Long Beach, California Airbnb Market Data 2026

Can you actually run an Airbnb in Long Beach, and what does one earn if you can? Yes on the first, once the city registers you, and how that registration works decides more here than any revenue figure does. Long Beach sits on the coast at the southern edge of Los Angeles County, California, and it treats a host who lives in the property very differently from an investor who doesn't.

If you live there, registration is uncapped and you can rent the place out while you're away for up to 90 nights a year. If you don't, you're applying for one of 800 non-primary registrations the city allows at any one time, and only 350 of those can sit inside the Coastal Zone covering the beach, Belmont Shore, Naples and the Peninsula. Accessory dwelling units, the backyard ADUs half of Southern California has been building, can't go on either track. So work out which lane you're in first, since it changes what a house here is worth to you.

A word on scope before the numbers. BNBCalc tracks this area as the Gateway Cities market, and that market reaches past the city line into southeast Los Angeles County. It picks up Downey, Whittier, Norwalk, Bellflower, Lynwood, Signal Hill, Pico Rivera, South Gate, Lakewood and a slice of San Pedro, though Long Beach is still the bulk of it. Plotting every listing against the city's own boundary in September 2026, 68.5% of the market's listings sit inside Long Beach city limits, so the market-wide figures lean Long Beach without being Long Beach alone. Wherever a number below covers the whole market rather than the city, I say so.

How Much Do Long Beach Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Start with the split those market-wide figures hide. Over the twelve months to August 2026, a listing inside Long Beach city limits took in a median of $38,037, while one in the rest of the Gateway Cities market took in $27,495. The gap comes from pricing rather than from how often places book, since the in-city median nightly rate runs $315 against $227 outside it. Half of Long Beach's listings clear $38,037, and the top quarter start at $57,296 and climb from there.

Size explains most of what's left. Here's what each bedroom count did over the same twelve months, worked out from the listings themselves rather than from a market average:

Bedrooms	Median annual revenue	Top quarter starts at	Median nightly rate
Studio	$21,068	$25,590	$174
1	$22,967	$29,309	$194
2	$34,871	$44,092	$292
3	$49,450	$68,503	$413
4+	$65,495	$89,742	$610

Medians across every Gateway Cities listing that was genuinely available and booking through the twelve months to August 2026, as of September 2026. Half of each group earned less than the median. "Top quarter starts at" is the 75th percentile, so a quarter of the group earned more than that.

Everything BNBCalc renders elsewhere on this page, market-wide and by bedroom, is an average or a typical value rather than a median, which is why those numbers sit above these rows. A handful of large waterfront homes lift an average, so one set describes what a size is capable of while the other describes where the middle listing of that size actually landed. It's the second one you want when you're deciding what to offer on a house.

The jump from one bedroom to two is where the money starts moving, because a two-bedroom's median sits about 52% above a one-bedroom's while a one-bedroom barely beats a studio. What matters more, though, is that the spread inside a single size runs wider than the gap between sizes: a three-bedroom at the 75th percentile earns $68,503, which beats the median four-bedroom outright, so a well-run smaller house takes a badly run bigger one with room to spare. That's worth sitting with before you stretch the budget for another bedroom.

Is the Long Beach Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No, and it isn't a close call, because there's less competition here each year rather than more.

Measure	January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025
Active listings	About 11% fewer
Nightly rate	About 16% higher
Booking lead time	About 18% longer

Market-wide across every Gateway Cities listing, not a single performance band. Each measure is averaged on its own, so they won't multiply out into a revenue figure. Rounded, and covering January through August 2026 against January through August 2025.

Listings are down about 11% on that window, and running the same comparison again on a shorter, cleaner stretch of the data leaves the fall at least as steep, so the direction isn't an artifact of where I drew the line. Rates went the other way. Guests are also committing about 18% further ahead, which usually means demand is firming up, though it can equally mean fewer people are finding last-minute space, and either reading argues against a glut.

I'd rather tell you what I can't tell you than dress it up. Occupancy is the measure that would settle this cleanly, and Long Beach's occupancy trend flips direction depending on which slice of the past year you measure, so I'm leaving it out instead of picking the flattering version. Nothing in the reliable measures points at crowding, though. Rates rising while listings fall is the opposite pattern.

If you want to keep tabs on this yourself, don't watch the market-level figures. Find half a dozen listings that really do compare with the one you're weighing up, same neighborhood and same bedroom count, then watch how full their calendars run, and look again a quarter later. A market this size moves when a handful of buildings change hands, and your competitors' calendars show that long before any city-wide average does.

Typical purchase prices, meanwhile, moved about 1% across the twelve months to August 2026, a longer window than the table uses, so the cost of getting in isn't running away from you the way nightly rates are.

When Is Long Beach's Peak Airbnb Season?

If entry prices are holding steady while nightly rates climb, the next thing to work out is when in the year those rates actually show up. Summer, and hard. Here's how the last twelve months ran:

Month	Occupancy	Nightly rate
September 2025	36.7%	$253
October 2025	42.4%	$269
November 2025	39.2%	$279
December 2025	36.8%	$277
January 2026	35.8%	$245
February 2026	37.8%	$250
March 2026	45.5%	$283
April 2026	43.4%	$279
May 2026	46.5%	$288
June 2026	50.5%	$362
July 2026	56.1%	$394
August 2026	48.4%	$302

Market-wide monthly figures for the Gateway Cities market, twelve months to August 2026. Occupancy and nightly rate are measured separately and won't combine into the revenue figures elsewhere on this page.

July tops the market on both measures, at 56.1% occupancy and a $394 nightly rate, while January is the floor at 35.8% and $245. That's a 20-point occupancy swing and a July rate about 61% above January's, which makes this a properly seasonal business rather than a mildly seasonal one. Plan on carrying the winter, and don't let a strong June quote convince you the rest of the year looks like that.

Inside any given week there's a second pattern running. Saturday occupancy comes in about 26% above the weekly average, Friday about 21% above, and Monday and Tuesday both land around 18% under it, which makes a Saturday night here roughly one and a half times as likely to be booked as a Tuesday. Rates move less than the calendar does: Saturday nightly rates run only about 12% above average, which leaves more room to push weekend pricing than most hosts in this market currently take.

That skew rewards a two-night minimum on summer weekends and punishes one in February, when filling a Tuesday is the whole game. If your pricing tool runs a single rule all year, you'll want to split it by season here.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Long Beach?

Season decides when the money arrives, and the address decides how much of it there is. Here the water does most of that work, and not subtly. Two things to hold in mind before you read the rows: these are medians, so half of each group earns less, and the thinner neighborhoods will move between refreshes because a couple of strong listings shift them.

Long Beach neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Top quarter starts at	Median nightly rate
Peninsula	$66,046	$81,421	$510
Naples	$64,968	$78,740	$665
Bluff Park	$59,103	$95,914	$720
South of Conant	$50,319	$67,898	$426
Belmont Shore	$45,602	$65,495	$379
Los Altos South	$42,635	$53,750	$390
Bixby Knolls	$41,436	$66,224	$377
Downtown	$41,387	$110,813	$372
North Alamitos Beach	$39,641	$56,804	$290
Recreation Park	$39,440	$54,594	$259
Belmont Heights	$38,755	$45,999	$311
Central	$37,711	$45,030	$315
Rose Park	$37,370	$47,040	$290
Bluff Heights	$34,940	$43,388	$284
South Wrigley	$34,080	$42,975	$315
Willmore	$33,399	$51,055	$285
Bryant	$32,744	$37,844	$270
Zaferia	$31,235	$40,683	$211
Alamitos Beach	$28,629	$37,396	$260
West Village	$24,778	$40,487	$224
East Village	$23,911	$29,307	$214

Long Beach neighborhoods drawn with the City of Long Beach's own neighborhood boundaries, September 2026. Neighborhoods too thin to measure reliably are left out.

Each row mixes every size of property in that neighborhood, so don't read a row as the number for the house you're looking at. Use them the other way round: take the bedroom median for your size, then move it up or down by the distance between the neighborhood's row and the city median of $38,037. A three-bedroom in Belmont Shore sits above the city line, one in East Village well below it, and the two tables together get you closer than either does alone.

The four strongest rows all sit on or beside the water, which is exactly where the 350-unit Coastal Zone allocation applies, so the neighborhoods that pay best are the ones where a non-primary registration is hardest to get hold of. If you already live on the Peninsula or in Naples, that's an unusually good hand. If you're shopping there for an investment property, treat the registration as the binding constraint and the purchase price as the easy part.

Belmont Shore is the row I'd point a first-time buyer at. It's by far the deepest submarket in the city, its $45,602 median sits only about a third below the Peninsula's, and there's enough comparable inventory that you can price against real neighbors instead of guessing. Bixby Knolls does something similar inland, with a median of $41,436 and a top quarter starting at $66,224, which is a wider upside than a mid-city neighborhood usually offers.

Downtown is the strangest row here and worth understanding before you act on it. Its median is a middling $41,387, yet its top quarter starts at $110,813, the widest spread anywhere in the city, and the typical Downtown listing is a one-bedroom. What that describes is a floor of small units doing ordinary numbers alongside a few doing extraordinary ones. Unfortunately, the average buyer lands nearer the floor than the ceiling, and a Downtown pro forma built off that top quarter is how people talk themselves into a bad purchase.

At the other end, East Village and West Village are the cheapest way into the city on paper, at medians of $23,911 and $24,778. They're also the two rows where the numbers argue for a long-term tenant instead, unless you're buying for appreciation and treating the nightly rental as a bonus.

Outside the city line, the rest of the market is a different business:

Rest of the Gateway Cities market	Median annual revenue	Top quarter starts at	Median nightly rate
Los Angeles (San Pedro)	$43,662	$66,952	$452
Whittier	$34,548	$41,212	$226
Lynwood	$33,136	$48,004	$278
Signal Hill	$31,765	$45,210	$286
Bellflower	$30,810	$40,762	$274
South Gate	$30,379	$37,084	$241
Pico Rivera	$28,524	$43,540	$224
Lakewood	$28,433	$33,231	$197
Downey	$27,703	$36,264	$249
South Whittier	$23,449	$34,667	$208
Norwalk	$22,977	$33,374	$200

Cities in the Gateway Cities market outside Long Beach, drawn with US Census place boundaries, September 2026. That's a different boundary source at a different level of geography from the neighborhood table, so don't read the two as a single ranking.

Only the San Pedro slice beats the Long Beach city median, and that slice sits inside the City of Los Angeles, which runs its own home-sharing rules rather than Long Beach's. If you're looking at anything west of the harbor, read the Los Angeles short-term rental guide instead, since none of what follows applies there. Signal Hill deserves a flag for the same reason in miniature, because it's a separate city sitting entirely inside Long Beach, and it writes its own rules. For a closer read on which streets suit which strategy, the Long Beach neighborhood guide goes block by block where this article stays with the numbers.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Long Beach?

Once the street is settled, what goes inside the house is the next lever you control, and one amenity stands out here. It isn't a pool. Across the Gateway Cities market, listings with a hot tub carry a revenue lift of about 21%, and scarcity is why: only around 8% of listings market-wide have one, against roughly 11% with a pool. That scarcity bites harder on the coast than it would inland, because where the ocean is a short walk for half the inventory, a private hot tub is the one thing a guest can't get anywhere else on the block.

The lift moves with size, though. Run it by bedroom count and the tub is worth about 13% on one-bedrooms and two-bedrooms, about 20% on three-bedrooms, then a pool overtakes it from four bedrooms up at about 15%. Studios are their own case, since the only amenity with an openly published lift there is allowing pets, at about 3%, which tells you something about who books a Long Beach studio.

Parking, an EV charger, a barbecue, bicycles, a gym, lake access, a sauna and a pet-friendly policy all throw off a real signal in the model too, though their values are gated, and naming them is where I stop rather than invent a number. It also leaves out whatever comes as standard on almost everything in the city, which is right: a feature your whole competitive set already has tells a pricing model nothing.

Before you order a hot tub, read section 5.77.050 of the city code. Outdoor pools, spas and hot tubs can't be used between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. in a registered short-term rental, which shapes how you photograph and describe one, and becomes a source of citations when guests ignore it.

Cleaning fees are the other place hosts leave money on the table, and the market is split almost evenly on whether to charge anything. About 55% of listings across Gateway Cities do, and among those the median fee comes to $130 while the top quarter ask $195 or more. Fees scale with size the way you'd expect, from a median of $80 on studios up to $250 on four-bedrooms. What's interesting is the other side of it, since listings that charge no cleaning fee run a higher median nightly rate, $310 against $262, and still land on almost identical annual revenue. So the fee isn't free money. It's a pricing choice, and the hosts who skip it look to be recovering it in the rate instead.

Is Airbnb Legal in Long Beach?

None of those pricing decisions matter until the city lets you list at all. It does, with a registration, and that registration is where every real decision here sits. The rules live in Chapter 5.77 of the Long Beach Municipal Code, which the City Council rewrote in full on February 11, 2025, then touched again on February 3, 2026 to tidy two subsections rather than reopen the chapter. You can't advertise, rent or operate without a registration number, and every listing has to display that number and its expiration date.

Which track you qualify for decides the whole business case:

• Primary residence. The unit sits on the parcel where you actually live, meaning at least 275 days a calendar year, documented with two of five proofs. Hosted stays are unlimited. Un-hosted stays, where you're off the property, are capped at 90 days per registration year.
• Non-primary residence. Anything you don't live in. There's no day limit at all, but the city allows only 800 of these citywide, with 350 usable inside the Coastal Zone. Council sets that number and reviews it every year, so it can move, though 800 is what the code says today. You apply with an Application of Interest and either get a reservation or go onto a waiting list.

You can hold one of each and no more. Some properties can't register at all, whichever track you're on, and that list covers accessory and junior accessory dwelling units, deed-restricted affordable housing, single-room-occupancy units, and any building whose owner or homeowners' association has added it to the city's prohibited buildings list. Garages, pool houses, casitas, storage rooms and tents don't count as habitable space either, so they can't be rented.

The city caps the number of people who can be on the property: two for each bedroom, plus two more, with a hard ceiling of eight that counts children. A studio has no bedrooms by this formula, so it tops out at two. That ceiling matters more than it looks, since a three-bedroom already reaches eight under the formula, so bedrooms four and five add rooms without adding a single guest you're allowed to house.

Getting registered isn't a form and a fee. The city inspects any area guests will use before it approves you, you need liability insurance of at least $1 million or platform coverage that matches it, and the property can't be carrying open code enforcement cases or unpaid citation fees. Registrations last one year, don't transfer when you sell, and don't run with the land.

Then there's enforcement, where Long Beach is firmer than most California cities its size. Each violation carries a $1,000 fine, and a single incident can generate several citations where it breaks several rules, so three citations against a property in any rolling 18-month window let the city refuse to renew, suspend or revoke. A revoked registration then locks every dwelling unit on that parcel out of the program for at least twelve months, which is a far heavier penalty than the fine and the one I'd actually plan around.

There's one more mechanism most buyers miss, and it can take a whole block off the table. Under section 5.77.080, owners in any census tract block group can petition the city to ban un-hosted stays across that block group, and a majority of the owners who receive the petition have to sign for it to carry. So far the city has run 15 of these, and only two have carried, both in its 2024 fiscal year, in council districts 3 and 4. The odds are against any one petition, then, but a successful one is effectively permanent: the ban holds for at least three years and continues indefinitely after that until another petition reverses it. Make sure to check the city's published list before you buy a non-primary property rather than after.

Tax is simple by comparison. Long Beach puts a 13% transient occupancy tax on any stay of 30 nights or less, 7% of it to the general fund and 6% to the city's advertising and promotion fund. Guests are billed for it above the nightly total, so it never touches what you gross, and Airbnb handles collection and payment under an agreement with the city. Book through anything else and you're filing monthly yourself, due on the 10th, with a 25% penalty a month late and 50% after two. For how that sits alongside everything else the state expects, there's a guide to California short-term rental taxes.

One live caveat, as of September 2026: the city's own program page says it's reviewing the short-term rental ordinance for possible updates, so nothing here is settled forever. Nothing has changed yet, though, and the Long Beach short-term rental guide tracks the forms, fees and application steps in more detail than this article has room for.

Where Does This Long Beach Airbnb Data Come From?

Registration is that guide's department. The earnings side of this one comes from BNBCalc Markets, where we research short-term rental markets and stack them against each other, so a buyer can tell a good one from a merely busy one. The hot tub's payoff here shrank at one bedroom and a pool replaced it at four, and Markets prices that split out for every amenity it measures, at each bedroom size. Worth a look before you spend anything on a backyard.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Long Beach Property?

Work from the address down, not from the city average up. Open the Gateway Cities market page to see where rates and occupancy sit right now and how the year is shaped, then look at where California lands among the states on the best Airbnb markets by gross yield ranking. If you're weighing Orange County against Los Angeles County, the Anaheim market data makes a useful comparison from the other side of the county line. Then take one specific address to BNBCalc, and give it the price you'd genuinely pay, the financing you'd genuinely get, and what cleaning really costs here, because a market median starts the conversation and never finishes it.

Three Long Beach-specific things will move your estimate more than anything in a generic calculator.

Which registration track you're buying into. A property you live in year-round and a property you leave for 90 nights are two different income models, and a non-primary purchase isn't an income model at all until you hold a reservation rather than a waiting-list spot. Price the risk that one never comes.

Whether the block can say no. Check the prohibited buildings list, any covenants on the property, and the census tract block group's petition history before you make an offer. A condo in a building that self-certified out is worth what a long-term rental is worth, whatever the neighborhood row says.

Where the eight-guest ceiling bites. Above three bedrooms you're buying square footage rather than sleeping capacity, so the case for a four or five-bedroom rests on the nightly rate a bigger, better house commands, not on packing more people in. The four-bedroom median of $65,495 is real, but it comes out of the rate, not out of headcount.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in Long Beach, California?

A listing inside Long Beach city limits earned a median of $38,037 over the twelve months to August 2026, against $27,495 across the wider Gateway Cities market. By size, medians ran $22,967 for a one-bedroom, $34,871 for a two-bedroom and $49,450 for a three-bedroom. Half of each group earned less than that, and the top quarter of three-bedrooms started at $68,503.

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in Long Beach?

Yes. Long Beach requires a short-term rental registration under Municipal Code Chapter 5.77 before you advertise, rent or operate, and the registration number and its expiration date must appear on every listing. There are two tracks: primary residence, which is uncapped, and non-primary residence, which is limited to 800 citywide and 350 inside the Coastal Zone. Registrations run one year and don't transfer with a sale.

Can you Airbnb an ADU in Long Beach?

No. Accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units are specifically excluded from the short-term rental program, on both the primary and non-primary tracks. Garages, pool houses, casitas, storage rooms, boats and tents are excluded too, since the code only allows registration of space legally permitted as habitable. An ADU can still be rented on a long-term lease.

What is the hotel tax on a Long Beach short-term rental?

The city's transient occupancy tax is 13%, and it applies to any stay of 30 consecutive nights or less, split 7% to the general fund and 6% to the special advertising and promotion fund. Guests pay it on top of what they owe you, so it never comes out of the host's gross. Airbnb handles it under an agreement with the city; on other platforms the operator files and pays monthly, due on the 10th of the following month.

Which Long Beach neighborhood earns the most on Airbnb?

The Peninsula, at a median of $66,046 a year, followed by Naples at $64,968 and Bluff Park at $59,103, all measured over the twelve months to August 2026. All three sit inside the Coastal Zone, where non-primary registrations are capped at 350 units, so the highest-earning addresses are also the hardest ones to register as an investment property.

Is the Long Beach short-term rental market getting more crowded?

Not on the measures worth trusting. Active listings across the Gateway Cities market ran about 11% lower from January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025. Across the same eight months, nightly rates ran about 16% higher and guests booked about 18% further ahead. The occupancy trend isn't stable enough to publish either way, so track the calendars of a few comparable listings instead.

Every coastal city ends up writing the same rule in its own dialect. Let the people who live there rent their own homes, put a hard number on everybody else, and let the neighbors vote on what's left. What that leaves a buyer is a market where the scarce input isn't capital or even competition but permission, and permission is the one thing a spreadsheet can't model for you. Find out whether you can say yes before you work out whether it's worth saying.