Stockton, California Airbnb Market Data 2026

Can an Airbnb in Stockton make money, and can you legally run one? Yes to the second, and a qualified yes to the first, since the typical home listed inside the city limits brought in a median of $21,206 over the past year as of October 2026, a little under what listings earned in the towns around it. Stockton sits in San Joaquin County in California's Central Valley, but BNBCalc doesn't give the city a market page to itself. Instead, it folds Stockton into the Modesto market, which stretches from Lodi in the north to Merced in the south, and only about one in twelve of the market's listings sit inside Stockton's city limits.

Stockton's own rules are light, because the city has no short-term rental permit and no cap on nights. What it does have is an 8% occupancy tax, and although your guest pays it, you're the one who registers for it, collects it and files it, because Airbnb doesn't collect it in Stockton. A city tourism-district charge of 5% may also apply on top, and the city hasn't said whether it reaches Airbnb homes. Cross into unincorporated San Joaquin County, though, and a county permit and a 180-day yearly cap on rentals come with the house, so you'll want to know which side of the city line a property sits on before you run a single number.

Because so much of the data is the Modesto market's rather than Stockton's, I've labeled every figure by where it comes from. For earnings, bedroom sizes and neighborhoods I counted Stockton's own listings wherever there were enough of them, while trends, seasons and amenity values cover the whole market, and I say so each time they come up.

How Much Do Stockton Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Once I drew Stockton's city line through the market's listings, the ones inside it earned a median of $21,206 in the year to early October 2026, charging a median $212 a night at a median occupancy of 30.9%, and the best quarter of them cleared $32,891. Across the rest of the Modesto market, the median listing earned $23,716 at $230 a night. So a typical Stockton listing brings in about $2,500 a year less than the typical listing in the rest of the market, roughly 11%, even though it fills its calendar at almost exactly the same rate (30.3% outside the city).

I don't think that gap is as bad as it looks, because Stockton's listings run small. The city's typical listing is a two-bedroom, while the rest of the market's is a three-bedroom, and more than two in five Stockton listings are one-bedrooms, about twice the one-in-five share in the rest of the market. When I line the two up by bedroom count instead, Stockton holds its own.

Median annual revenue by bedroom count inside Stockton's city limits (Census place boundary) against the rest of the Modesto market, trailing 12 months as of October 2026, from BNBCalc market data; studios inside the city are too thin to measure reliably.

Bedrooms	Stockton median revenue	Stockton median nightly rate	Stockton median occupancy	Stockton top quarter	Rest of market median revenue
All sizes	$21,206	$212	30.9%	$32,891	$23,716
1 bedroom	$15,924	$164	29.7%	$19,581	$15,445
2 bedrooms	$21,758	$181	34.0%	$26,970	$19,933
3 bedrooms	$28,908	$276	30.9%	$38,393	$27,036
4+ bedrooms	$35,253	$343	30.9%	$39,906	$37,680

Reading across the rows from one to three bedrooms, I found Stockton's median a few hundred dollars to about $1,900 above the rest of the market. It only trails at four bedrooms or more, by roughly $2,400. Keep in mind that the Stockton rows past one bedroom are thin, and a handful of unusually strong or weak listings can move them between data updates, so I'd use them to see the city's shape and leave the quote for a specific house to its own comps.

You'll also notice these don't match the bedroom figures shown in this page's data panel, which describes typical-performing listings across the whole Modesto market. My medians count every qualifying listing inside Stockton's city line instead, so the two answer slightly different questions.

Is the Stockton Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No. BNBCalc measures Stockton's trends at the level of the whole Modesto market, and across it, active listings fell by about 11% when I lined up January through September 2026 with the same months of 2025, and over those months nightly rates climbed. I kept to those nine months so both periods cover the same stretch of the calendar.

Modesto market-wide trends across all listings, January to September 2026 against January to September 2025, from BNBCalc market data; each change is relative to the 2025 level rather than in percentage points, and each measure is averaged on its own, so they don't multiply into revenue.

Measure	Change
Active listings	Down about 11%
Average nightly rate	Up
Booking lead time	Longer

The listing count is the row I'd lean on. A market that lost about a tenth of its active listings while rates climbed isn't being flooded with new competition, and guests booking further ahead fits the same picture. The rate and lead-time rows carry a direction without a figure, because how big each change looks depends on which months you include. Occupancy is the one measure I can't call. It moved so little across the market that its direction flips with the months you pick, which is why there's no occupancy row at all.

Can Stockton's own listings add anything? A trend, no, because my Stockton count only covers the past year. They do show the city isn't a soft spot inside the market, though, because Stockton's listings fill at the same rate as everyone else's, 30.9% median occupancy against 30.3%, and they're only about one in twelve of the market's listings to begin with.

What would I watch from here? Make sure you check how full your closest competitors are every few months. A market that thinned out this year can fill back in, and comparable listings are where you'd see it first.

When Is Stockton's Peak Airbnb Season?

Late spring into midsummer, and the clearest sign is what guests pay. Across the Modesto market, July's average nightly rate of $253 topped every other month and sat about 15% above January's low of $220, while occupancy ran above 40% in May, June and July of 2026, against roughly 27% to 31% from December through February.

Modesto market-wide occupancy and average nightly rate by month, October 2025 to September 2026, from BNBCalc market data.

Month	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
October 2025	37.0%	$230
November 2025	33.7%	$226
December 2025	30.8%	$229
January 2026	29.4%	$220
February 2026	26.9%	$229
March 2026	33.9%	$223
April 2026	37.7%	$238
May 2026	41.4%	$247
June 2026	42.4%	$246
July 2026	40.9%	$253
August 2026	36.4%	$248
September 2026	34.7%	$235

I read it as two seasons more than twelve months. Rates sit in the $220s and $230s from October through April, then move into the high $240s and low $250s from May through August before easing back to $235 in September. Occupancy follows a similar curve, bottoming out in February at 26.9% and running above 40% from May through July. Most of those monthly figures run above the roughly 30% median occupancy in the earnings section, because they measure booked nights as a share of the nights hosts kept open, whereas my medians divide them by every day in the year, blocked days included.

The week has a shape, too. Saturday nights fill about 37% more often than Mondays across the market, while Friday and Saturday rates sit about 18% to 19% above the weekly average, which puts a Saturday roughly 32% above a Tuesday. I'd call that a weekend-driven market, and it means your weekday pricing deserves as much attention as your summer premium, because the quiet nights are where a calendar in this market leaks money. Remember, too, that BNBCalc measures the season for the Modesto market as a whole, not for Stockton on its own.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Stockton?

Timing tells you when guests come, but the bigger decision is where. So should you buy in Stockton at all, or in one of the towns around it? I'd zoom out first. On California's ranking of short-term rental markets by gross yield, the Modesto market sat around the middle of the state as of October 2026, behind Visalia, Bakersfield and Fresno, so the Valley has stronger yield plays than this one if Stockton isn't your fixed point.

Within the Modesto market, I sorted every town with enough listings to measure by median revenue.

Towns in the Modesto market with enough listings to measure, ranked by median annual revenue for the year to early October 2026, from BNBCalc market data with Census place boundaries (Bethel Island and Salida are unincorporated communities).

Town	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quarter	Typical size
Manteca	$38,061	$329	29.5%	$41,781	4 bedrooms
Bethel Island	$30,207	$300	25.9%	$39,356	2 bedrooms
Lathrop	$28,738	$313	30.0%	$34,772	3 bedrooms
Tracy	$28,151	$298	30.2%	$41,299	3 bedrooms
Lodi	$26,398	$246	31.9%	$39,465	3 bedrooms
Turlock	$25,108	$233	29.1%	$34,002	3 bedrooms
Oakdale	$22,553	$185	30.1%	$31,042	3 bedrooms
Stockton	$21,206	$212	30.9%	$32,891	2 bedrooms
Merced	$19,619	$203	30.6%	$24,783	3 bedrooms
Modesto	$19,398	$184	33.3%	$28,883	2 bedrooms
Salida	$19,154	$179	28.4%	$20,979	2 bedrooms
Mountain House	$16,301	$125	35.2%	$18,034	1 bedroom

Stockton lands eighth of the twelve, but the towns above it mostly earn their spot with bigger houses. Manteca's typical listing is a four-bedroom, and Lathrop, Tracy and Lodi sit at three, so part of their lead comes from the floor plan. Bethel Island is the outlier I'd take a second look at, because its typical two-bedroom still commands about $300 a night, although it sits in Contra Costa County, outside both Stockton's rules and San Joaquin's. Modesto, the town the market's named after, lands near the bottom on revenue despite the second-best occupancy in the table.

Inside Stockton, there aren't enough listings per neighborhood for a ranking I'd stand behind. Only three ZIP codes clear the bar for a reliable median, all of them barely: 95204 led at about $25,500, while 95203 and 95219 came in between roughly $19,000 and $19,500. That's a hint about where the stronger listings cluster, and for the street-by-street judgment, our Stockton neighborhood guide for investors is the better read.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Stockton?

If I were buying one of Stockton's smaller homes and wanted it to out-earn the median, a pool is the amenity with the clearest payoff in BNBCalc's data. Across the Modesto market, BNBCalc Markets' amenity revenue impact estimates that listings with a pool earn about 23% more than similar listings without one. Pools are scarce enough for that to matter, too, with only about one in nine listings across the market offering one, and they're rarer still inside Stockton.

That 23% is a market-wide estimate, not one for a particular bedroom count, so it pools Stockton's one-bedrooms with Manteca's four-bedrooms.

The model also finds a revenue signal for hot tubs, lake access, barbecue grills, saunas, pet-friendly stays, EV chargers, gyms and bicycles, and the values for those sit inside BNBCalc Markets for subscribers. Basics that nearly every listing already has, a washer for instance, get no published value, which is why they don't show up on that list.

Is Airbnb Legal in Stockton?

Yes. Stockton doesn't have a short-term rental ordinance. That means no host permit, no cap on nights and nothing that says you have to live there. The city did look at one: in July 2022 a council committee considered a draft that would've required a short-term rental license and capped rentals at 200 days a year, and as of October 2026, it hasn't returned to the full council. My guess is that it could resurface, so it's worth watching if you plan to hold a property for years.

What you do owe is Stockton's 8% occupancy tax on any stay of up to 30 days. It's added to your guest's bill on top of the rent, and you collect it, show it as a separate line on the receipt, register with the city's tax administrator within 30 days of starting to rent, and file a return by the end of the month that follows each calendar quarter. Unfortunately, Airbnb won't take that off your hands here. When I checked its California tax-collection page in October 2026, it covered San Joaquin County but carved Stockton out by name, so the registration and the quarterly filings stay with you. Rates and platform collection vary from one California city and county to the next, which is what our California lodging tax guide maps out.

Two more city rules may reach you as well. For a single house, the city doesn't give a straight answer on a business license. Its FAQ only requires a Business License Tax Certificate for rentals once you have three or more units, while its general rule is that nobody runs a business in Stockton without a license, so ask the business license office before your first booking. Then there's the city's tourism business improvement district, which the council renewed in November 2024 for 2025 through 2034. It charges 5% of room revenue on stays under 31 days, rising to 5.5% in its sixth year. On paper it applies to every lodging business in the city, and it defines one in the same words as the occupancy tax, a definition that includes a "tourist home or house". It's levied on the business, which can pass it to guests as its own line, yet the plan's list of assessed businesses is mostly hotels and motels, and I couldn't find anything from the city saying whether it reaches a home on Airbnb, so ask before you set prices.

I'd check the city line before anything else, because the rules change there. In unincorporated San Joaquin County, a short-term rental needs a county permit renewed every year and can be rented for no more than 180 days a year, which makes it a different business from one in town. About a quarter of the Modesto market's listings sit on unincorporated land in one county or another, and each town in it, from Lodi to Modesto, sets its own rules. Our San Joaquin County guide covers the county side. If the house sits in an HOA, read its rules on stays under 30 days before you make an offer, too.

For the full set of forms, offices and filing steps inside the city, BNBCalc's Stockton short-term rental guide walks through each one.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Stockton Airbnb Market?

Forms and filing deadlines aside, every seasonal swing and year-on-year change I've cited counts all the listings in BNBCalc's Modesto data. That same data feeds BNBCalc Markets, where BNBCalc ranks short-term rental markets and lets you hold any two up to each other, but each market page there starts from the market's typical earners, so the page's figures won't match mine, though its pool lift is the same one I quoted. The Stockton medians are mine alone, cut at the city line from BNBCalc's listing data. Markets also tracks how each market has changed year over year, and since thinner supply around Stockton came with higher nightly rates this year, the rate line is the change I'd keep checking before you lock in your own prices.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Stockton Property?

The BNBCalc Calculator is where I'd begin, since it does the part you'd otherwise spend an evening on. You type in the Stockton address, it gathers up to 50 comparable listings and projects what the house should earn in revenue, occupancy and nightly rate, and after that it runs your expenses, the loan and your returns on top. On a US property with four comps or more, its AI Underwriter can do the comp-picking for you and keep the closest matches. Once you've settled on the comps you trust and filled in the home's bedrooms, bathrooms and guest count, use that report as your baseline and sanity check, and build your own costs on top of it.

If you already host near Stockton, I'd open the Airbnb Listing Optimizer first, because it's built for the listing you're running now. It audits the live page, reading as far back as 100 guest reviews and comparing it with up to 50 listings close by, and hands you a ranked list of what to fix first. For lenders and investors who run Stockton addresses through their own systems by the hundred, the BNBCalc API covers that job. It's a REST API, billed per use, that hands their software the Calculator's analysis for each property, from revenue, occupancy and nightly rate through comps and cash flow.

If you're still choosing where to invest at all, BNBCalc Markets lets you compare the Modesto market with others across California before you shortlist a single house.

With a report in hand, there are three Stockton details I'd look at twice. Make sure the comps sit on the same side of the city line as the house, because a home in unincorporated San Joaquin County is limited to 180 rental days a year and won't earn like one in town. Match bedroom counts closely as well, since Stockton's two- and three-bedrooms have run neck and neck with the rest of the market, or a little ahead, while its four-bedrooms have trailed. And don't forget the 8% occupancy tax: it belongs on the guest's bill, but registering for it and filing it each quarter is your job here, not Airbnb's, and the 5% tourism-district charge may sit on top if the city applies it to your listing.

Is Stockton a Good Place for an Airbnb in 2026?

For a modest, small-home rental, I think it can be. Listings inside the city brought in a median of $21,206 over the past year as of October 2026, Stockton's two- and three-bedrooms earned about the same as their counterparts elsewhere in the Modesto market, or slightly more, and the market around it lost listings while nightly rates rose, which is the opposite of crowding. The catch is size and paperwork. Bigger houses do better in Manteca, Tracy and Lodi, the 8% occupancy tax is yours to file, and a 5% tourism-district charge may apply too. Run the specific address through the BNBCalc Calculator before you make an offer.

Stockton's lower median says more about the size of the homes people list here than about the city itself, and that's a good reason to study the floor plan as closely as the ZIP code.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the median annual revenue for a Stockton Airbnb?

BNBCalc's data puts the median Stockton listing inside the city limits at $21,206 for the year to early October 2026, charging $212 a night at the median and booking 30.9% of the year. By size, one-bedrooms earned a median of $15,924, two-bedrooms $21,758, three-bedrooms $28,908 and four-bedrooms or larger $35,253. For a particular Stockton house, the BNBCalc Calculator builds its estimate from as many as 50 comparable listings.

Does BNBCalc have a separate Stockton market?

No. Stockton sits inside the Modesto market in BNBCalc Markets, which mainly covers San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced counties plus a small slice of Contra Costa County. About one in twelve of that market's listings sit inside Stockton's city limits. Market-wide figures such as trends and seasonality describe that whole area.

Which bedroom count earns the most in Stockton?

In BNBCalc's October 2026 data, revenue rises with size inside Stockton, from a median of $15,924 for one-bedrooms to $35,253 for four-bedrooms or larger. At two and three bedrooms, Stockton's medians sit roughly even with the rest of the Modesto market or a little above it, by about $1,800 and $1,900 a year, on rows thin enough to shift. The BNBCalc Calculator shows how a specific floor plan compares with its nearest comps.

When do Stockton Airbnbs book best?

BNBCalc's market data for the whole Modesto market puts occupancy above 40% in May, June and July of 2026, bottoming out at 26.9% in February. July carried the highest average nightly rate, $253, against a January low of $220. BNBCalc Markets shows the same night-of-week pattern on its Modesto page, with Saturdays booking about 37% more often than Mondays, so weekends carry the calendar.

Is the Stockton Airbnb market getting more competitive?

Not by BNBCalc's measure. Across the Modesto market, active listings fell about 11% when the first nine months of 2026 are set beside the same stretch of 2025, while average nightly rates rose and guests booked further ahead. BNBCalc Markets tracks year-over-year change for every market it covers, though its market page leads with typical earners, so its numbers differ from these counts of every listing.

Where can you check the rules for an Airbnb in Stockton?

BNBCalc's Stockton short-term rental guide lists the city's tax registration, quarterly filing and business license steps, and BNBCalc's San Joaquin County guide covers unincorporated land outside the city line. Once a property checks out, the BNBCalc Calculator estimates its revenue, occupancy and nightly rate from comparable listings, so you can see whether it's worth the paperwork.