Raleigh, North Carolina Airbnb Market Data 2026

What does a short-term rental in Raleigh actually earn, and will the city sign off on yours?

Take the permission half first, because in Raleigh it's the easy half. The city doesn't ask you to live in the house, and it doesn't cap how many short-term rentals it will allow. What it does ask is that the parcel sits in one of ten zoning districts and that you pull a zoning permit before the first booking, and for a state capital of this size that's a light touch.

The money half is where Raleigh gets slippery, and the reason is geography. BNBCalc's Raleigh market covers far more ground than the city does: only about 36% of the listings in it sit inside Raleigh's limits, roughly one in six sits in Durham, and about a fifth sits on county land that belongs to no town at all, a good deal of it well north of the city out where the lakes are. So every figure below describes that whole spread unless a label says otherwise, while every rule below stops dead at Raleigh's city line.

How Much Do Raleigh Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

The middle listing in BNBCalc's Raleigh market took in $22,347 over its trailing twelve months, and the top quarter of them start at $30,772. Split that by the city line, though, and almost nothing happens: inside Raleigh's own limits the middle listing took in $22,660, against $22,143 across the rest of the market, which is close enough that I'd stop treating the boundary as a money line at all.

Size moves the figure much further than any boundary does. The middle one-bedroom brought in $15,704, the middle two-bedroom $20,992, the middle three-bedroom $24,199, and the middle four-plus-bedroom $37,428. Read down that list and the jump from three bedrooms to four looks like the one that pays, since it's worth more than the two steps beneath it put together.

Before you go shopping for the biggest house you can finance, though, look at what a good smaller one does. The top quarter of two-bedrooms start at $26,083, which is more than the typical three-bedroom earns, so a well-run two beats an ordinary three here. That overlap closes at four bedrooms: even the strongest quarter of three-bedroom listings start at $30,707, short of the $37,428 a typical four-plus takes in, and if you can genuinely run a house that big the market does pay you for it.

Gross yield complicates that from the purchase-price side. Two-bedrooms lead the market on yield, three-bedrooms follow closely, and the four-plus tier that wins outright on revenue drops back once you set those earnings against what a house that size costs in Wake County. Studios trail everything and aren't close.

There's a mechanical reason the big homes give some of it back. As size goes up the nightly rate climbs hard, from a median of $137 at one bedroom to $383 at four-plus, while median occupancy drifts the other way, from about 34% down to about 29%. You're selling fewer, dearer nights, so a four-plus-bedroom house lives or dies on whether you can keep its expensive weekends full.

As for who else is bidding, a large share of everything listed across this market is already run by professionals, more so downtown and around the university than out in the suburbs. Guests don't settle in for long stays either, so any house you buy gets turned over often rather than seldom, and that bill lands hardest on the biggest ones.

Is the Raleigh Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Mildly, yes. More listings arrived this year and the average calendar got slightly emptier, which is what a market normally looks like while it digests new supply.

Metric	Change
Active listings	Up about 10%
Occupancy	Down about 5%
Average nightly rate	Up about 19%
Booking lead time	Up about 14%
Purchase price	Roughly flat

BNBCalc market data across every listing it tracks in the Raleigh market. The listing count, occupancy, nightly rate and booking lead time compare January through August 2026 with the same eight months of 2025, as relative changes, rounded. Purchase price stands apart: it's a full twelve-month figure drawn from a separate home-price series that follows homes rather than listings. Each measure is averaged on its own, so no two of them multiply together.

Two things keep that from reading as a gloomy table. Hosts were able to push nightly rates about 19% higher across the same eight months, so the pricing side of the market didn't soften while the calendars did, and what those houses sell for barely moved, which means the cost of getting in hasn't run away from you either. The occupancy slip is also smaller than it sounds: about 5% of a calendar like this one works out to roughly two points, or eight nights spread across a whole year, and you'd give up more than that to one weak set of listing photos.

Guests are also booking further ahead, about 14% further, and over the past year the average reservation landed around a month before check-in. Keep that number in your head when your spring calendar looks bare in early March, because in this market it's supposed to.

None of which tells you whether one particular street can absorb another rental. A market-wide count never could. What settles it is the occupancy that comparable listings near your address are running right now, matched to your bedroom count and to whichever city limit you're buying inside, and you'll want to recheck that every few months rather than once at closing.

When Is Raleigh's Peak Airbnb Season?

Raleigh's year swings on price far more than on how full the houses get.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	35%	$199
Oct 2025	43%	$211
Nov 2025	37%	$217
Dec 2025	33%	$205
Jan 2026	28%	$179
Feb 2026	31%	$189
Mar 2026	36%	$206
Apr 2026	41%	$216
May 2026	43%	$244
Jun 2026	45%	$235
Jul 2026	46%	$245
Aug 2026	38%	$232

BNBCalc market data across every listing in the Raleigh market, one row per month from September 2025 through August 2026. Occupancy and nightly rate are averaged independently of each other, so read each column on its own terms.

Occupancy holds in the low-to-mid forties from April right through July and again in October, then gives way through the autumn and falls off in the new year. Within that pattern January is the thinnest month by a distance, filling 28% of its nights, while February only claws back a few points of it.

The rate column travels much further. July is the dearest month at $245 a night and May is a dollar behind it, while January bottoms out at $179, so the same house commands about 37% more in high summer than it does in the dead of winter. From May onward the market never drops below $232, which means a Raleigh year really has one long expensive stretch and one short cheap one rather than a tidy peak.

Unfortunately for anyone hoping to average their way through it, January and February give up occupancy and price at the same time. Losing both at once is what turns a decent annual figure into a cash-flow problem in week three of the year, so budget those two months as the hole they are instead of smoothing them into an annual average.

Inside the week, the split is sharper than the seasons. Saturdays and Fridays fill about 28% and 27% more nights than an average day, while Mondays sit about 20% behind and Tuesdays about 18% behind. Rates don't stretch nearly as far, rising about 17% on both weekend nights and easing about 10% on Monday and Tuesday. Since the demand gap is wider than the price gap, widening your weekend premium is usually the first pricing change worth making here.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Raleigh?

Work out which government you'd be answering to before you fall for a neighborhood, because this market runs across a dozen counties and dozens of town halls. About 62% of its listings sit in Wake County and about 18% in Durham County, with the remainder scattered from Johnston and Harnett in the south to Warren, Vance, Halifax and Northampton up on the Virginia line.

That last group is small but it distorts the averages, and it's worth knowing why. Roughly one listing in five here sits beyond every incorporated town, on unincorporated county land, and as a group they run the highest top quartile anywhere in the market, starting at $38,182 against $30,772 market-wide. They charge more per night and fill fewer of them, which is exactly what a lake house does. Kerr Lake, Gaston, Falls and Jordan are all inside this market, and a waterfront rental up there is a different business from a house near a hospital in Raleigh even though one data set carries them both.

Inside Raleigh proper, the city divides itself into ten planning districts, and each address belongs to exactly one of them.

Rank	Planning district	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Northwest	$26,917	$257	32%	$35,525
2	North Hills	$26,205	$251	31%	$42,355
3	Central	$24,748	$230	32%	$33,525
4	North	$24,479	$225	32%	$33,854
5	Southwest	$24,120	$236	30%	$35,546
6	East	$23,473	$186	36%	$29,310
7	Umstead	$23,023	$219	31%	$28,710
8	Southeast	$22,265	$223	29%	$30,480
9	Northeast	$20,983	$193	30%	$26,482
10	University	$19,605	$155	32%	$25,255

BNBCalc 2026 listing data placed inside the City of Raleigh's own planning-district boundaries, trailing twelve months. Revenue, nightly rate and occupancy are medians, and the last column is the 75th percentile, where a district's strongest quarter begins. Each column is worked out separately, so they don't multiply into each other. The thinnest districts here will move between refreshes.

The spread from top to bottom is about $7,300, which is narrower than the gap between a two-bedroom and a four-bedroom anywhere in the city. Raleigh doesn't have a golden postcode, in other words, and if you've come from a coastal market where the water view doubles your revenue, that's the expectation to leave behind.

North Hills is the row I'd read twice. Its median is second, yet its strongest quarter begins at $42,355, well clear of anything else on the list, which says the ceiling there is higher than the middle of the market suggests. Whether that comes down to bigger homes or better operators isn't something these figures can settle, so treat it as a place to study rather than a place to assume.

The East district trades the other way and shows what that looks like. It asks only $186 a night, second-cheapest in the city, and still fills 36% of its nights, which is the fullest calendar any district here manages, while Southeast Raleigh runs $223 a night at 29%. Neither is the better buy on its own terms, since one asks you to clean more often and the other asks you to sell a dearer night, and the right answer depends on what your cleaning turnaround can actually absorb.

University sits at the bottom on revenue with the cheapest rate in the city, and it's the only district where the middle listing has a single bedroom. That isn't a weak market so much as a different one, aimed at NC State rather than at families, and a large share of it is already in professional hands.

Outside the city, the same listings sorted into their towns look like this.

Rank	Town	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Apex	$27,373	$234	34%	$33,959
2	Holly Springs	$26,747	$235	29%	$32,700
3	Cary	$26,682	$227	33%	$32,968
4	Clayton	$25,526	$198	34%	$28,704
5	Wake Forest	$23,368	$220	34%	$31,016
6	Raleigh	$22,660	$209	32%	$31,033
7	Fuquay-Varina	$21,318	$186	31%	$23,831
8	Morrisville	$21,242	$244	33%	$31,601
9	Garner	$21,237	$194	32%	$27,044
10	Durham	$20,200	$176	32%	$27,353
11	Smithfield	$19,404	$156	34%	$20,102
12	Wilson	$19,296	$158	34%	$26,604
13	Sanford	$18,482	$186	28%	$23,910
14	Rocky Mount	$17,999	$178	31%	$24,798
15	Lillington	$15,113	$184	27%	$17,647
16	Warrenton	$15,111	$175	26%	$19,238

BNBCalc 2026 listing data placed inside US Census municipal boundaries, trailing twelve months, same medians and same 75th percentile as the district table. This is a different boundary method at a different level of geography, so read it on its own and never against the planning-district ranking. Towns with too few measurable listings are left out because their figures wouldn't hold still.

Apex, Cary and Holly Springs take the top three, all of them southwest of Raleigh in the corridor between the city and Research Triangle Park, and all of them out-earning Raleigh itself. Cary is the one with real depth behind the figure, and it's also a reminder that Cary writes its own short-term rental rules even though it shares Wake County's tax rates. Durham sits tenth despite carrying the second-biggest block of listings in the market, on the cheapest nightly rate of any sizeable town here, and it answers to Durham's ordinance and Durham County's taxes rather than to anything on this page.

What none of these rows can tell you is how a street feels to arrive at on a Friday night, which is the job the best Raleigh neighborhoods for Airbnb takes on.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Raleigh?

One amenity in Raleigh carries a figure the market will show openly, and it's a hot tub, which BNBCalc's current amenity model puts at about 22% more revenue for a listing that has one. That's a serious return on a weekend's plumbing, and since a market this spread out sells a lot of quiet winter nights, my guess is that a tub is doing most of its work in exactly the months when Raleigh's calendars and its nightly rates are both at their thinnest.

Several others move the needle here without publishing a number: a gym, lake access, a sauna, an EV charger, a television, a pool, a barbecue, whether you take pets, and how good the internet is. Their values sit behind BNBCalc Markets, so you'll get the names from me and not the percentages. Lake access appearing on that list at all should tell you something about how wide this market reaches.

The fixtures nearly every house here comes with are kept out of the model entirely, which is the right call. An amenity that everyone offers can't tell a strong listing apart from a weak one, so it earns nothing in a comparison even though a guest would walk out without it.

Then there's the cost side of fitting out a bigger house, which most first-time buyers underestimate. Where hosts charge a cleaning fee, it averages about $74 at one bedroom, about $107 at two, $135 at three and $202 at four-plus, as of September 2026. That fee is a pass-through you set, not a margin, and the bigger the house the more of your guest's total budget it eats before you've earned a dollar of it.

Is Airbnb Legal in Raleigh?

Yes, across most of the city, and without the residency test that trips investors up in so many places. Raleigh did run a stricter owner-occupied program for years, although it repealed the thing outright: text change TC-8-20, adopted by the City Council on February 2, 2021 and effective from March 4, 2021, put a plain "short-term rental" use in the Unified Development Ordinance in its place, defined as a dwelling unit, or part of one, let for overnight stays of no more than 30 days.

The gate is zoning. Short-term rental is a limited use in ten districts, R-1, R-2, R-4, R-6, R-10, RX, OX, NX, CX and DX, and it isn't permitted anywhere else, so an address in an office-park or industrial district can't be fixed with paperwork. Inside an eligible district you apply for a zoning permit, one application per unit, and you post that permit number on the property and on every advertisement you run.

The operating standards are mostly easy to live with, although one of them catches conversions. You can't put cooking facilities in a bedroom, and the ordinance is specific about what counts, down to a fridge over seven cubic feet and a cooktop with more than two burners, unless the whole rental is a genuine one-room studio. On top of that, no exterior advertising, no special events or gatherings in residential districts, no more than 25% or two units of any single multi-unit building, whichever is greater, and a list of everyone who stays kept for three years.

Where Raleigh does bite is afterwards. Two verified violations of the city's zoning, noise or nuisance rules at the property inside any 365 days, or a qualifying criminal conviction on the premises, and the city revokes the permit. Once it's revoked, that address can't get a new one for a year, whoever owns it. So the risk you're underwriting in Raleigh isn't whether you'll be allowed in, it's whether the house can stay quiet, which makes your screening and your relations with the neighbors a financial control rather than a nicety.

Tax lands on the guest, not on you. A Raleigh stay carries North Carolina's 7.25% combined state and local sales and use tax in Wake County, plus Wake County's 6% room occupancy tax, so about 13.25% goes on top of the nightly rate your guest sees. State law gives an accommodation facilitator the same responsibility for a county's room occupancy tax that it already carries for the state sales tax on accommodations, which is why a booking taken through a platform usually arrives with both already collected and remitted for you. Cross into Durham County and the sales tax alone changes to 7.5%, and the occupancy tax is that county's to set. The North Carolina short-term rental tax guide covers what you still owe on your own income, and the Raleigh short-term rental regulation guide takes you through the application itself, the fee schedule and who to call when your parcel's zoning is ambiguous.

Where Does This Raleigh Airbnb Data Come From?

That guide is the place for forms and phone numbers, while every market figure here was pulled from BNBCalc Markets, where BNBCalc studies whole markets so you can settle on one before you start viewing houses. It also reports how many nights a booking usually runs at each bedroom count, and given how much of your return in Raleigh depends on absorbing turnovers rather than filling nights, that's the panel I'd open before deciding what size to buy.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Raleigh Property?

Start wide and narrow down. Open the Raleigh market page for where levels sit today and how the calendar moves through the year, then check where North Carolina's markets rank by gross yield to see how Raleigh's earnings compare with what its houses cost, set beside every other North Carolina market. Once a specific address is in front of you, price it in BNBCalc using your own purchase price, your own financing and your own cleaning cost rather than a market average.

Three Raleigh-specific numbers to hold yourself to while you do it. Check the parcel's zoning district before anything else, because ten of them qualify and no permit rescues the other ones. Underwrite on something near the $22,347 in the middle of this market rather than the $30,772 where the top quarter begin, and only reach for the higher figure once you can name what the house does differently. And write January and February in at 28% and 31% occupancy on the year's two cheapest rates, because those two months are where an optimistic annual average quietly breaks.

A last thought that outlives any of these figures. Because markets this spread out punish averages, the further a data set has to travel to describe your street, the less it can say about it. Whatever you're buying, the number that decides your year is what the handful of homes nearest yours are doing this month, and that's a number you have to go and look at.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in Raleigh, North Carolina?

The middle listing across the Raleigh market took in $22,347 over the trailing twelve months, and the strongest quarter start at $30,772. Size drives most of the difference: the middle one-bedroom brought in $15,704 and the middle four-plus-bedroom $37,428. Inside Raleigh's city limits the middle listing took in $22,660, which is barely different from the $22,143 typical elsewhere in the market. Figures come from BNBCalc's 2026 listing data.

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

Yes. Raleigh's Unified Development Ordinance requires every short-term rental operator to obtain a zoning permit from the city before renting, with a separate application for each unit, and the permit number has to be posted on the property and on every advertisement. Short-term rental is a limited use in ten zoning districts, so the parcel has to sit in one of them first. Raleigh doesn't require the owner to live there.

Can the city take away a Raleigh short-term rental permit?

Yes. Under the ordinance, two or more verified violations of the city's zoning, noise or nuisance rules at the property within any 365-day period will cost the permit, as will a qualifying criminal conviction on the premises. Once a permit is lawfully revoked, no new short-term rental permit can be issued for that address for 365 days, regardless of who owns it by then.

What taxes do Raleigh short-term rentals pay?

Guests pay North Carolina's combined state and local sales and use tax, 7.25% in Wake County, plus Wake County's 6% room occupancy tax, roughly 13.25% on top of the nightly rate. North Carolina law gives an accommodation facilitator the same collection duty a retailer has, so bookings taken through a platform normally arrive with both taxes already collected and remitted. Durham County's rates differ, starting with 7.5% sales tax.

Which part of Raleigh earns the most from short-term rentals?

Among the city's ten planning districts, Northwest leads on median annual revenue at $26,917, with North Hills just behind at $26,205. North Hills has the highest ceiling of the ten, its top quarter beginning at $42,355. The whole city spans only about $7,300 from best district to worst, so the size and quality of the house matter more here than the district it sits in.

Is a bigger house a better Airbnb investment in Raleigh?

Not automatically. Four-plus-bedroom homes earn the most, a median of $37,428 against $24,199 for three-bedrooms, but they charge far more per night and fill fewer of those nights, and their gross yield falls behind what two- and three-bedroom homes return against their purchase price. A strong three-bedroom, whose top quarter begin at $30,707, out-earns a typical four-plus-bedroom on much less capital.