New Orleans, Louisiana Airbnb Market Data 2026

Can you still run an Airbnb in New Orleans, and if you can, will it earn enough to be worth the paperwork?

Well, the money only matters once you know you can get a permit, because New Orleans runs one of the strictest short-term rental systems I've come across in a big American city. The city takes in all of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, and in a residential neighborhood you can only get one non-commercial permit per block, with a lottery if more than one owner applies, and whoever holds the operator permit has to be staying in a bedroom on the property during every guest stay. If the plan was to buy a house on a residential block, rent out every bedroom and manage it from somewhere else, I'm afraid that version isn't on offer here, and no amount of good numbers changes that.

The good news is that the listings that do get through earn solid money, especially for hosts who price around the festival calendar. I'm covering what they bring in, how the market has moved, when it fills, where it pays best and the rules as of September 2026. The market figures also take in the surrounding parishes, though about four in five listings sit inside Orleans Parish.

How Much Do New Orleans Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

What does a listing that clears the rules bring in, then? When I look at a market by bedroom count, the first thing I check is the spread inside a single size, because that's where your own skill shows up.

Two-bedrooms are the most common size in this market, and when I line up the strongest against the weakest, the gap runs past six times on the same bedroom count, so how you run the place matters far more here than how many bedrooms it has.

If you compare bedroom counts on gross yield, make sure to plug in your own purchase price, because BNBCalc's yields by size rest on a market-wide price for each size rather than the cost of a property that can legally host.

As for the competition, professional hosts held a large share of the listings here as of September 2026, and the average stay ran a little over five nights. I'd expect to be pricing against a good number of full-time operators, and if handing the work to a manager appeals more than doing it yourself, our roundup of New Orleans property managers lays out who they are and what they charge.

Is the New Orleans Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Those earnings are a snapshot, so here's how the latest twelve months compare with the twelve before.

Measure	Change on the year
Average nightly rate	+7%
Purchase price	+1%
Occupancy	−1%
Booking lead time	Down

BNBCalc market data across all listings BNBCalc tracks in the market, with every change rounded to whole percentages. The latest year covers September 2025 to August 2026, against a baseline of September 2024 to August 2025. I've dropped any measure whose direction this year's data can't pin down, so the count of active listings is missing, and the booking lead time row says which way it went but gives no figure, since how far it moved isn't clear yet.

Is New Orleans oversaturated, then? Unfortunately, this year's data can't settle that yet. You'd usually spot crowding when the listing count climbs while occupancy falls, because that means more hosts are chasing the same guests, but this year's figures don't show whether New Orleans gained or lost listings, so I can't run that test here.

What does hold up is that occupancy slipped about 1% across those twelve months, even as nightly rates climbed about 7%, which tells me guests kept booking at the higher prices. That slip on its own can't tell me whether new competition took some of those bookings or hosts priced a few guests out, though.

So for now I'd judge crowding street by street. Check the occupancy of the handful of listings you'd be up against, the same bedroom count within a few blocks, and make sure they're still filling their calendars before you pay for a property, and recheck them every few months, because a slipping calendar on your own street is the earliest warning you'll get.

My guess is that the one-per-block cap on residential permits limits how fast new listings can open, though this year's numbers can't show that either way, and plenty of the market's listings sit downtown anyway. In BNBCalc's listing data the Central Business District holds roughly three in ten of the parish's listings, and a fifth of the market's listings sit outside Orleans Parish.

Still, keep in mind that nightly rates made the biggest move this year, and I wouldn't buy on the hope that they climb another 7% next year. Purchase prices rose about 1% over the year, so buying in didn't get any cheaper, while guests booked closer to their arrival dates than they did a year earlier, which means a given week's bookings can land later than they used to.

When Is Peak Airbnb Season in New Orleans?

If you average those twelve months together, you lose the shape of the year, and in New Orleans that shape follows the festival calendar more than the weather.

Month	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
Sep 2025	25%	$249
Oct 2025	37%	$322
Nov 2025	35%	$324
Dec 2025	30%	$327
Jan 2026	27%	$279
Feb 2026	36%	$461
Mar 2026	42%	$365
Apr 2026	42%	$435
May 2026	35%	$372
Jun 2026	32%	$315
Jul 2026	33%	$327
Aug 2026	25%	$284

BNBCalc market data across all listings BNBCalc tracks in the market for September 2025 through August 2026, giving each month's occupancy alongside its average nightly rate.

February carries the highest nightly rate of the year at $461, which lines up with Mardi Gras, yet April books more of its calendar, filling 42% of its nights at $435 against February's 36%. March matches April's 42%, and peak season here stretches from February through May instead of a single carnival week, with those four months charging the four highest nightly rates of the year, each of them above $360.

I'd call late summer the cheap end of the year, because September charges the lowest nightly rate of the year at $249 while filling 25% of its nights, and August's $284 is the third lowest. January sits between them at $279, which makes it the other soft month, while October and November fill 37% and 35% of their nights at $322 and $324, and June and July charge much the same, at $315 and $327.

What I'd plan around is the gap between spring and late summer, which comes out to about 17 points of occupancy and roughly $186 a night between April and September, so in late summer you're booking fewer nights and getting less for each one. That's why I'd hold enough in reserve to carry August and September, when owners on thin margins end up covering the mortgage out of pocket.

The week has its own swing. Saturdays fill 45% more often than the average day and Fridays 40% more, while Tuesdays fill 32% less often. Nightly rates move far less, rising about 16% at the weekend and falling about 10% on a Tuesday. Occupancy swings close to three times as hard as price does, and I think that gap cuts both ways here. Friday and Saturday nights look cheap for how fast they fill, whereas Tuesday looks expensive for how often it sits empty. If this were my listing, I'd test a higher Saturday rate and a softer Tuesday one before I spent a dollar on furniture, because my pricing is the cheapest thing I can change.

What Are the Best Neighborhoods for Airbnb in New Orleans?

I find market averages only go so far once you're comparing addresses, and in New Orleans the block matters twice over, first for what it earns and then for whether it can hold a permit at all.

I mapped every measurable listing inside Orleans Parish to the city's official Neighborhood Statistical Areas, and these are the top 20 when you sort them by the typical listing's revenue.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median yearly revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quarter starts at
1	Touro	$71,624	$651	36%	$105,811
2	Tulane-Gravier	$45,561	$445	29%	$67,532
3	Central City	$42,842	$406	30%	$67,326
4	Lake Catherine	$42,336	$382	30%	$50,849
5	Marigny	$40,259	$380	30%	$58,923
6	Mid-City	$39,099	$349	31%	$57,587
7	West Riverside	$35,566	$284	34%	$47,769
8	East Riverside	$35,356	$363	28%	$50,002
9	Treme-Lafitte	$35,131	$378	30%	$72,678
10	Central Business District	$34,636	$318	31%	$55,397
11	Lower Garden District	$34,560	$339	27%	$52,666
12	East Carrollton	$34,410	$258	36%	$44,317
13	French Quarter	$34,016	$349	27%	$46,274
14	Milan	$33,914	$314	35%	$56,751
15	Bayou St. John	$31,814	$241	31%	$35,965
16	Irish Channel	$29,734	$246	33%	$46,568
17	St. Claude	$28,919	$257	35%	$48,216
18	Bywater	$28,065	$257	33%	$50,919
19	Freret	$26,157	$270	30%	$42,107
20	McDonogh	$24,917	$250	28%	$30,991

BNBCalc neighborhood listing data for 2026, mapped to the City of New Orleans' official Neighborhood Statistical Areas. Every figure is a median or a 75th percentile, so one outsized listing can't lift an entire neighborhood, while the final column gives the revenue at which each neighborhood's top 25% of listings begins. Areas too thin to measure reliably don't appear, and I'd expect the thinner rows here to move a little between refreshes. For scale, the median listing across all of Orleans Parish earns $33,673.

On the medians, the best neighborhoods for an Airbnb in New Orleans are Touro, Tulane-Gravier, Central City and Lake Catherine, though I'd put an asterisk on two of those. Touro rests on one of the smallest samples here, and a cluster of four- and six-bedroom homes, several of them at the same map point, pulls its median up, so read it as a few big houses rather than a neighborhood-wide rate. Lake Catherine, out at the far eastern edge of the city, is thin too, and some of its listings sit at identical points as if the same unit were posted twice, which makes that row noisy as well.

What jumped out at me next is how far the famous names sit from the top. The Central Business District holds roughly three in ten of the parish's listings, yet its median lands tenth, below both Central City and Mid-City. The French Quarter comes in 13th, and it's another thin row. I'd put that down to the rules, because only one of the Quarter's zoning districts allows a non-commercial permit, so I wouldn't lean hard on its median either.

I also wouldn't assume that neighbors earn alike. Marigny's median runs about $12,200 above Bywater's even though the two sit side by side downriver of the Quarter, so make sure to price a Bywater purchase on Bywater's own numbers instead of the reputation of the whole area.

Then look at Treme-Lafitte, which sits ninth on the median at $35,131, while its top quarter of listings starts at $72,678, a mark second only to Touro's. That's the widest stretch in the table between a median and the top-quarter mark, and it means a listing that makes Treme-Lafitte's top quarter earns at least twice the neighborhood median.

I'm not surprised the Garden District is missing, because the zoning code bans short-term rentals inside its core boundaries outright.

I've left the fifth of listings outside Orleans Parish, in places such as Jefferson and St. Tammany, out of the table because it uses the city's own neighborhood boundaries, which stop at the parish line, and each of those parishes sets its own rules too.

If you want the feel of each neighborhood rather than its numbers, our New Orleans neighborhood guide for investors scores the neighborhoods on what guests and owners care about.

What Amenities Increase Airbnb Revenue in New Orleans?

For New Orleans, BNBCalc's current amenity model publishes one amenity openly: a hot tub, linked with about 17% more revenue. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that it pays off because demand here piles up on Friday and Saturday nights, when groups are choosing between listings, and a hot tub is the kind of extra that settles the choice.

Seven more amenities show a measurable effect here: a pool, internet, a sauna, a TV, a gym, an EV charger and lake access. BNBCalc shows their percentages only to Markets subscribers, so you'll only see their names here.

A cleaning fee is the lever I'd pull first, since you can add one tonight. As of September 2026 only 45.6% of listings in this market charged one, at an average of $144.20 among the hosts who did, while BNBCalc's data put average cleaning revenue at about $2,278 a year per listing. If the good operators in your neighborhood charge one and you don't, you're leaving that money behind for no reason I can see.

Is Airbnb Legal in New Orleans?

Yes, with a permit, though as of September 2026 getting one is the hard part.

Any stay shorter than 30 consecutive days counts as a short-term rental, it's illegal without a city permit, and every rental needs two of them: an owner permit for the property and an operator permit for whoever runs it.

In residential neighborhoods the permit on offer is the Non-Commercial Short-Term Rental (NSTR) license, and the block limit is what closes most doors, because only one NSTR is allowed per city block, counting every lot that faces it. That means a block which already holds an NSTR or a bed and breakfast is closed to new applicants. Where an open block draws more than one complete application, the city decides it by lottery, and the application window only opens for about a week each quarter. The Council also removed the special-exception route around that cap from the zoning code in 2025.

The operator rule stops most of the investors who do find an open block, because whoever holds the operator permit has to physically stay in a bedroom on the property during every guest stay, respond to a complaint within an hour, and keep that bedroom off the listing. Guests are capped at three bedrooms and six people, and nobody can own more than one NSTR property, so the whole-house, hands-off model that works in plenty of other cities isn't available in a New Orleans residential neighborhood.

One thing did loosen recently, because in October 2025 the Fifth Circuit struck down the city's ban on LLCs and other business entities holding owner or operator permits, and the city's own 2026 application checklist now accepts a property owned by a person, a trust or an LLC. The block cap and the on-site operator rule survived that case, though.

What about commercial permits, the kind that don't need an operator sleeping on site? Honestly, they're hard to get. The city's commercial permit page still says new applications stopped on June 8, 2023, although the interim zoning district it cites expired in November 2025, and since May 2026 a newer interim district has made commercial short-term rentals a conditional use wherever zoning used to allow them outright, which means a public hearing before one can open.

I'd check location next, because it can rule a property out. The zoning code bans short-term rentals and bed and breakfasts inside the Garden District, bounded by St. Charles Avenue, Jackson Avenue, Magazine Street and Louisiana Avenue, and it says that ban can't be waived, while in the French Quarter the Vieux Carré Entertainment (VCE) district is the only one of the Quarter's zoning districts where an NSTR can go at all.

Every NSTR owner also signs an attestation that no HOA agreement, condo bylaw or deed restriction bars short-term rentals on the unit, and the property needs a Healthy Homes registration like any other rental. The fees are the easy part, though, at $50 per application plus $150 for a single-unit operator permit, with the owner license listed at $500 in the city's 2025 renewal training.

Taxes, meanwhile, land mostly on your guests, as I read the city and platform pages. Guests pay Louisiana's 5% state sales tax on top of the nightly rate, and the city's short-term rental tax page adds a 5% Orleans Parish gross rentals tax and a 6.75% occupancy tax, for 16.75% in all, plus a $5 NSTR occupancy fee and a 50-cent occupancy privilege fee per night. Airbnb's Louisiana tax page lists all of those except the $5 fee among the charges guests pay at booking, and state law has had platforms collecting the state sales tax since July 2025.

Enforcement runs through administrative hearings, where a hearing officer can fine you up to $1,000 per violation and revoke your permits. For the city's STR office contacts and more background, see BNBCalc's New Orleans regulation guide. The rules here have changed several times since 2016, and that same Fifth Circuit ruling sent part of the case back to the district court in October 2025, so make sure to check the city's NSTR license map for your block before you tour anything.

Where Does BNBCalc Get Its New Orleans Airbnb Data?

The permit rules come from the city, while the market data in this article is drawn from BNBCalc Markets, where you can weigh one market against another before you settle on a property. For US cities it ranks them by gross yield, setting what listings earn against what homes cost, and because it includes the Calculator, the same subscription takes you from choosing New Orleans to running the numbers on an address there.

How Do You Calculate Airbnb Income for a New Orleans Property?

Here's the order I'd work in. Check the NSTR map to see whether the block is available, pull up the New Orleans market page to see this month's revenue, occupancy and seasonal pattern, and if you haven't settled on a city yet, look at how it compares with Louisiana's other markets ranked by gross yield. Once an address survives that, put it into BNBCalc with your real purchase price, mortgage terms and operating costs.

I run every New Orleans deal through four checks. If the block isn't open, or you can't put an operator on site, there's no business to model. If your reserves won't carry August and September, the deal is thinner than it looks. If the pro forma only works above what a typical listing of that size earns, treat the extra as a bonus rather than the plan. And before you count the 16.75% against yourself, check which of those taxes and nightly fees your booking platform already collects from guests on top of the nightly rate, and budget only for the ones it doesn't.

Strict cities scare off a lot of buyers, and I understand why, since from outside the rules look like a wall. Once you're legally inside that wall, though, it's the same thing that stops the next buyer from opening a listing on your block.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Much Does a 2-Bedroom Airbnb Make in New Orleans?

It depends more on the operator than on the unit. Two-bedrooms were the most common size in the market as of September 2026, and in BNBCalc market data the strongest earned more than six times what the weakest did. Across the whole market, the top tier earned around $114,400 a year at roughly 49% occupancy as of September 2026, before operating costs.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in New Orleans in 2026?

That depends on the property more than on the market's trend. Across all listings BNBCalc tracks in the market, the year from September 2025 to August 2026 saw occupancy slip about 1% while nightly rates rose about 7%, so guests kept booking at higher prices. Whether a given New Orleans property turns a profit comes down to whether its block can hold a permit, what it costs to buy and run, and whether the owner's reserves can carry the slow late-summer months.

What Is the Slowest Month for Airbnb in New Orleans?

September is the slowest, with the year's lowest average nightly rate at $249 and 25% occupancy across all listings in BNBCalc market data for September 2025 to August 2026, and January ($279) and August ($284) have the next-lowest rates. The strongest stretch runs from February through May, the four months with the highest rates, led by February at $461 and April at $435, with March and April each filling 42% of their nights, so a New Orleans purchase needs to work across the whole year rather than on the Mardi Gras and spring festival peak.

What Permit Do You Need for an Airbnb in New Orleans?

Two. Any rental shorter than 30 consecutive days needs both an owner permit and an operator permit from the City of New Orleans. In residential areas that means a Non-Commercial Short-Term Rental license, limited to one per city block and awarded by lottery when a block draws several applicants. The city's commercial permit page says new commercial applications haven't been accepted since June 8, 2023, and since May 2026 new commercial rentals need a conditional-use hearing wherever zoning allowed them outright.

Can You Buy a House in New Orleans and Rent It on Airbnb?

Only within tight limits. A non-commercial permit requires a permitted operator to stay in a bedroom on the property during every guest stay, caps rentals at three guest bedrooms and six guests, and allows one per city block. Nobody can own more than one such property. Short-term rentals are banned outright in the Garden District, and in the French Quarter only the Vieux Carré Entertainment district allows the non-commercial permit.

Can an LLC Own a Short-Term Rental in New Orleans?

Yes, as of an October 2025 ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down New Orleans' ban on business entities holding short-term rental owner or operator permits, and the city's 2026 application checklist accepts property owned by a natural person, a trust or an LLC. The one-per-block limit, the on-site operator requirement and the one-property limit still apply.

Does a Hot Tub Increase Airbnb Revenue in New Orleans?

A hot tub is linked with about 17% more revenue in BNBCalc's amenity model for New Orleans, and it's the one amenity the model publishes openly for this market. Seven others also show a measurable effect: a pool, internet, a sauna, a TV, a gym, an EV charger and lake access, but their values are available only in BNBCalc Markets.

What Taxes Do New Orleans Short-Term Rentals Pay?

Guests pay the 16.75% in state and parish taxes on top of the nightly rate, and Airbnb collects them at booking, so check whether your platform also covers the city's nightly fees. The layers are Louisiana's 5% state sales tax, a 5% Orleans Parish gross rentals tax and a 6.75% occupancy tax, plus a $5 nightly occupancy fee for non-commercial rentals ($12 for commercial ones) and a 50-cent nightly occupancy privilege fee.

Which New Orleans Neighborhoods Earn the Most on Airbnb?

By median annual revenue inside Orleans Parish, Touro leads at $71,624, though on a thin sample pulled up by a few large homes, followed by Tulane-Gravier at $45,561, Central City at $42,842 and Lake Catherine at $42,336. The Central Business District holds the most listings but ranks tenth at $34,636. Figures are 2026 medians from BNBCalc neighborhood listing data inside the city's official Neighborhood Statistical Areas.