Madison, Wisconsin Airbnb Market Data 2026

What does an Airbnb earn around Madison, Wisconsin, and can you run one without living in it? The second answer turns on how long your guests stay, which isn't where most cities draw their line. Inside the City of Madison, a rental of one to six nights has to be the operator's own home, and it has to have been their home for the twelve months before they start operating. Rent in blocks of seven nights or more and that requirement falls away, although the city can then hold you to 180 days of renting in any 365, running back to back, with written notice to the Zoning Administrator when the first rental starts.

Then there's the map, which trips up more buyers than the ordinance does. The market published under Madison's name covers seven counties of south-central Wisconsin, and only about one listing in seven sits inside the city limits. It runs south to Janesville and the Illinois line, west to Mineral Point in Iowa County and Spring Green in Sauk, east to Lake Mills and the lakes around Cambridge, and down to New Glarus and Monroe in Green County. Dane County carries a little under half of the whole thing. So a figure quoted for "the Madison market" is mostly describing somewhere that isn't Madison, while the rules above stop dead at the city limit.

Everything below comes from BNBCalc market data through August 2026, with the county and municipal medians built from individual listings rather than lifted off a summary. The law comes from the ordinance Madison's Common Council actually adopted and the state statute sitting above it, so nothing here is carried over from how the city used to work.

How Much Do Madison Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Line up all the listings in this market and the one in the middle earned $23,347 over its trailing twelve months, while the top quarter cleared $36,403. A City of Madison address lands at $22,256, roughly 6% behind the $23,586 the midpoint reaches across the rest of the market. All three are medians I worked out listing by listing, so they answer a different question from the averages this page reports, and you should expect the two to differ.

Read that 6% gap carefully, though, because the two sides of it aren't buying the same thing. A Madison listing is usually a condo or a near-campus apartment bought at city prices, while the market's middle includes farmhouses and lake cottages that cost a good deal less per square foot. Revenue is only half of a yield, so you'll want the purchase price beside the earnings figure before you conclude anything about which one is the better buy.

Bedroom count explains more of the spread than anything else does. Running the same listings by size:

Bedrooms	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top-quartile revenue
Studio	$16,761	$162	29.8%	$19,173
1	$16,490	$169	29.6%	$20,046
2	$20,505	$210	28.0%	$26,363
3	$31,233	$340	29.2%	$45,342
4+	$47,440	$534	27.8%	$72,024

Medians of individual listings in the Madison market, trailing twelve months to August 2026, built from listing-level data rather than the module's market-wide averages.

A four-plus-bedroom's $47,440 is about 2.9 times a one-bedroom's $16,490, and the step from two bedrooms to three is worth about half as much again. Notice where that stops being true: a studio's median sits slightly ahead of a one-bedroom's, so the first extra bedroom buys you almost nothing, and if you're choosing between a small one-bedroom condo and a studio here, the bedroom isn't what you're paying for.

Now look at the occupancy column, because it's the most useful thing on the table. Every size sits between 27.8% and 29.8%. A studio and a four-bedroom lake house fill roughly the same share of the calendar, which means the revenue gap between them is almost entirely a nightly-rate gap. That pattern holds when you cut the market by geography instead of by size, and it's the first thing I'd pin down before underwriting anything around here.

There's a lot of room inside one size, mind you. The market's top quarter earns about 1.6 times its median, and inside the city limits that stretch widens to about 1.9 times, since Madison pairs a thin, ordinary middle with a handful of large properties that clean up on football and graduation weekends. A well-run two-bedroom clears what a neglected three-bedroom takes in, comfortably. Out in the smaller villages you're usually pricing against an owner running one house rather than a management company, which changes how quickly the calendar next door reacts when you move your rate.

Is the Madison Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No. The plainest evidence for that is a market shedding listings rather than adding them. Guests booked a thinner slice of the nights available, so it isn't a pure green light, and the two together describe hosts pushing rate and giving back nights to get it.

Measure	January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025
Active listings	Down about 3%
Occupancy	Down
Nightly rate	Up about 24%
Booking lead time	About 9% longer
Purchase price (twelve months to August 2026)	Up about 3%

Market-wide across all listings in the Madison market. Madison's stored history changed metric definitions at the start of 2025, so the comparison runs over the eight months either side of that break rather than a full twelve, and occupancy is shown as a direction because the two ways of measuring it disagree on the size. Occupancy and nightly rate are averaged separately and won't multiply out to revenue.

A 24% jump in the nightly rate is a big move for a market this size, and you'd want to know whether hosts found genuinely better guests or simply overshot. The lead-time row leans toward the first reading: guests are booking about 9% further ahead than they were, which is what happens when people plan a trip rather than grab a last-minute deal. Occupancy slipping while rate climbs that hard is normal, and it only becomes a problem if the rate gains stall while the nights keep leaking away.

What I wouldn't do is wait around for a tidier signal. If you're weighing a specific house, look up how full the nearest four or five listings of its size are running, write that number down, and come back to it in a few months. Your own block will teach you more than any market-wide average does, and a glut shows up there first.

When Is Madison's Peak Airbnb Season?

Summer, and it isn't close. Here's the last twelve stored months, month by month.

Month	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
September 2025	35.5%	$286
October 2025	36.0%	$296
November 2025	29.8%	$285
December 2025	27.7%	$292
January 2026	21.7%	$259
February 2026	22.4%	$258
March 2026	26.2%	$271
April 2026	29.7%	$274
May 2026	37.5%	$320
June 2026	45.2%	$351
July 2026	50.1%	$380
August 2026	47.4%	$364

Market-wide occupancy and average nightly rate by month, Madison market. A data reload sits between April and May 2026, so treat small gaps across that boundary as noise.

July tops both columns, at 50.1% occupancy and $380 a night, while January bottoms out at 21.7% and $259. That's a 28-point swing in occupancy and a $121 swing in rate between the best month and the worst, which is a wide seasonal spread for a market that isn't a ski town or a beach. Wisconsin winters do that, since the lakes carrying the top of this market freeze from January into March and the properties beside them go quiet along with them.

Autumn, though, is the interesting part. Rates in October ran ahead of September's even though both months sit well below summer, which is what a run of home football Saturdays and fall color does to a weekend-driven market. If you're buying something whose whole case rests on summer, make sure to underwrite four strong months rather than six, because May through August is where this market actually lives.

The week has its own shape, too. Saturday nights fill about 38% more often than the week's average, Friday about 36% more, while Monday and Tuesday sit roughly 22% below it. Rates follow the same curve, with Saturday about 17% above the week's average and midweek about 10% below. For a state capital with a Big Ten campus in the middle of it, that's a surprisingly weak midweek, and it means you should model this as a leisure market rather than counting on corporate and university travel to hold up Tuesdays.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Madison?

Since the market runs across seven counties, start there. Counties tile the whole area, so nothing goes missing from this cut, and anywhere too thin to measure reliably is left out.

County	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quarter revenue
Jefferson	$26,071	$261	28.7%	$34,244
Rock	$25,220	$281	30.2%	$44,679
Dane	$24,072	$248	29.4%	$38,911
Green	$18,638	$194	28.7%	$26,628
Lafayette	$18,261	$186	27.5%	$23,472
Sauk	$17,405	$200	25.7%	$21,080
Iowa	$17,174	$204	26.8%	$31,916

Medians of individual listings, trailing twelve months to August 2026, assigned by point-in-polygon against US Census county boundaries.

Jefferson and Rock counties out-earn Dane, which surprises people who assume the capital pulls hardest. Jefferson carries every lake name in this market, and Rock County's listings gather around Janesville on the Illinois border. Dane sits third, while the western and southern counties trail by a wide margin. Look along the occupancy column again and you'll see the same flatness as the bedroom table, everything between 25.7% and 30.2%, while the nightly rate runs from $186 in Lafayette to $281 in Rock. Rate is what separates these places.

Zoom in to individual cities, villages and census-designated places and the ranking gets more useful, though keep in mind that this is a different boundary level from the county table, so the two lists don't belong merged into one. Wisconsin's unincorporated towns aren't census places at all, so about three in ten listings in this market fall outside every boundary in the table and don't get a row of their own.

Place	County	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quarter revenue
Monona	Dane	$33,813	$384	26.9%	$42,953
Fitchburg	Dane	$32,981	$351	29.7%	$63,713
Lake Ripley	Jefferson	$32,397	$445	25.3%	$45,397
Lake Koshkonong	Jefferson	$31,874	$267	30.5%	$42,748
Janesville	Rock	$26,863	$255	29.1%	$37,468
Sun Prairie	Dane	$25,946	$231	31.1%	$29,461
Lake Mills	Jefferson	$24,709	$230	31.3%	$32,988
Middleton	Dane	$24,072	$274	24.2%	$29,802
Verona	Dane	$22,899	$218	26.9%	$27,162
Madison	Dane	$22,256	$228	31.8%	$41,190
Monroe	Green	$18,638	$188	30.5%	$25,882
Spring Green	Sauk	$18,253	$214	25.7%	$23,972
New Glarus	Green	$17,236	$198	27.4%	$23,020
Mineral Point	Iowa	$16,984	$185	25.5%	$18,566

Medians of individual listings, trailing twelve months to August 2026, assigned against US Census incorporated places and census-designated places. The thinnest rows here will move between refreshes.

Notice that both names at the top belong to separate cities that touch Madison rather than sit inside it. Monona sits between Madison and Lake Monona, Fitchburg lies directly south of the city, and neither one answers to Madison's ordinance, which is worth a long look if the residence rule is what's blocking you. Fitchburg is the more striking row, since its top quarter reaches $63,713 against a $32,981 median, the widest gap on either of these tables.

After those come the water names. Lake Ripley posts the market's steepest median nightly rate, $445, more than double Mineral Point's $185, and Lake Koshkonong isn't far behind on revenue while charging $267. Both fill about a quarter to a third of the calendar, same as everywhere else, so you're buying the rate, not the nights.

Madison itself lands in the middle of its own market, and the way it gets there is worth understanding. No row on that table fills more of its calendar, at 31.8%, and it does that on the second-lowest nightly rate in the top ten. A Madison listing works harder for less per night, which is what a market of downtown condos and near-campus apartments looks like, and it's also why the city's top quarter runs so far ahead of its median. For neighborhood-by-neighborhood judgment inside the city, the Madison neighborhoods guide takes it further than a market-wide table can.

If I were shortlisting from that table, I'd start with three. Lake Mills, because it pairs one of the better occupancy figures in the market with a nightly rate that doesn't need a trophy purchase price behind it. Janesville, because Rock County's median comes in ahead of Dane's, so the whole case turns on whether you can buy in cheaper down there, which your own comparables will settle in an afternoon. And Fitchburg, with a caveat attached: the distance between its median and its top quarter is the widest on either table, which says the ceiling rewards anyone who can operate, yet it rests on one of the thinner rows here, so a couple of strong listings could be carrying it on their own.

One more thing before you shortlist anywhere. Every place on that table writes its own short-term rental ordinance, and they don't resemble each other. The Dane County guide walks through how the suburbs around Madison differ, and for anything in Jefferson, Rock, Green, Iowa or Sauk counties you'll need to call the municipal clerk before you make an offer. Don't assume a rule you read about Madison applies four miles outside it, because that's the mistake this market is built to punish.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Madison?

Hot tubs, at nearly every size. BNBCalc's amenity model puts the lift at about 22% across the whole market, and it holds up when you split by bedroom count: roughly 20% on one-bedrooms, 19% on two-bedrooms and 14% once you're at four bedrooms or more. That's the one amenity carrying an open figure at the market level here, and given how hard Wisconsin winters press on the shoulder months, it's the obvious thing to fit if you want February to earn anything at all.

Three bedrooms is where the answer changes. At that size the model puts lake access on top at about 23%, ahead of everything else, which lines up with what the geography section showed: the highest-rate rows in this market are lake places, and three bedrooms is the size a family rents when they go to the water for a weekend. If you're comparing a three-bedroom on a lake against a three-bedroom four blocks inland, that gap is the number you're arguing about.

A handful of other amenities register a signal here without a published figure, and putting a made-up number on one would be worse than leaving it out. The list runs lake access, sauna, TV, bicycles, gym, internet, barbecue, EV charger and pool. Which of them stay closed shifts with bedroom count, and that's why a hot tub is an open number at one, two and four-plus bedrooms and a closed one at three. Washing machines and heating sit outside the model altogether, a modeling choice rather than a verdict on whether Wisconsin guests care about heat.

Worth knowing before you set your pricing: most listings around here don't charge a cleaning fee at all. As of September 2026, BNBCalc's market data puts roughly four in ten carrying one, and the listings that do average about $100, climbing to around $180 once you're at four bedrooms or more. That reads to me as a deliberate choice rather than an oversight, because a market running on long weekends loses bookings to a cleaning fee about as fast as it collects them. If you'd rather fold the cost into the nightly rate, just remember that the rate is the number every comparison in this article rests on.

None of that changes the shape of the argument. Amenities move the nightly rate, the nightly rate is what separates a $17,000 listing from a $33,000 one here, and occupancy stays stubbornly where it is whatever you bolt on.

Is Airbnb Legal in Madison?

Yes, with a fork in the road that decides everything else. Madison General Ordinance 28.151, as amended by the ordinance the Common Council adopted on 11 July 2023, splits tourist rooming houses into two kinds by the length of the stay.

Rent for one to six consecutive nights and the unit has to be your primary residence, and it has to have been your primary residence for the twelve consecutive months before you start. Stay on site through the night and there's no cap on how often you rent. Leave the property while guests are there and you're limited to 30 days per permitting year, which runs 1 July to 30 June, and you can't take two unrelated bookings at once. Rent only in blocks of seven to 29 consecutive nights and the residence test doesn't apply to you at all, though the ordinance caps you at 180 days in any 365-day period, requires those days to run consecutively, and requires written notice to the Zoning Administrator when the first rental of a period begins.

That second lane exists because of state law rather than local generosity, since Wisconsin's own statute at s. 66.1014 says a city may not prohibit renting a home for seven consecutive days or longer, and the same section is where the 180-day ceiling comes from. So Madison drew its residence requirement exactly at the edge of what the state allows, and our Wisconsin state guide covers how that preemption plays out elsewhere. Keep in mind, though, that the ordinance counts your advertising as evidence, so an open calendar showing one-night availability puts you in the short lane whatever your bookings turn out to be.

So what does that second lane actually buy you? It drops the residence test, which is the one thing standing between an investor and a whole-home rental inside the city, and the price of admission is a seven-night minimum in a market where the typical booking is a long weekend rather than a week. You'd be handing over a large slice of your demand for the right to own the place without living in it, and half the year is the ceiling either way, with those 180 days running back to back so you choose your window once and live with it. My read is that the numbers work for a furnished unit aimed at traveling nurses, visiting faculty and corporate relocations, and that they don't work for a weekend rental. Build both versions before you decide, since the answer flips on which guest you're chasing.

Getting licensed means three separate approvals, and two of them have to arrive before the third.

What you need	Who issues it	What it costs
Tourist Rooming House license	Public Health Madison & Dane County	$941.38 for a new one-room license, then $378.88 a year
Zoning Tourist Rooming House permit	City of Madison Zoning, Building Inspection	$300 application fee, plus $100 a year
Transient Room Tax permit	City of Madison Treasury	No application fee published

Health fees from Public Health Madison & Dane County's own schedule, effective 4 May 2026. The $300 zoning application fee was set by ordinance in 2025, up from $100.

The health license includes a pre-inspection, a failed one costs another $225, and zoning won't issue the permit until you're holding the other two numbers. Call it about $1,341 in year one before a single guest arrives. After that you file quarterly reports on 1 February, 1 May, 1 August and 1 November listing where you advertised and whether you slept there, and missing two of them in a year is grounds for revoking the permit on its own. Your permit number goes in every advertisement, your guest registry stays on site, and your maximum occupancy is the lesser of twice your legal bedroom count or twelve people.

Enforcement has teeth. A violation runs $500 to $1,000 per day, each day counts separately, the fine doubles once a permit has been revoked, and a revocation blocks any new permit at that address for six months. Unfortunately for anyone hoping to quietly test the water, an unpermitted listing is the easiest kind to find, since the ordinance makes the advertisement itself the evidence.

Tax sits on top of all of it, and it lands on the guest rather than on you. A Madison stay carries 5% Wisconsin sales tax, 0.5% Dane County sales tax and the city's 10% room tax, so 15.5% goes onto the bill. Airbnb and Vrbo are licensed as lodging marketplaces in Wisconsin, so they collect both layers and pass them on for anything booked through them, and you'd only be filing yourself on a direct booking. All seven counties in this market charge that same 0.5%, so what varies from place to place is the municipal room tax rather than the county share, and our Wisconsin tax guide walks through what a direct booking asks of you. Fees and forms do move, and our Madison regulation guide is where we keep the current version of all of it.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Madison Airbnb Market?

That guide stays on top of the paperwork, while every number above is drawn from BNBCalc Markets, our market-research product, built for weighing one market against another instead of reading them one at a time. Because rate decides returns here and occupancy hardly budges, gross yield is the measure I'd reach for first, since it sets a year of revenue against what a property costs to buy. Wisconsin's ranking runs on exactly that, which puts Madison's standing among the state's other markets a click away.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Madison Property?

Start wide, then narrow to a street address. The Madison market page is where the current levels and the month-by-month pattern live, while Wisconsin's markets ranked by gross yield sets Madison beside Milwaukee, Green Bay and the Dells so you can rule places in or out early. With a specific listing in hand, put its address into BNBCalc using a purchase price you'd actually sign for, the financing a lender would actually give you and a cleaning fee you'd charge in practice, since no market median tells you whether one particular house pencils.

Three thresholds are worth setting before you model anything around here.

Start with occupancy, and be strict about it. Everything in this market clusters between about 24% and 32%, so any assumption above the mid-thirties needs a reason you can name and defend rather than optimism. Second, if the property sits inside the city limits and you won't be living there, your model has to cap the calendar at 180 consecutive days rather than 365, which roughly halves the gross before you've made a single other assumption. Third, test your nightly rate against the place-level medians rather than the market's, since the gap between $185 in Mineral Point and $445 at Lake Ripley is far too wide for one average to stand in for both.

Run the same house at three rates: the median for its size, the median for its municipality, and something 15% below both. If it only works at the top of that range, you're buying a hope rather than a property.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Three of them. You need a Tourist Rooming House license from Public Health Madison & Dane County, a Zoning Tourist Rooming House permit from the city, and a Transient Room Tax permit from the Treasury, and zoning won't issue its permit until the other two exist. Budget about $1,341 in the first year across the health license, the $300 application fee and the $100 annual permit fee, then $478.88 a year after that.

How many nights can you rent a Madison home if you don't stay there?

Thirty, per permitting year, if you're renting for one to six nights at a time and the home is your primary residence. The permitting year runs 1 July to 30 June. If the home isn't where you live, the short-stay lane is closed to you entirely, and your only route is renting in blocks of seven to 29 nights, which the ordinance caps at 180 consecutive days in any 365-day period.

What taxes does a Madison short-term rental collect?

15.5% on the guest's bill: 5% Wisconsin sales tax, 0.5% Dane County sales tax and Madison's 10% municipal room tax. Wisconsin's Department of Revenue works the split out with a Madison example in its lodging publication. Airbnb and Vrbo hold Wisconsin lodging marketplace licenses, so they collect both layers themselves on anything booked through their platforms, and you'd file only for direct bookings.

Which month is busiest for Madison short-term rentals?

July, at 50.1% occupancy and $380 a night market-wide, with August close behind. January is the low point at 21.7% and $259. The strong stretch runs May through August, and autumn keeps its rates closer to the summer peak than it keeps the calendar full. Anything you buy on a summer thesis needs to survive a January where the lakes are frozen.

Is a lake property worth more than a house in Madison?

On the nightly rate, clearly. Lake Ripley's median nightly rate of $445 is nearly double Madison's $228, and the lake places take the top of the revenue table while the city sits mid-pack. Madison fills more of its calendar, at 31.8% against Lake Ripley's 25.3%, which makes it the steadier of the two. Which one wins depends entirely on the purchase price you're comparing them at.

Wherever you land, the lesson this market teaches is one that travels. When occupancy is the same everywhere, the only thing left to compete on is what you're selling, and no amount of good operating turns a small unit in an ordinary spot into a lakefront weekend. Pick the property first and run it well second, rather than hoping the second fixes the first.