Seattle, Washington Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much can a Seattle Airbnb earn, and how many of them will the city let you run?

Well, the second answer is short, and it changes how you should read the first. The City of Seattle licenses each short-term rental operator for one unit, or two when one of them is the home you live in. You can't get around that with a second license through your spouse or an LLC either, because each person is limited to one. Renters are shut out too, apart from a narrow downtown exception dating back to 2017. So if your plan was a handful of condos rented out nightly, unfortunately the city stops you at one.

Whoever does get licensed is joining a market where guests paid more per night but booked a smaller share of the nights on offer. In BNBCalc's data for the whole Seattle market, nightly rates rose about 23% over the year ending August 2026, while occupancy fell about 8%. That same year, Seattle hosted six World Cup matches in June and July, the two months with the year's highest nightly rates, so keep in mind that a year with an event like that in it is a hard one to repeat. I'm covering Seattle in King County, Washington, where nearly nine in ten of the market's listings sit inside the city limits.

How Much Do Seattle Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

With only one or two units to your name, what each one brings in matters more here than in most cities. So which size should you buy?

When I split Seattle's revenue by bedroom count, the typical four-plus-bedroom home brings in about two and a half times the revenue of the typical one-bedroom. Size isn't the whole story. That's because a strong one-bedroom, near the top of what that size earns, still beats a typical two-bedroom, and I'd credit most of that gap to location and management.

Gross yield, on the other hand, points toward the small end. One-bedrooms return the most on their purchase price of any size, the sizes from one bedroom to four-plus sit less than two points apart, and studios trail all of them by a wide margin. In an uncapped city I'd usually lean toward the best yield, but Seattle changes that math, because the scarce thing here isn't your capital, it's your license, and a bigger home earns more dollars from the same slot as long as you can afford the price.

The strongest listings, the ones BNBCalc puts in its top performance tier, earn about 75% more than the market's average listing. I'd aim for that group without budgeting on it, especially since this year's figures cover the summer Seattle hosted World Cup matches.

Is the Seattle Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

A World Cup summer also makes it harder to judge whether Seattle has room for another host, so I've only kept the year-over-year measures that this year's data can settle.

Metric	Year-over-year change
Average nightly rate	+23%
Occupancy	−8%
Booking lead time	Down
Purchase price	−1%

BNBCalc data across all listings BNBCalc tracks in the market, September 2025 to August 2026 compared with September 2024 to August 2025, rounded to the nearest whole percent. A measure is left out when this year's data doesn't settle which way it moved, and booking lead time shows a direction without a figure because the size of its change isn't settled either. Purchase price follows home prices rather than listings.

Unfortunately, I can't give you a yes or a no yet, because this year's data doesn't settle whether Seattle's listing count went up or down, and oversaturation starts with more listings chasing the same guests.

What I can tell you is that occupancy fell about 8% over the year, while nightly rates rose about 23%. Filling a smaller share of the calendar is what crowding usually looks like, yet hosts fighting over the same guests don't tend to push their rates up that far, so there's no way to tell whether Seattle lost those nights to new competition or to prices that ran ahead of what guests would pay.

Whichever it was, I wouldn't count on this year's rates holding, since hosts charged their highest ones during the World Cup months and an event like that doesn't come back every summer. That's why I'd want a deal there to pencil out even if rates give back part of this year's gain.

So what should you check instead? I'd pull the occupancy of the listings you'd compete with, meaning the same size within a few blocks of yours, across the last several months. If theirs is holding up, that's a better sign for your unit than any market-wide figure, whereas if it keeps sliding, that's where oversaturation would show up first. Make sure to run that check again every few months, too, because one look at those calendars won't tell you which way they're moving.

Guests are also booking closer to their stays than a year ago, which gives a half-empty calendar a little more time to fill.

When Is Seattle's Peak Airbnb Season?

Half-empty would've counted as a good month in Seattle this past winter, whereas the year's peak came in June and July.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	54%	$266
Oct 2025	47%	$237
Nov 2025	39%	$227
Dec 2025	37%	$224
Jan 2026	33%	$186
Feb 2026	34%	$188
Mar 2026	41%	$212
Apr 2026	43%	$225
May 2026	47%	$261
Jun 2026	50%	$476
Jul 2026	59%	$420
Aug 2026	54%	$327

BNBCalc market data across all listings in the market, one row per month. Occupancy and nightly rate are each averaged on their own, so multiplying one by the other won't tell you what a listing earned.

July filled 59% of its nights, the year's highest occupancy, and averaged $420 a night, while January filled 33% at $186, the lowest on both counts.

June is the month I'd study hardest. Its average nightly rate was the year's highest, $476, yet only half its nights booked, a lower share than July or August managed. Did hosts price guests out, or hold their calendars open for match nights? I can't tell from these figures, but either way, don't copy June's rates into next year's calendar. If you need a starting point, I'd price closer to May's $261 or August's $327 and raise it once the bookings come in.

From November through April, half the calendar, no month filled more than 43% of its nights or averaged more than $227 a night. So if you plan around a monthly average, the winter will feel like a loss.

Days of the week follow a pattern as well. BNBCalc's current figures across all listings put Saturday occupancy 21% above a typical day and Friday 20% above it, while Monday and Tuesday sit 16% below. Nightly rates move less than half that much, peaking only 10% above average on Friday and Saturday. That tells me Seattle hosts fill their weekends without charging much of a premium for them, and it's the first price I'd raise.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Seattle?

A weekend premium works anywhere, although where the unit sits decides how far you can push it. On this year's numbers, downtown and Lower Queen Anne earn the most, while Belltown is the pick I trust most for a smaller unit.

Unlike a lot of big markets, this one is mostly the city itself. Nearly nine in ten of its measurable listings fall inside Seattle's city limits, so I've kept to one table of city neighborhoods. The City Clerk's Neighborhood Map Atlas splits Seattle into 94 small neighborhoods, and I placed each listing inside one of them, then ranked every neighborhood with a big enough sample by its median revenue.

Rank	Neighborhood	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Pike-Market (Pike Place Market)	$48,198	$412	35%	$63,664
2	Central Business District	$44,511	$404	33%	$52,741
3	Lower Queen Anne (Uptown)	$43,413	$379	35%	$61,585
4	Atlantic (Judkins Park)	$41,137	$348	36%	$57,986
5	Belltown	$40,817	$292	40%	$53,544
6	Leschi	$38,503	$352	35%	$67,156
7	Roosevelt	$37,800	$313	34%	$45,399
8	East Queen Anne	$37,073	$343	35%	$58,927
9	Minor (Central District)	$36,482	$337	33%	$50,903
10	Eastlake	$36,022	$381	31%	$50,301
11	Madrona	$35,656	$360	35%	$64,445
12	First Hill	$33,711	$270	35%	$41,342
13	Broadway (Capitol Hill)	$33,228	$282	35%	$50,990
14	Mid-Beacon Hill	$32,767	$276	38%	$42,009
15	North Queen Anne	$32,713	$308	34%	$47,249
16	Fremont	$32,713	$277	35%	$44,135

BNBCalc listing data as of September 2026 inside the City of Seattle's Neighborhood Map Atlas boundaries, covering a trailing twelve months that includes the 2026 World Cup. Within it, revenue, rate and occupancy are medians, while the last column is the 75th percentile, where a neighborhood's top quarter of listings begins. Each column is worked out on its own, so they don't multiply. Neighborhoods with too little data are left out, tied medians are ordered by the 75th percentile, and a better-known local name follows in parentheses where the atlas name is less familiar.

Don't expect the occupancy column to line up with the monthly numbers. Each figure is the typical listing's own occupancy in that neighborhood rather than an average across the whole market, so it's a way to rank neighborhoods against one another.

Downtown's core fills the top of the table along with Lower Queen Anne, the neighborhood around Seattle Center, and the Pike Place Market area charges the highest median rate on the list at $412. Will that lead hold? That trailing year includes the World Cup, so I wouldn't treat one year's order as settled, and before paying extra for a downtown address, I'd see how comparable listings nearby have filled their calendars over the last few months.

Belltown is where I'd look hardest for a condo-sized unit. Its figures draw on a deeper pool of listings than anywhere else in the city, its typical listing has one bedroom, and no neighborhood in the table fills more of its nights, at a 40% median. Before you make an offer, make sure the building's own rules allow nightly stays.

Further east, the Central Area rows tell a different story. Atlantic and Leschi both have a typical listing of three bedrooms, so part of their rank comes from house size. Leschi and Madrona, meanwhile, post the two highest 75th-percentile figures on the list, $67,156 and $64,445, on the two thinnest samples in the table. That spread suggests a well-run home there can pull far ahead of its neighbors, although I wouldn't bet a purchase on so few listings.

Capitol Hill's Broadway neighborhood and Fremont rest on some of the deepest samples in the city and still land around $33,000, which I'd call solid middle-of-the-table picks rather than standouts. What a median can't show you is what those blocks are like for a guest, and the best Seattle neighborhoods for Airbnb covers that side.

When I checked the slice of the market outside the city, in places such as Burien, SeaTac, Tukwila, Shoreline and Kirkland, it posted a lower median than Seattle itself, $24,457 against $31,178. Crossing the city line changes the rules as well, since Seattle's short-term rental code only applies inside the city limits. Communities such as White Center and Bryn Mawr-Skyway sit in unincorporated King County, so if one of those is on your list, start with King County's short-term rental rules.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Seattle?

Location sets the ceiling, and what you put inside the unit decides how close you get to it.

For Seattle, the one amenity lift BNBCalc's current model shows publicly is a sauna, worth about 18% more revenue, and my guess is that the long grey, damp months have something to do with it.

Even so, what surprised me is how much that answer changes with size. Broken out by bedrooms, a pool leads for one-bedrooms, a gym for two-bedrooms and a hot tub for homes with three or four-plus bedrooms, while studios don't show any amenity strong enough to register.

The model also finds a measurable signal across the market for seven more amenities: a hot tub, an EV charger, a barbecue, a gym, internet, bicycles and a pool. Seattle's figures for those are gated inside BNBCalc Markets, so I'm naming them without numbers. A few basics are excluded from the model deliberately, because nearly every listing has them, and an amenity almost everyone offers won't explain why one listing out-earns another.

With only one or two licensed units, an upgrade is one of the few ways left to grow. So match it to the size you bought, whether that's a building with a gym for a two-bedroom condo or a hot tub for a family-sized house.

Is Airbnb Legal in Seattle?

An upgrade can't earn anything until you're licensed, and in Seattle the license is the part that limits you.

Yes, short-term rentals are legal in Seattle, but they're capped. As of September 2026, the city's code treats any stay of fewer than 30 consecutive nights as a short-term rental. To run one, you need two things from the city: a Seattle business license tax certificate and a short-term rental operator license, which costs $75 per unit and renews every year.

That operator license covers one unit, or two when one is the home you live in, which the code calls your primary residence. It means your usual place of return, shown by records like your driver's license, vehicle registration or voter registration, and nobody gets more than one. So if you live outside Seattle, you're limited to one short-term rental in the city. Rooms inside your own home don't count toward the limit as long as they don't have their own kitchen and bathroom, whereas a basement apartment or backyard cottage counts as a separate home and takes one of your two spots.

What about an LLC, or a license in your spouse's name? Neither gets you past the cap. You can hold only one operator license, and you can't be a principal, or the spouse of a principal, on more than one. The code does grandfather some operators who were already renting before its September 30, 2017 cutoff, but those exceptions don't help anyone buying in now. And since a renter can't get a license outside a narrow downtown exception from that same era, leasing apartments to list them isn't an option either.

Some homes can't be short-term rentals at all. The city's land use rules don't allow one in an RV, tent, garage or boat, in a floating home, a waterfront residence or any other spot where the Shoreline Code prohibits lodging, or in a live-work unit or caretaker's quarters. If the unit isn't your own home, you'll also need to register it with the city's Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance program before you apply.

Once you're licensed, I'd call the day-to-day rules fairly standard. Your license number has to go on every listing you post, and the city wants a local contact who lives in King County and can respond during each stay. Every unit also needs working smoke detectors, carbon monoxide alarms and a charged fire extinguisher, plus posted emergency details, exit routes and the maximum occupancy. Then there's insurance, since you need at least $1 million in liability coverage, through your own policy or a platform that carries it. You can hire a property manager to list and run the place, but the city says the license still has to be in the owner's name, and BNBCalc's Seattle property management roundup compares the local options.

Lodging taxes are charged to your guests on top of your price rather than taken out of it. Washington's Department of Revenue puts the total on a Seattle short-term rental at 15.7% for both the July to September and October to December 2026 quarters. The department says Airbnb collects and pays the sales tax, special hotel/motel taxes and convention and trade center taxes for its hosts. Don't forget your own side of it, though. The department's guide says you may still need to register, and if you do, you'll report your rental income, claim a deduction for what the platform collected, and pay any business and occupation tax left after the small business credit. The Washington short-term rental tax guide walks through those filings.

Are the penalties worth worrying about? I'd say so. The city can fine an operator $500 for a first violation and $1,000 for each one after that within five years, and it can count every day as a separate violation. Platforms have to pull a listing once the city tells them to, anyone with two citations in three years can face a misdemeanor charge, and a license can't be renewed while any penalty is still unpaid.

For the application itself, including the documents and who to call at the city, head to the Seattle short-term rental regulation guide.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Seattle Airbnb Market?

The guide sorts out the rules, but the market figures I've used for Seattle are all drawn from BNBCalc Markets, the side of BNBCalc that studies whole markets instead of one property at a time. It also shows how much of each market is professionally managed, and professional hosts still run a large share of Seattle's listings under a two-unit cap, so my guess is that a lot of them are managers listing homes for many different owners. If that's who you'll be pricing against, you'll want your listing and your turnovers run as tightly as theirs.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Seattle Property?

How do you turn a market's worth of averages into a number for one Seattle address?

The Seattle market page is the place I'd begin, since its revenue and occupancy figures move with each data release. If you're still choosing between cities, check how Seattle ranks among Washington markets by gross yield. When you've got an actual address, plug its purchase price, mortgage and expenses into BNBCalc.

Before you trust the number that comes back, I'd test it against what's particular to Seattle. Start by counting your license slots. If you won't live in the home, it's your one unit, and anything you buy after it would have to work as a rental of 30 nights or more. I'd also go easy on any trailing-year revenue figure, because it counts a World Cup summer, when hosts charged the year's two highest nightly rates, $476 in June and $420 in July. Keep the 15.7% in mind when you set rates, since guests pay it in addition to your nightly price. Then plan for a winter when occupancy stayed at 43% or lower from November through April, and look at your comps' calendars again this fall, because if they keep filling less of their nights, your unit will be competing for a smaller share of bookings than the last twelve months suggest.

Whenever a market's latest year includes a one-off event, look hard at its two strongest months first, because the trailing average may be describing a year nobody gets to repeat.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in Seattle?

Inside the city limits, the median short-term rental earned $31,178 over the trailing year, in BNBCalc's 2026 listing data. Listings in the rest of the market, outside the city, earned a lower median of $24,457. Income varies with size, since homes with four or more bedrooms typically bring in about two and a half times the revenue of one-bedrooms, and top-tier listings earn about 75% more than the average listing.

Are Airbnb Nightly Rates Rising in Seattle?

Yes. Seattle's average nightly rate rose about 23% from September 2025 through August 2026, compared with the twelve months before, across all listings BNBCalc tracks in the market. Over the same period, occupancy fell about 8% and guests booked closer to their stays. Each measure is averaged on its own, so they don't multiply together, but guests paid more per night while filling less of the calendar.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Seattle?

From September 2025 through August 2026, July had the highest occupancy across all listings in the market, 59%, at an average nightly rate of $420, while June had the highest rate, $476, during Seattle's World Cup matches. January was the weakest month, with the year's lowest occupancy, 33%, and its lowest average rate, $186. Weekends book best, with Friday and Saturday occupancy about 20% above a typical day.

How Many Airbnbs Can One Person Run in Seattle?

A Seattle short-term rental operator license covers a single home, or two when one of them is the operator's primary residence. Each person can hold only one license and can't be a principal, or a principal's spouse, on more than one. Rooms inside the operator's home without their own kitchen and bathroom don't count toward the limit, while an accessory dwelling unit counts as a separate unit. Exceptions apply only to operators who were renting short term before September 30, 2017.

What Licenses Does a Seattle Airbnb Need?

Two city licenses: a Seattle business license tax certificate and a short-term rental operator license, which costs $75 per unit and renews annually. A unit that isn't the operator's primary residence must also be registered with the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance program before applying. Operators must post the license number on every listing, provide a local contact who lives in King County, and carry $1 million in liability coverage or book through a platform that provides equal coverage.

Can Renters List a Seattle Apartment on Airbnb?

Generally no. Seattle's operator license goes to owners, and the city says renters can't obtain one unless they live in the downtown core and their unit was already operating as a short-term rental before September 30, 2017. Leasing apartments to list them nightly isn't an option under the current rules. Owners may hire a property management company to list and manage a short-term rental, but the operator license must be in the owner's name.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in Seattle?

Washington's Department of Revenue lists a total lodging tax rate of 15.7% for Seattle short-term rentals from July through December 2026, and guests pay it on top of the booking. The department says Airbnb collects and remits sales tax, special hotel/motel taxes and convention and trade center taxes for its hosts. Hosts may still need to register with the department, report rental income and pay any business and occupation tax due.

Which Seattle Neighborhood Earns the Most on Airbnb?

In BNBCalc's 2026 listing data, the Pike-Market neighborhood around Pike Place Market has the highest median annual revenue, $48,198, and the highest median nightly rate among the ranked neighborhoods, $412. The Central Business District and Lower Queen Anne follow at $44,511 and $43,413, and Belltown has the best median occupancy among the top neighborhoods, 40%. These medians cover a trailing year that includes the 2026 World Cup, and nearly nine in ten of the market's listings sit inside Seattle's city limits.