Honolulu, Hawaii Airbnb Market Data 2026

What does an Airbnb on Oahu earn in a year, and is nightly renting something your address is allowed to do at all?

Start with the map, because on Oahu the map does most of the deciding. The City and County of Honolulu is one government covering the entire island, and its land use code allows a registered bed and breakfast or transient vacation unit in resort-zoned land plus four narrowly drawn apartment areas: part of the Waikiki special district mauka of Kuhio Avenue, meaning the inland side, a pocket near the Ko Olina Resort, a pocket near Turtle Bay, and a strip beside the Hoakalei Resort and Lagoon. Outside those lines your only route is a nonconforming use certificate for a unit that has run continuously since before October 22, 1986, and the city stopped issuing new ones decades ago. Buy anywhere else on Oahu and the shortest stay you can legally sell is measured in months.

That rule is also why the numbers in this article are the island's, not the urban core's. BNBCalc's market here is titled Oahu and it stretches from Waianae to Kahuku, though about 80% of its measurable listings do sit inside the Census place Urban Honolulu, and Waikiki's neighborhood board alone accounts for roughly three-quarters of them. So when a figure below says Honolulu, read it as the island under one rulebook, and keep in mind that the highest-earning addresses on that island are the ones furthest from Waikiki.

How Much Do Honolulu Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Across every Oahu listing that clears BNBCalc's measurement filter, the median one took in $42,128 over the trailing twelve months, its median night going for $309 and its median occupancy sitting at 38.6%. At the 75th percentile the figure is $67,096. Each of those is the middle listing rather than an average, from a pull I ran on September 29, 2026, and medians and averages answer very different questions on this island, because a thin band of large resort homes earning several hundred thousand dollars a year drags any average well above the middle of the pack. If you're underwriting a condo, the median is the number that describes your neighbors.

Split the island at the Urban Honolulu boundary and the spread gets much wider. Inside it the median listing earned $36,919 at a $270 nightly rate, while the fifth of the market sitting outside earned $84,700 at $720 a night. That's more than double the revenue on less occupancy, and it isn't a mystery: the outside-the-line listings are Ko Olina villas, Turtle Bay condos and Makaha houses, where the unit being rented is a whole home rather than a studio in a tower.

Bedroom count tells the same story in a straighter line.

Size	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quartile revenue
Studio	$27,764	$198	40%	$36,690
1 bedroom	$38,657	$293	39%	$51,132
2 bedrooms	$82,437	$651	37%	$107,297
3 bedrooms	$122,639	$1,039	35%	$155,361
4+ bedrooms	$131,164	$1,113	36%	$204,761

Medians of individual Oahu listings over the trailing twelve months, from BNBCalc market data pulled September 29, 2026, with the same 10-listing floor applied to every row.

So the curve bends at two bedrooms, where the median more than doubles a one-bedroom's while occupancy barely moves, because that second bedroom lets you leave the condo pool behind and list a house or a townhome to families. Going from three bedrooms to four adds far less on the median, yet look at the top quartile: a strong four-bedroom clears $204,761 against a median of $131,164 for the same size, the widest gap in the table. Big homes on Oahu are a management business, not a passive one, and the spread inside that size band is what separates an operator from an owner.

There's one more thing to factor in before you model anything. Professional hosts run a large share of Oahu's listings. That means the comparable sets you'll be judged against belong mostly to people doing this full time, with pricing tools and cleaning crews already in place. Whether you join them or hire one of them is a real decision here, and the Honolulu property management companies worth calling are worth calling before you close, not after.

Is the Honolulu Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No, and the direction of travel is unusually clear for a market this size.

Measure	Change over the year
Active listings	Down about 9%
Occupancy	Down about 6%
Nightly rate	Up about 14%
Booking lead time	Shorter
Purchase price	Up about 2%

Market-wide across all Oahu listings, September 2025 through August 2026 against September 2024 through August 2025, from BNBCalc market data pulled September 29, 2026, with each measure averaged on its own so they don't multiply out and booking lead time shown as a direction because it moved too much between measurement windows to carry a figure.

Competition here is shrinking rather than growing, and that's the single strongest argument for Oahu as an entry point if you can find a legal address. Enforcement has a lot to do with it. When the shortest sellable stay outside the registered zones runs into months, the supply of nightly listings can only fall, and it has.

Still, I'd want you to notice the occupancy line before you get comfortable. Guests booked about 6% fewer of the available nights than they did a year earlier, even as the pool of listings shrank, so the demand side isn't growing to meet the gap. What carried the market was price: hosts charged about 14% more a night and the bookings held up well enough for that to work. Buying here on the assumption that a smaller field automatically fills your calendar would be reading half the table.

Nightly rates rising while occupancy slips is a pattern that rewards a specific kind of owner, and the tell is in the lead time. Guests are booking closer to arrival than they were, which means a calendar that looks empty in March for a June stay isn't necessarily a calendar in trouble. If you price to fill three months out on an island where bookings now arrive later, you'll leave money on the table and never know it. What you'd want to watch, every few months, is the occupancy of the few listings that genuinely compete with yours, not the island's average.

When Is Honolulu's Peak Airbnb Season?

That closer booking window matters more in some months than others, because Oahu's year has two separate busy stretches rather than one long summer.

Month	Occupancy	Nightly rate
September 2025	44.0%	$342
October 2025	45.9%	$349
November 2025	41.9%	$351
December 2025	51.4%	$430
January 2026	51.1%	$402
February 2026	49.9%	$396
March 2026	47.7%	$404
April 2026	46.2%	$386
May 2026	43.4%	$381
June 2026	45.3%	$399
July 2026	53.5%	$412
August 2026	44.4%	$379

Market-wide monthly occupancy and nightly rate across all Oahu listings from September 2025 through August 2026, from BNBCalc market data pulled September 29, 2026.

So July and December are the year's two strongest months on occupancy, although they sit close enough together that I won't rank one over the other. December is the clearer story on price: at $430 a night it's the most expensive month of the year, about a quarter above September's $342, which is the cheapest. Mainland school holidays and the Honolulu Marathon land in the same few weeks, and rates answer accordingly.

Autumn is the soft patch on both measures. September through November is where the nightly rate sits at its lowest for the year and occupancy runs thin with it, which makes those three months the ones to plan around rather than hope through. Owners who take their own trip in September or October, or run a maintenance cycle then, give up the least. If you're modeling a purchase on twelve equal months, expect about twelve points of occupancy between your best month and your worst, and price the gap deliberately.

Within a week the pattern is ordinary, though the size of it is worth a look. Friday and Saturday nights carry about a 5% rate premium over the week's average and roughly 6% more occupancy, while Tuesday is the softest night on the island at about 6% below average. A two-night weekend minimum will help your rate and hurt your fill, so the call depends on whether your unit competes on price or on something the unit next door doesn't have.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Honolulu?

The seasonal swing is mild compared with the geographic one. Honolulu's own neighborhood boards are the cleanest official way to cut the island, since they cover all of it under one set of polygons, and ranking them by median revenue puts the map in a very particular order.

Neighborhood board	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quartile revenue
Makakilo / Kapolei / Honokai Hale	$120,972	$961	36%	$151,499
Waianae	$92,740	$696	39%	$124,253
Koolauloa	$66,291	$515	37%	$95,944
Kailua	$65,562	$602	33%	$89,498
North Shore	$58,716	$603	33%	$123,903
Waimanalo	$47,483	$467	31%	$53,417
Downtown / Chinatown	$38,331	$257	41%	$48,318
Waikiki	$37,312	$273	39%	$54,592
Ala Moana / Kakaako	$36,333	$248	42%	$42,706
Diamond Head / Kapahulu / St. Louis Heights	$33,192	$233	37%	$43,421
McCully / Moiliili	$26,338	$191	38%	$37,534

Medians of individual listings assigned by point in polygon to the City and County of Honolulu's own neighborhood board districts, from BNBCalc market data pulled September 29, 2026, leaving out any board with too few measurable listings to report reliably.

Read down that list and the board covering Ko Olina tops the island at $120,972, more than three times Waikiki's median. Third place goes to Koolauloa, which is the Turtle Bay end of the north shore. Those two names are not a coincidence, because they're the places the land use code actually lets you register a nightly rental outside Waikiki, and what they hold are resort condos and houses rather than studios. Waikiki, for all that it carries most of the island's listings, sits eighth.

Occupancy runs roughly the other way. Ala Moana and Kakaako fill 42% of their nights and Downtown fills 41%, both above anything on the windward or leeward coasts, yet the pair of them sit near the bottom on revenue, because a $248 night booked often still loses to a $961 night booked sometimes. That's the choice the island really offers: a dense urban condo that books steadily at a low rate, or a resort-area home that sits empty more often and earns multiples when it does. Neither is obviously right, though the second needs far more capital and a real operator behind it.

One caveat you'd rather hear now than discover at closing, because listing data can't tell a registered nightly rental from a condo renting on a 30-night minimum, and on Oahu that difference is the whole ballgame. So a high median in Waianae or Waimanalo does not mean those boards are open for nightly business, and plenty of what you see advertised across the island isn't legal at the term it's advertised at. Treat the table as a map of where guest money lands, then check the address against the zoning before you believe a single row of it applies to you. The best places to invest in Honolulu guide goes deeper on the neighborhoods themselves, and the thinnest rows here will move between refreshes.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Honolulu?

With an area settled, the fit-out question is where Oahu stops behaving like anywhere else, because the strongest amenity signal across the whole market is an EV charger, worth about 25% more revenue, and at one-bedroom units it's worth about 34%, the largest single amenity effect on the island. My read is that a visitor picking up a rental car at Honolulu airport is choosing between gas and electric, and the electric one only works if the unit can charge it overnight. Whatever the reason behind it, for a condo owner that's a wall box and an electrician rather than a renovation.

Go bigger and the answer changes, which is why a single market-wide number misleads. At two bedrooms the top signal is a gym, about 20%, while at three bedrooms and above it's a pool, worth about 14% and 17% respectively. Read that as a shift in who's booking, since a couple in a one-bedroom is optimizing their rental car, whereas a family in a four-bedroom wants the kids occupied without leaving the property. Studios returned no measurable amenity signal at all, which fits, since a Waikiki studio competes on price and location and not much else.

BNBCalc's model tracks several more amenities on Oahu without publishing their values openly: a TV, internet, a hot tub, a sauna, a gym at the market-wide level, lake access and a pets-allowed policy all show a measurable effect here, though you shouldn't read that order as a ranking or spend money against a number you haven't seen. The practical version is simpler anyway. If you own a condo, the charger is the cheapest real edge on this island; if you own a house with land, the pool you already have is doing more work than you think, and saying so in the listing title is free.

Is Airbnb Legal in Honolulu?

Nightly renting is legal on a short list of Oahu addresses, and it isn't on most of the island. The binding text is section 21-5.70-3 of the Revised Ordinances of Honolulu, as amended by Ordinance 25-52, which the Council passed on November 5, 2025 and the Mayor returned approved on November 18, 2025. It permits a bed and breakfast home or a transient vacation unit in low-density and medium-density apartment districts, as long as they sit within 3,500 feet of a resort district larger than 50 contiguous acres and were rezoned as part of the same master-planned resort community. The same permission covers the apartment precinct of the Waikiki special district mauka of Kuhio Avenue, and certain apartment-zoned lots beside the Hoakalei Resort and Lagoon. The ordinance draws those areas as four figures covering Waikiki, Ko Olina, Turtle Bay and Hoakalei, and where the words and the maps disagree, the maps win.

Everything else on Oahu falls back to two options. A nonconforming use certificate covers units operating continuously since before October 22, 1986, and the city hasn't issued new ones since; that door is closed to a buyer today, though an existing certificate can be renewed by a new owner as long as the renewal happens before it expires. Failing that, Ordinance 22-7 set the floor for an unregistered unit at 90 consecutive days. In practice the floor is 30. In December 2023 Chief Judge Derrick K. Watson of the federal district court in Hawaii permanently enjoined the city from enforcing that 90-day rule against 30 to 89 day rentals that were already lawfully running when the ordinance took effect, and Honolulu's Department of Planning and Permitting now tells owners plainly that a unit outside the eligible areas can't be rented for fewer than 30 consecutive nights.

If your address does qualify, registration is per unit rather than per building, it runs a year at a time, and you renew no earlier than three months and no later than one month before it expires. The city asks for proof of ownership, a state general excise tax license, a state transient accommodations tax license and a city one, liability coverage, and an association letter where a condo is involved. Watch the advertising rule especially, because it's the one that catches people who never take a booking: every advertisement for a stay under 30 days has to display the registration or certificate number and the property's tax map key, and an unregistered unit's listing has to carry a statement that the property can't be rented for under 30 consecutive days. The ad itself is the violation.

Then there's the tax stack, which is heavier here than almost anywhere on the mainland and comes in three layers. Hawaii's general excise tax runs 4% plus Honolulu's 0.5% county surcharge, and the state allows a business to pass it on at a visible rate of up to 4.712% on Oahu. The state transient accommodations tax rose from 10.25% to 11% on January 1, 2026 under Act 96 of 2025. On top of those the City and County levies its own 3% Oahu transient accommodations tax, which it has collected since December 2021 and which is paid to the city separately even though the state return covers the filing. Property tax is the layer that surprises buyers, though. For the tax year running July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027 an ordinary residential parcel pays $3.50 per $1,000 of net taxable value, a bed and breakfast home pays $6.50, and a transient vacation unit pays $9.00 on the first $800,000 and $11.50 above it. So on an $800,000 condo that's the difference between roughly $2,800 and $7,200 a year, and it's the line new hosts leave out of a model most often.

Still, none of that is a substitute for reading the rule against your own parcel, and the detail runs far past what a market article can hold. BNBCalc's Honolulu short-term rental regulation guide walks through registration, the document list and enforcement, and since Maui, Kauai and Hawaii County each write their own rules on the same state skeleton, the Hawaii statewide guide is where to go if you're comparing islands rather than addresses.

Where Does BNBCalc Get Its Honolulu Airbnb Data?

That guide handles the rules, while every figure here comes from BNBCalc Markets, the market research product that sits alongside the Calculator, so the same subscription that helps you pick an island also prices the address on it. Because Oahu splits its year into a summer stretch and a holiday stretch with a soft autumn in between, the month-by-month view is the one I'd open first there. It walks any market you pick through the calendar on occupancy and nightly rate, and that's the difference between a purchase that pencils on twelve average months and one that pencils on the months you'll actually sell.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Honolulu Property?

Work from the island down to the parcel, in that order, because on Oahu the parcel can disqualify everything above it.

Start with the Oahu market page for where nightly rates and occupancy sit right now, then see how it stacks up against Hawaii's other markets on the best Airbnb markets in Hawaii by gross yield ranking, which is the fastest way to tell whether your capital does more on Oahu or on a neighbor island. After that, run that exact address through BNBCalc against your own numbers: what you'd pay for it, how you'd finance it, and what it costs you to operate. A median describes the middle of a market, never the unit you're buying.

Three Honolulu-specific checks should stay in front of you while you do that.

Confirm eligibility before anything else: if the parcel isn't in one of the four mapped areas and carries no nonconforming use certificate, your model is a 30-day-minimum rental model, and the numbers in this article don't describe it. Budget the transient vacation property tax class from day one rather than the residential rate, since that single reclassification can cost over four thousand dollars a year on an average condo. And build your revenue on the median for your bedroom count rather than the island average, because the average on Oahu is carried by resort homes most buyers will never own.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

You need a registration, and only if the unit sits in an eligible area. The Department of Planning and Permitting registers bed and breakfast homes and transient vacation units in resort-zoned land and four mapped apartment areas near Waikiki, Ko Olina, Turtle Bay and Hoakalei. Registration is per unit, lasts one year and is renewed between three months and one month before expiry. Units grandfathered under a nonconforming use certificate from before October 22, 1986 renew on their own schedule instead.

What taxes does a Honolulu short-term rental pay?

Three layers on the stay, plus property tax. Hawaii's general excise tax is 4% with a 0.5% Honolulu surcharge, passed on at a visible rate of up to 4.712%. The state transient accommodations tax is 11% as of January 1, 2026, up from 10.25%. The City and County adds a 3% Oahu transient accommodations tax, remitted to the city separately. Property tax is assessed in the transient vacation class at $9.00 per $1,000 up to $800,000 of value and $11.50 above it for the 2026-27 tax year.

How much does a Waikiki condo earn on Airbnb?

The median listing in Waikiki's neighborhood board took in $37,312 over the trailing twelve months, its median night priced at $273 and its median occupancy at 39%, with the top quartile at $54,592. That's the lower half of the island's range on revenue and the upper half on occupancy, which is what a dense supply of small condos looks like. Figures are medians of individual listings from BNBCalc market data pulled September 29, 2026.

Can you Airbnb a house in Kailua or on the North Shore?

Not by the night, unless the house holds a nonconforming use certificate issued before October 22, 1986 or sits inside the mapped Turtle Bay area. Kailua, Waimanalo, most of the North Shore and the whole windward coast fall outside the districts that Ordinance 25-52 permits, so the legal minimum stay there is 30 consecutive days. Listings advertising shorter stays in those areas are common and are not evidence that the use is allowed.

Is Ko Olina or Waikiki the better Airbnb investment?

They're different businesses. The board covering Ko Olina posts a median of $120,972 a year at $961 a night on 36% occupancy, while Waikiki's median is $37,312 at $273 on 39%. Ko Olina earns multiples more and needs far more capital, larger units and real management, while Waikiki fills more nights on a much smaller purchase. Gross yield, not revenue, is the comparison that settles it for a given budget.

How far in advance do guests book Oahu stays?

Guests were booking about 46 days ahead on average as of September 2026, and that window has been narrowing over the past year. An average that short means much of the calendar fills inside seven weeks of arrival, so a listing that looks thin two months out is normal here rather than alarming. Price the far calendar for the traveler who plans early, and leave yourself room to move as the window closes.

Markets that shrink usually do it because demand left. Oahu's is shrinking because the law removed the supply, and owning into that is a different proposition: the competition you'd face is smaller, more professional and already compliant, and what stands between you and it is a map rather than a market. Wherever you're buying, the rule worth carrying off this island is that a legal constraint tight enough to bind will always show up in the numbers before anyone writes about it.