Lubbock, Texas Airbnb Market Data 2026

Can a short-term rental in Lubbock pay, and does the city even let you operate one? The second half of that question comes first in Lubbock, because Lubbock County's biggest city answers it more narrowly than most of Texas does. Under the city's Unified Development Code, a short-term rental can only operate inside a primary residence or in a legal accessory dwelling unit, and that accessory unit is only legal when its owner lives in one of the two homes sharing the lot.

So the usual plan, buying a second house just to run it nightly, doesn't match what Lubbock's own code allows. What does match it is renting the place you live in while you travel, listing a casita or garage apartment behind your own house, or buying a home with a legal second unit already on the lot. Make sure you settle which of those you're doing before you look at a single revenue figure, since it changes which properties you can even shop for.

With that settled, the numbers are worth your time, because Lubbock pays for space rather than for a full calendar. Across this market the middle listing took about $20,500 over the 12 months through August 2026, and the middle four-bedroom cleared roughly three times what the middle one-bedroom did while filling no more of its nights.

How Much Do Lubbock Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Start with the middle of the market rather than the average. Across every listing that clears the same activity filter BNBCalc's Lubbock market page applies, the median one took in about $20,506 over the trailing 12 months as of September 2026, charging a median $191 a night and filling a median 30.7% of its calendar. Cross into the top quarter and the figure starts at about $28,206, while inside the Lubbock city limits the median sat a little higher at $20,730 and outside them it dropped to $17,387.

Every one of those medians sits below the market-wide averages the market page reports, occupancy included. That's what a handful of very large, heavily booked houses do to an average, so underwrite a normal three-bedroom against one and you'll overshoot. What moves the figure here is bedroom count.

Bedrooms	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quartile starts at
1	$12,962	$121	30.0%	$16,210
2	$18,049	$164	31.7%	$23,050
3	$21,892	$210	30.7%	$28,214
4+	$37,804	$345	30.1%	$46,392

Medians of the trailing-12-month figures for every Lubbock-market listing that passes the market page's own activity filter, computed from neighborhood listing data as of September 2026. Medians are calculated separately, so they don't multiply out.

The occupancy column is where Lubbock stops behaving like other markets. A one-bedroom and a four-bedroom book about the same fraction of the year, near 30% either way, yet the four-bedroom takes about 2.9 times the one-bedroom's $12,962. Nothing about demand rewards the smaller unit here, so the guest who's coming, a family in for a graduation or a group in for a game, is paying for beds and paying by the night.

The size effect has a direct consequence if you're weighing a casita against a spare bedroom suite. A one-bedroom accessory unit in Lubbock sits in a band where the median lands near $13,000 a year and the top quarter starts around $16,200, which is real money against a garage conversion but thin against a mortgage. Keep in mind that the three-bedroom median, $21,892, is what a whole house does, and a whole house is only listable here if it's where you live.

Is the Lubbock Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No, and the comparison behind that answer is shorter than a full year for a reason: Lubbock's stored history changed how it measures a few of these numbers partway through, so the honest window runs eight months rather than twelve. Set January through August 2026 beside the identical stretch of 2025 and active listings came in about 12% higher, occupancy about 6% higher, and the average nightly rate about 15% higher. More competitors arrived, and the ones already here still filled a slightly larger share of their nights at higher prices, which isn't what a saturated market looks like.

One caution on that supply figure, because it's easy to read too much into it. Part of the month-to-month jump in the stored series this spring came from a reload of the underlying data rather than from new hosts, so treat the direction as sound and the exact size as soft. Either way, the check that matters is the one you can run yourself: pull the occupancy of the listings that would compete with yours, at your bedroom count and in your part of town, and run it again every few months. Market-wide averages won't tell you whether the six houses on your block are booked.

Guests here reserve about 25 days ahead on average over the 12 months through August 2026, which is a short window by vacation-market standards and a useful one in a town whose demand clusters around dated events. You'll want that in mind when you price a graduation weekend or a home game weekend, because the bookings that matter most arrive roughly three weeks out rather than six months ahead.

Hosts running more than one property hold a large share of what's listed here, so the amateur end of this market has already been partly professionalized. It doesn't mean you can't compete, though it does mean the listings above yours in search results are unlikely to be somebody's forgotten spare room.

When Is Lubbock's Peak Airbnb Season?

Summer, if you mean occupancy, and May if you mean price. Those two answers pull in different directions, which is why the season is worth laying out month by month rather than naming one winner.

Month	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
September 2025	34.3%	$187
October 2025	35.2%	$224
November 2025	36.1%	$221
December 2025	34.3%	$221
January 2026	27.6%	$150
February 2026	29.9%	$144
March 2026	37.0%	$161
April 2026	40.0%	$197
May 2026	40.0%	$262
June 2026	43.9%	$196
July 2026	45.8%	$189
August 2026	44.9%	$212

Market-wide monthly figures for all listings in the Lubbock market, 12 months through August 2026, from current market benchmarks. Occupancy and rate are averaged separately.

June through August carry the highest occupancy of the year, in the mid-forties, while January and February sit near 28 to 30%, and that winter trough is the number to plan around rather than the summer peak. Two slow months in a market this size can eat a year's cushion if you've underwritten on an annual average.

May is the outlier worth building a pricing rule around. The average nightly rate hit $262 that month against $197 in April and $196 in June, which is a rate spike rather than an occupancy spike, and in a city where Texas Tech hands out degrees in mid-May, that's exactly what you'd expect: fixed demand, fixed dates, families who booked early and paid what was asked. Autumn does a smaller version of the same thing, with rates holding in the $221 to $224 range through October, November and December on moderate occupancy, which lines up with home football Saturdays.

The week has its own shape underneath the year, and in Lubbock it's a sharp one. Friday and Saturday nights run about 70% more occupied than a typical midweek night, and they price about 30% above the average night of the week, while Monday and Tuesday sit at the bottom of both. A two-night weekend minimum will suit plenty of properties here, though if you're listing an accessory unit near campus you'll probably do better keeping midweek open at a softer rate, since that's where the visiting-family and work-trip bookings tend to land.

The practical version of all this is that Lubbock rewards a calendar you manage yourself. If you price a May graduation weekend the same as a June Tuesday, you're leaving the best rate of the year on the table, and unfortunately no automated pricing tool knows the Texas Tech academic calendar unless you tell it.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Lubbock?

Since the code ties your listing to where you live, "where to buy" here means where to live if you want the rental side to pay. The spread across the city is wide enough to matter.

ZIP	Where it sits	Median size	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quartile starts at
79424	6.5 miles southwest of downtown	3 bed	$27,080	$229	30.9%	$32,815
79413	3.2 miles southwest	3 bed	$22,586	$199	29.9%	$30,168
79423	6.2 miles south	3 bed	$22,573	$216	30.3%	$27,345
79416	4.9 miles west	3 bed	$22,383	$191	31.2%	$32,552
79414	4.3 miles southwest	3 bed	$22,332	$203	32.8%	$31,616
79407	6.7 miles west	3 bed	$21,547	$199	31.4%	$28,407
79401	downtown	3 bed	$18,533	$181	31.4%	$27,315
79410	2 miles southwest, beside the Texas Tech campus	2 bed	$18,362	$191	30.2%	$25,576
79412	2.6 miles south	3 bed	$16,534	$131	35.0%	$20,001
79411	1.2 miles south	1 bed	$15,240	$150	29.6%	$20,693
79415	2 miles northwest	2 bed	$15,079	$145	26.0%	$18,703

Listings assigned to 2020 Census ZIP Code Tabulation Areas by their coordinates, one boundary method for the whole table, with any ZIP too thin to measure reliably left out; distances run from the county courthouse downtown, and the medians are as of September 2026.

Far south Lubbock, the 79424 band, tops the table at $27,080, and the campus-adjacent ZIPs sit at the bottom of it. That surprises people who assume proximity to Texas Tech is the whole game, so it's worth saying plainly why it happens: the six ZIPs at the top of that table are all three-bedroom territory, while the bottom of it mixes one and two-bedroom places with the cheapest three-bedroom nights in the city, and size is what this market pays for. Occupancy says the same thing a second time, since 79424 and 79415 fill roughly the same share of nights while one earns nearly twice what the other does.

One occupancy story does stand out, and it belongs to 79412, just south of campus. Its typical listing is a three-bedroom house like the ones at the top of the table, yet $131 a night is the cheapest median in Lubbock, and it fills 35.0% of the year, more than any other ZIP here. That's a volume market rather than a rate market, and it behaves more like student-adjacent housing than like a vacation rental. If your plan is an accessory unit that stays busy at a modest price, that shape works; if your plan needs a high average rate, it doesn't.

About 86.5% of this market's listings sit inside Lubbock's city limits, and the rest stretch a long way, out past Snyder and Colorado City. Those outlying listings pull a median of $17,387 on a median rate of $165, and they're mostly two-bedroom rather than three. They also sit outside the city's permit and zoning rules, in unincorporated county land or in other small towns, which is a separate legal question covered in the Lubbock County short-term rental guide. For street-level judgment on the neighborhoods themselves rather than the medians, the Lubbock neighborhood guide goes further than a table can.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Lubbock?

Pooled across every listing in the market, a pool is associated with about 28% more revenue, which is the single largest amenity effect measured here. Then again, the pooled number hides the answer most Lubbock hosts need, because it's dominated by the big houses that have pools in the first place.

Split the same model by bedroom count and a different amenity leads three of the four bands:

Property size	Strongest measured amenity	Revenue association
1 bedroom	hot tub	+20%
2 bedrooms	hot tub	+17%
3 bedrooms	hot tub	+16%
4+ bedrooms	pool	+20%

Amenity revenue associations from the current regression run, September 2026. These are associations, not guarantees that adding the item produces the lift.

Most of what's listed here has one, two or three bedrooms, which makes the hot tub the answer that applies to you unless you're buying something unusually large, and it's the cheaper of the two to install by a wide margin. A pool earns its keep at four bedrooms and up, where you're already competing for the group bookings that pay $345 a night at the median.

Several other amenities register a signal in Lubbock whose values stay gated: an EV charger, lake access, a barbecue, a sauna, bicycles, a gym and allowing pets. Their presence on that list still tells you something, since an amenity with no measurable effect wouldn't appear on it, so if you're weighing a barbecue against a set of bicycles for a small unit, neither one is a coin flip.

Is Airbnb Legal in Lubbock?

Yes, in two specific situations, and which one you're in decides everything else. Section 39.02.018.c.6 of Lubbock's Unified Development Code says a short-term rental "shall only occur in" either "a legal accessory dwelling unit" or "within a primary residence", and there's no third option anywhere in the text, whatever zoning district the property sits in.

The zoning map is comparatively generous: the code's land use table makes short-term rental a "limited" use across the residential districts RE, SF-1, SF-2, MDR and HDR, the mixed-use districts MU-1, MU-2, MU-3 and MU-5, plus Neighborhood Commercial, Auto Commercial and Heavy Commercial, while prohibiting it outright in the Office and the three industrial districts. That breadth misleads people, though, because the accommodation standard narrows it again in every one of those districts.

The accessory dwelling unit route comes with its own conditions in section 39.02.020e, and the first one is the same owner-occupancy test: the unit is only permitted on a parcel "where the owner of the property lives in either the primary or accessory unit". After that the lot does most of the deciding. You get one primary home and one accessory unit per lot, the lot has to run at least 10,000 square feet (6,000 in the Neighborhood Infill and Community Infill overlays), the accessory unit can't have more floor area than the main house, and it needs an off-street parking space of its own. The code says plainly that an approved accessory unit "may be used as a long-term rental, short-term rental, or guest house", and just as plainly that its approved status "shall cease to exist" once neither unit is owner-occupied. Sell the house to a non-occupant and the rental right doesn't travel with it.

Whichever route applies, the code puts a Short-Term Rental Permit on whoever runs the listing, and Lubbock's own short-term rental page states that all short-term rental properties in the city "are required to hold a valid Short-Term Rental Permit and remit taxes monthly for nights that the property is occupied by guests". These standards were adopted by ordinance in May 2023 and amended three times since, most recently in August 2025, all of it read off the city's own codified ordinances in September 2026. Anything you read that predates the Unified Development Code is describing rules the city has already replaced, so be careful with older summaries of Lubbock, including the ones that still say the city has no short-term rental rules at all.

Then there's the tax, charged to the guest at checkout rather than taken out of what you earn, and it arrives in three layers. The state charges 6% hotel occupancy tax, and Airbnb collects and remits that layer for stays of 29 nights or fewer. The City of Lubbock charges 7%, which it reported to the Texas Comptroller for fiscal 2025 and which no platform collects for you, so you're registering, collecting and remitting it monthly yourself. Lubbock County reported a further 2% venue tax for the same year. Add them up and a guest paying $191 a night is paying about $29 on top before fees, which is worth spelling out in your listing rather than letting it land as a surprise at checkout. The mechanics of registering and filing each layer are laid out in the Texas short-term rental tax guide, and the permit process, contacts and enforcement picture sit in the Lubbock short-term rental regulation guide.

Where Do These Lubbock Airbnb Numbers Come From?

The permit trail belongs to that guide; the figures here all come out of BNBCalc Markets, which is where BNBCalc measures short-term rental markets and sets them against each other. Since bedroom count turned out to be the thing that moves revenue in Lubbock rather than location or occupancy, the breakdown by property size is where I'd start there: it splits a market into its one, two, three and four-plus bedroom bands and shows what each one earns, rents for and fills. Check the band you can list before you commit to a floor plan, because in this market the difference between two and four bedrooms is larger than the difference between the best and worst ZIP code.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Lubbock Property?

Work from the band down to the address, in that order. The market page gives you the current Lubbock-wide levels, and every Texas market ranked by gross yield shows how Lubbock's revenue-to-price ratio stacks up against Austin, San Antonio or the Gulf Coast, which is the comparison that matters when a market's case rests on what a house costs rather than on what it rents for. Then run the address itself through BNBCalc on the numbers you'd sign for: your offer price, your lender's terms, a cleaning quote somebody in Lubbock has given you, none of it a market average.

Three thresholds are specific enough to Lubbock to be worth testing before you sign anything:

Does the property qualify at all? Either you'll live in it, or it has a legally permitted accessory dwelling unit on a lot that meets the minimum size. Pull the lot square footage off the appraisal district record before you write an offer, since anything under 10,000 square feet rules out an accessory unit outside the two infill overlays, and ask the city's planning department whether an existing casita was ever permitted rather than taking the listing agent's word for it.

Does the size justify the price? With the median four-bedroom at $37,804 and the median one-bedroom at $12,962, revenue scales with bedrooms far faster than it does with anything else you can change. A fourth bedroom is worth more to your revenue line than a renovation.

Can you carry January and February? Occupancy fell to 27.6% and 29.9% in those two months on the lowest rates of the year. Run your worst two months as a pair and see whether the property still clears its costs, because an annual average hides exactly this.

A market like this one rewards a narrow, honest question more than a broad optimistic one. The house you can legally list, at the size the guests here pay for, at a rate that survives February, is a much smaller set of properties than the listings count suggests, and knowing that before you shop is worth more than any projection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you need a permit to run an Airbnb in Lubbock?

Yes. A Short-Term Rental Permit has to be in hand before the property goes up, and the city states that every short-term rental inside the city limits must hold a valid permit and remit taxes monthly for occupied nights. The permit sits on top of the zoning standard, not instead of it, so a property also has to be a primary residence or a legal accessory dwelling unit to qualify in the first place.

Can you buy an investment property in Lubbock to run as an Airbnb?

Not as a standalone nightly rental. The Unified Development Code allows short-term rental use only inside a primary residence or a legal accessory dwelling unit, and an accessory dwelling unit requires the owner to live in one of the two units on the lot. Buying a house you won't live in and listing the whole of it doesn't meet that standard in any zoning district. Owner-occupied purchases with a legal second unit do.

How much does a Lubbock Airbnb make per year?

The median listing in the Lubbock market took in about $20,506 over the trailing 12 months as of September 2026, with the top quarter starting near $28,206. Bedroom count drives most of the spread: the median one-bedroom earned $12,962 and the median four-bedroom $37,804. Revenue is also seasonal, with occupancy in the mid-forties from June through August and near 28% in January.

What taxes do Lubbock short-term rentals pay?

Three layers apply to the guest's bill. Texas charges a 6% state hotel occupancy tax, which Airbnb collects and remits on stays of 29 nights or fewer. The City of Lubbock charges 7%, reported to the Texas Comptroller for fiscal 2025, which hosts collect and remit to the city themselves each month. Lubbock County reported an additional 2% venue tax for the same year.

Which Lubbock ZIP code earns the most on Airbnb?

79424, in far south Lubbock, carried the highest median at $27,080 a year as of September 2026, against $15,079 in 79415 northwest of downtown. The difference is property size rather than demand, since both areas fill a similar share of their nights. The highest occupancy belongs to 79412 south of the Texas Tech campus at 35.0%, on the lowest median nightly rate in the city.

Is Lubbock a good market for a first short-term rental?

It suits a particular first move: an owner-occupied house with a legal accessory unit, bought for its size rather than its address. The median listing cleared about $20,506 over the trailing 12 months as of September 2026, though occupancy sits near 31% year-round in every ZIP and at every bedroom count, so the case rests on what the house costs rather than on how often it fills. Anyone shopping for a standalone rental property should look elsewhere in Texas.