates.

Outside the city limits, the map changes, so the next table uses Census places instead of the city's planning areas. Read the two side by side rather than as one ranking.

Place (outside Fresno)	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Clovis	$25,989	$214	35%	$34,117
Madera	$24,386	$220	30%	$34,332
Old Fig Garden	$24,028	$209	32%	$31,342

Listings outside Fresno's city limits, grouped by Census place, over the twelve months to September 2026 (BNBCalc market data), leaving out places too thin to measure reliably; Madera is the city of Madera, and Old Fig Garden is unincorporated county land inside Fresno's outer boundary.

Clovis edges the city of Fresno's median by about $2,000, and Old Fig Garden earns almost exactly what the city does, but Old Fig Garden is county land, which changes the paperwork, as the legal section explains. Madera is the thinnest of the three. For the on-the-ground read behind these numbers, BNBCalc's guide to the best Fresno neighborhoods for an Airbnb goes area by area.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Fresno?

Once you've picked an area, the next lever is what's inside the house. BNBCalc estimates how much more revenue Fresno listings earn when they offer a given amenity, and the one value it shows openly for this market is a hot tub, at about 19% more. Only a small share of Fresno listings have one, though, so that figure rests on a thin slice of the market. I'd use it as a reason to price a hot tub into your plans rather than a number to budget around.

The rest of the measured list stays inside BNBCalc Markets: BNBCalc scores a pool, an EV charger, a sauna, a barbecue grill, allowing pets, a gym, lake access and bicycles for Fresno too, but keeps those figures behind the Markets subscription. BNBCalc doesn't publish a value for the basics almost every listing already offers, since a feature nearly every host provides can't separate the good listings from the rest.

Then there's the cleaning fee, which Fresno hosts split on. As of October 2026, about half of Fresno listings charge one, and the hosts who add one ask, on average, about $65 a stay for a one-bedroom, about $126 for a three-bedroom and about $168 for a four-bedroom or larger. If you skip the fee to look cheaper in search, make sure your nightly rate is carrying the cost of every turnover instead.

Is Airbnb Legal in Fresno?

Yes, inside the city, with a permit. Fresno has required a permit for short-term rentals since its ordinance, Fresno Municipal Code § 7-1249, took effect on October 31, 2019, and that section doesn't make you live in the home or cap how many permits the city hands out. What it does say is that you can't rent the place, offer it or advertise it without a permit or a filed application, so the listing can't go live first with the paperwork trailing behind.

The city's Finance Department asks for a zone clearance from the city's planning office before it takes your permit application. Once you've filed that application, the code gives you provisional status to operate until the city issues or denies the permit. A permit lasts a year, covers one address and can't be transferred, so whoever buys the house from you starts over.

Holding a permit comes with duties that don't end once it's issued. Your permit number goes on every ad, in type as large as the biggest in the ad's main text, and you can only advertise on the booking platforms you named on your application unless the Finance Department approves another in writing. Someone has to be reachable by phone at all times, and you keep records of every booking, including who reserved, how long they stayed and what they paid, for three years.

The city starts gently and then gets tougher. A first nuisance violation gets a written warning, but after that the city can suspend your permit, for as long as 12 months, or revoke it, and a suspension or revocation at that address in the past year can be grounds to refuse your renewal. The City Attorney can also prosecute a violation as a misdemeanor.

Your guests pay two city charges on top of the rent: a 12% transient occupancy tax and a 2% Tourism Business Improvement District assessment. You collect both with the rent, show them separately on the receipt and send them to the city every quarter, and a payment becomes late after the last day of January, April, July or October. An amendment that took effect in June 2023 also treats a booking platform acting as your managing agent as an operator with the same duty to collect, so make sure you know whether your platform is already collecting before you add the charges yourself, or your guests could end up paying twice. If you want the state side as well, the California short-term rental tax guide covers it.

Fresno's permit and its 12% tax stop at the city line, and in Fresno that line is unusually ragged. That's because about one in six of the market's listings sit on unincorporated Fresno County land, and more than half of those are in county islands inside the city's outer boundary, including parts of Old Fig Garden, Mayfair, Sunnyside and Fort Washington. The city's permit and its two charges don't apply there; Fresno County's rules do, and BNBCalc's Fresno County guide walks through them. Clovis holds about one in seven of the market's listings, and it's a separate city with its own code.

Don't let a Fresno mailing address settle the question for you, either. Even the City of Fresno's own online city-limits layer draws the outer boundary without cutting the county islands out of it, so check the parcel itself before you make an offer. When you reach the paperwork stage, BNBCalc's Fresno short-term rental regulation guide lists the application forms and the city contacts.

Where Does This Fresno Airbnb Data Come From?

Forms and contacts are one half of the homework, and the numbers are the other. The trends, seasons and amenity values you've read here come from the market data behind BNBCalc Markets, which is how BNBCalc studies a market as a whole, while the plan-area and city-line medians come from BNBCalc's listing data, which I grouped by those boundaries myself. Markets can also put US markets in order of gross yield, setting what a listing could earn if it were open all year against a home value matched to its ZIP code and bedroom count, so it's a quick way to check whether Fresno's home prices leave room for a return before you weigh it against other California cities.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Fresno Property?

Start with the BNBCalc Calculator and the actual address. Give it the house and it pulls in as many as 50 lookalike listings nearby, works out the revenue, occupancy and nightly rate they point to, and then runs your costs, loan and returns on top of that. On a US address with four or more comps, its AI Underwriter can choose the closest of them for you. If you're still deciding whether Fresno is the right market at all, use BNBCalc Markets to line it up against the other places on your list before you look at houses.

Then check the result against how this market behaves, starting with the comps. A three-bedroom in Fresno High-Roeding and one in Woodward Park live in different price ranges, so make sure the comparables come from the same plan area and the same size as the house you're looking at.

Occupancy is the next check. The median Fresno listing booked about a third of its nights over the past year, and no plan area's median got past 35%, so if a seller's spreadsheet assumes 60%, it's describing an exceptional listing rather than a typical one.

Jurisdiction comes last, and it's the one people skip. Inside the city you'll need the permit, or a filed application, before you advertise, and you'll collect 14% from guests on top of your rate, while in a county island or in Clovis a different set of rules applies, so confirm which one you're in before the numbers matter.

Already hosting in Fresno? The Airbnb Listing Optimizer takes the opposite job: it reads as many as 100 reviews your guests have left, sizes your listing up against as many as 50 others nearby, and hands back a ranked to-do list with the change most worth your time at the top. For a lender or investor feeding a lot of Fresno addresses into their own software, that same property analysis (nightly rate, occupancy, revenue, comps and cash flow) comes through the BNBCalc API, billed by how much they use it.

Is a Fresno Airbnb a Good Investment in 2026?

For the right house, yes. The median Fresno listing earned $23,979 in the year to September 2026, listings are down while nightly rates rose about 14%, and the city's permit is a paperwork step rather than a wall, so the market is neither crowded nor closed. The return still turns on which planning area and which size you buy, which is why your next step is to put the actual address into the BNBCalc Calculator and see what it projects before you bid.

In Fresno, the decision gets made below the citywide median. That one number can't tell you that one planning district's typical listing earns more than double another's across town, or that about one listing in ten sits on county land inside the city's outer boundary, under different rules. Once you've checked the district and the jurisdiction, the headline figure starts to mean something.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in Fresno, California?

BNBCalc's market data puts the median Fresno listing at $23,979 in revenue for the year to September 2026. Medians for nightly rate and occupancy were $203 and 33.5%. A listing at the 75th percentile earned $32,741. By size, the median runs from $13,984 for a one-bedroom to $34,618 for a four-bedroom or larger. To see what a specific house could earn, run its address through the BNBCalc Calculator, which builds the estimate from comparable listings nearby.

Which part of Fresno earns the most on Airbnb?

In BNBCalc's market data, Woodward Park, the City of Fresno planning area farthest north of downtown, has the highest median revenue at $34,696 for the year to September 2026, with Hoover next at $32,754. Hoover has the stronger top end, where top-quartile listings earned $41,804. Downtown sits lowest at $15,366, and its typical listing is a one-bedroom. BNBCalc Markets carries the current figures for the whole Fresno market.

Is the Fresno Airbnb market growing or shrinking?

By BNBCalc's count, it's shrinking. Fewer listings were active in Fresno from January to September 2026 than in the same months of 2025, while occupancy rose about 4% and nightly rates rose about 14% over the same stretch. That's the opposite of an oversaturated market. BNBCalc Markets tracks these trends for Fresno, and the occupancy of comparable listings near your address is the number worth rechecking every few months.

What size Airbnb earns the most in Fresno?

BNBCalc's market data says it depends on whether you're after dollars or yield. A four-bedroom or larger earns the most at the median, $34,618, roughly 2.5 times what a one-bedroom earns ($13,984), while median occupancy stays between 30% and 35% at every size. Smaller units cost less to buy, so if return on the price matters more to you, BNBCalc Markets can rank markets on gross yield for a single bedroom count. Run the exact house through the BNBCalc Calculator to compare both.

When is the busiest season for Airbnbs in Fresno?

BNBCalc's monthly data shows Fresno's occupancy in the 40s from April through July 2026 and at its lowest in January, at 29.4%. Nightly rates peaked in July at $222, about 21% above January's $184. Within the week, Saturday is the strongest night for both occupancy and rate. The Fresno page in BNBCalc Markets carries the current month-by-month figures.