Virginia Beach, Virginia Airbnb Market Data 2026

How much can an Airbnb make in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is the house you're eyeing one the city will let you rent out? The typical whole-home listing inside the city took in $38,251 over the past year, by my count of BNBCalc's listing data in late October 2026. The legal side is narrower, though, because Virginia Beach only issues the zoning permit a whole-home short-term rental needs to three kinds of property: one that's grandfathered under the city's older registration rules, one inside the Sandbridge Special Service District, or one inside a Short-Term Rental Overlay District, such as the Oceanfront Resort overlay, that has won a conditional use permit from City Council.

There's no separate Virginia Beach market in BNBCalc, and the Virginia Beach page in BNBCalc Markets shows the Norfolk market's figures under the city's name. The city sits inside BNBCalc's Norfolk market, along with Norfolk, Hampton, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Newport News and Suffolk. Of that market's measured listings, 51.7% fall inside Virginia Beach's city line, so the city makes up a little over half of it. The data panel beside this article covers the whole Norfolk market, while the Virginia Beach medians I quote are built only from listings within the city line. Since Virginia Beach is an independent city with no county above it, the rules come from City Hall and from Richmond, and nowhere else.

That permit gate changes how you should read every figure in this article. BNBCalc's data shows what operating listings earned, but it doesn't say which of those listings hold a city permit, so treat the city-wide medians as market context and price the kind of house the city would let you run.

How Much Do Virginia Beach Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

Inside the city line, the median listing earned $38,251 in the last 12 months on a $404 median nightly rate and 28.4% occupancy, and the city's top quarter clears $55,820. Elsewhere in the Norfolk market, the median listing earned $28,979 at $244 a night and 32.9% occupancy. So the median listing inside the city out-earns the median elsewhere in the market by about 32% even though it sells fewer nights, because its nightly rate runs about 66% higher.

Here's how that splits by size, with each bedroom count inside the city next to its match elsewhere in the Norfolk market.

Bedrooms	Virginia Beach median revenue	Virginia Beach median nightly rate	Virginia Beach median occupancy	Virginia Beach top quarter starts at	Rest of Norfolk market median revenue
Studio	$26,363	$227	33.3%	$31,871	$17,213
1	$22,523	$232	29.7%	$31,158	$19,795
2	$35,879	$345	29.2%	$47,758	$24,539
3	$45,772	$473	29.2%	$57,718	$32,841
4+	$59,889	$707	26.0%	$77,835	$47,520

Medians from BNBCalc listing data, cut at the Virginia Beach city line (Census place boundary), as of October 2026; the top-quarter column is the 75th percentile of annual revenue.

The row I'd look at twice is the two-bedroom, because a two-bedroom inside Virginia Beach earns a median $35,879, which is more than a three-bedroom earns outside the city ($32,841), so a smaller house in the city can out-earn a bigger one elsewhere in the market. The studio row is the thinnest in the table, inside the city and out, so I wouldn't read much into studios edging out one-bedrooms. From one bedroom up, bigger homes earn more inside the city, but their occupancy slips from 29.7% for a one-bedroom to 26.0% for four bedrooms and up, and the rate has to cover that.

So what do these medians describe? They're the listings that operated over the past year, and the data can't tell a permitted listing from one the city would shut down. Keep in mind that if the house you're pricing doesn't fit one of the three routes, none of these figures applies to it as a nightly rental, and the realistic plan is renting it for a month or longer.

Much of the competition here is run by professionals, who manage a large share of the Norfolk market's listings. A home share needs you living there, but if you hold a whole-home permit and want a manager to run the house day to day, our guide to Virginia Beach property management companies covers who does that locally.

Is the Virginia Beach Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Across the Norfolk market as a whole, no, and you can see why once you put January to September of this year beside the same months of 2025.

Measure, across the Norfolk market	January to September 2026 vs January to September 2025
Active listings	Down
Occupancy	Up about 7%
Average nightly rate	Up about 20%
Booking lead time	Up about 31%

BNBCalc market data for the whole Norfolk market, Virginia Beach included; changes are relative, a percentage of the 2025 figure rather than percentage points, and listings are shown as a direction only.

Fewer listings were competing for guests, each one sold a larger share of its nights, and rates climbed on top of that, so none of it looks like a market with too many hosts. Guests across the market also booked further ahead, with lead times about 31% longer than in the same months a year earlier, and a longer booking window gives you more time to fill a gap before it turns into an empty night.

Inside Virginia Beach, the picture has one wrinkle. The city holds about half the market's listings, and its median listing books fewer of the year's nights than the rest of the market does (28.4% against 32.9%), which could look like crowding if you stopped there. I read it as the way beach homes get priced instead: they sell fewer nights at much higher rates, and 60.6% of the city's listings earn at least the whole market's median of $32,291, against 38.7% of listings outside it.

My guess is that supply here can't balloon quickly anyway, because outside Sandbridge and the overlay district, a house that wasn't grandfathered can't become a new whole-home rental unless its neighborhood wins an overlay of its own. The way to catch crowding early is to follow occupancy at a few comparable homes nearby and compare it again each season, every few months. And if you're weighing the other cities in the metro, the Norfolk market-data post goes through them.

When Is Virginia Beach's Peak Airbnb Season?

Those rising rates aren't spread evenly through the year. July is the peak across the Norfolk market and January is the trough, and the gap between them is wide.

Month, across the Norfolk market	Occupancy	Average nightly rate
October 2025	31.6%	$252
November 2025	30.0%	$240
December 2025	28.3%	$231
January 2026	25.8%	$191
February 2026	27.7%	$197
March 2026	39.7%	$256
April 2026	40.6%	$278
May 2026	40.7%	$351
June 2026	51.2%	$455
July 2026	58.1%	$483
August 2026	48.7%	$437
September 2026	42.6%	$335

BNBCalc market data for the whole Norfolk market, October 2025 to September 2026.

In July the market booked 58.1% of its nights at an average $483, while January managed 25.8% at $191, so the peak month charged about two and a half times January's rate and filled more than twice the share of nights. June ($455) and August ($437) price close to July, and September still holds $335 a night, well above April's $278, which makes early fall a stronger month here than spring on rate.

You'll notice most months here show more occupancy than the 28.4% median in the earnings section, with only December through February falling below it, and that's because they measure different things. Each monthly figure is a market-wide average for that month, while the earnings medians spread each listing's bookings over all 365 days, including days the host blocked off. The typical listing in the Norfolk market was open about 230 nights, so its year-round figure reads lower.

The week has its own season, too. This is how each night performs against the average night across the Norfolk market.

Night, across the Norfolk market	Occupancy vs the weekly average	Nightly rate vs the weekly average
Sunday	-3.7%	-1.3%
Monday	-17.5%	-5.9%
Tuesday	-18.2%	-6.5%
Wednesday	-15.0%	-6.0%
Thursday	+1.3%	-0.6%
Friday	+25.4%	+10.0%
Saturday	+27.6%	+10.3%

BNBCalc market data for the whole Norfolk market. Each figure is relative to the average night of the week.

Across the market, Saturday books about 56% more often than Tuesday and charges about 18% more, while Monday through Wednesday sit well below average on occupancy even though they're priced about 6% under the weekly average. So the weekend largely takes care of itself, and if I were setting rates on a house in this market, the midweek nights are where I'd spend my attention, since that's where pricing decides whether the calendar fills.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Virginia Beach?

That calendar math only matters if the city lets you rent the house at all, though, which is why in Virginia Beach the place you're allowed to buy comes before the place you'd like to. The Sandbridge Special Service District is the one place in the city where every property is eligible to apply for the permit, so it's the obvious place to start, and the numbers back that up.

Area inside Virginia Beach	Median revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quarter starts at
Sandbridge Special Service District	$54,723	$656	24.9%	$69,706
Rest of Virginia Beach	$36,336	$374	29.1%	$53,326

Medians from BNBCalc listing data inside the city, split by the City of Virginia Beach's own Special Service Districts map, as of October 2026.

A Sandbridge listing earns about 51% more at the median than one elsewhere in the city while booking the fewest nights of any area here, because these are big houses at big rates: about seven in ten measured Sandbridge listings have four or more bedrooms. Guests also stay longer there, at more than five nights for the median listing's average stay against a little over four across the city. Sandbridge is only about one in seven of the city's measured listings, though, so it's a small, specific market rather than the city's typical one.

For the rest of the city, ZIP codes give a rougher map, though they're the boundaries most buyers already search by.

ZIP code inside Virginia Beach	Median revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quarter starts at
23456 (includes Sandbridge)	$47,176	$574	25.5%	$66,644
23451 (includes the Oceanfront)	$37,629	$380	29.3%	$53,506
23452	$33,039	$327	34.0%	$50,228
23455 (includes Shore Drive)	$27,255	$338	29.9%	$61,574

Medians from BNBCalc listing data inside the city, by 2020 Census ZIP code area, as of October 2026; ZIP codes too thin to measure reliably are left out.

About two-thirds of the city's measured listings sit in 23451, the ZIP that includes the Oceanfront, so its median is close to the city's own. The 23456 figure leans heavily on Sandbridge, which holds about two-thirds of that ZIP's measured listings, and 23452 is the thinnest row here, so it'll move the most between data updates. Then there's 23455, where the median is the lowest of the four but the top quarter starts at $61,574, the widest spread in the table, which tells you the house matters more than the ZIP code there.

None of that settles eligibility, which goes address by address, and the city's eligibility map is the place to check it. Our Virginia Beach investment area guide goes deeper on the neighborhoods themselves.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Virginia Beach?

Once you've found a house you're allowed to rent, you'll have to decide what goes in it. The answer the data gives openly is a hot tub: across the whole Norfolk market a hot tub is associated with roughly 21% higher revenue, and that's the one amenity value BNBCalc publishes openly for this market, so it's the only one I can rank here.

What makes that interesting in Virginia Beach is how rare hot tubs still are. Fewer than one in twenty listings inside the city has one (4.6%), and even in Sandbridge only about one in eight does (13.0%), so a hot tub still sets a listing apart here. A published lift plus so few competitors offering one makes it the strongest amenity case in this city.

Pools tell the opposite story, since about two in five listings inside Virginia Beach list one (39.3%), against about one in twenty elsewhere in the Norfolk market (4.7%), and in Sandbridge more than four in five do (83.2%). BNBCalc does put a value on a pool in this market, but it keeps that figure inside BNBCalc Markets, along with the values for parking, internet, a gym, pet-friendly stays, EV charging, lake access and a sauna. I'd still weigh how common a pool already is on your street before you count on it to win bookings.

Cleaning fees follow house size. The median cleaning fee inside Virginia Beach is $151, while Sandbridge's is $285, and since a guest pays it once per stay, Sandbridge's longer stays spread that fee across more nights.

Is Airbnb Legal in Virginia Beach?

Yes, but only for some houses, which is why it decides whether any dollar figure in this article applies to yours. A whole-home short-term rental, meaning a home rented out for stays shorter than 30 nights in a row, needs an annual zoning permit, and the city will only consider one for three kinds of property.

The first is a grandfathered property: one that registered and paid transient occupancy taxes with the Commissioner of the Revenue before July 1, 2018, or one granted a short-term rental conditional use permit by City Council before September 7, 2021 while sitting outside an overlay district. The second is any property inside the Sandbridge Special Service District, which is eligible to apply. The third is a property inside the Short-Term Rental Overlay District that has an approved conditional use permit from City Council.

If you live in the house and rent rooms while you're there, that's a home share, and the city doesn't require a zoning permit for it, although you'll still need a business license from the Commissioner of the Revenue. Outside the three routes, a neighborhood can ask City Council for its own overlay district, but only with the signatures of 75% of the property owners in an existing community, followed by Planning Commission and Council hearings.

Don't forget that the permit belongs to the owner, not the house. The zoning permit costs $500 a year and doesn't pass to a buyer, so if you purchase a permitted house you'll need to apply for your own. Unfortunately for anyone tempted to skip it, renting short-term without a permit is a criminal misdemeanor under the city zoning ordinance, with a fine of up to $1,000.

Guests pay the taxes on top of your nightly rate. Outside Sandbridge, a stay carries the city's 9% lodging tax plus Virginia's 6% sales tax on accommodations, 15% in all, with a flat $2 a night on top. In Sandbridge the city's share is 10.5%, so the total there is 16.5% plus the same $2. When a guest books through a platform that collects the tax, the platform handles its part. You pay the city its tax and the $2 a night on anything the platform didn't collect, direct bookings included, by the 20th of the following month, and you still file for a month with no rentals. On a direct booking you also collect Virginia's 6% yourself and report it to the state, which our Virginia lodging tax guide walks through.

For the permit paperwork itself, from the inspections to the parking plan, our Virginia Beach short-term rental regulations guide lays it out step by step.

How Does BNBCalc Track the Virginia Beach Airbnb Market?

Inspections and parking plans won't tell you what to charge a night, though. For that there's BNBCalc Markets, where BNBCalc stacks short-term rental markets against each other, and its Norfolk view starts on the typical earners, which is why its opening numbers won't match mine. The year-on-year changes and month-by-month seasons in this article come from BNBCalc's market data covering all Norfolk-market listings, which is what Markets runs on, while the city medians use those same listings cut at Virginia Beach's boundary. Where the two match exactly is the hot tub value and the night-by-night view, and with Saturday filling about 56% more often than Tuesday across the market, that view is your basis for pricing weeknights lower.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Virginia Beach Property?

The address comes first. Give the BNBCalc Calculator the street address and it builds a revenue, occupancy and nightly-rate projection from as many as 50 comparable listings, and when a US property has at least four comps to work with, the AI Underwriter can choose the most similar ones for you. That matters in Virginia Beach, where a five-bedroom in Sandbridge and a two-bedroom near the Oceanfront live in different worlds, so you'll want the comps to come from the same kind of house on the same side of the eligibility line.

From there the Calculator models expenses, financing and returns. That's where the city's own costs go in: the $500 annual permit, the inspections and the off-street parking the city requires, one space per bedroom.

If you already hold a permit, on a grandfathered cottage or a Sandbridge home, then raising what that house earns is the lever you control. That's the job the Airbnb Listing Optimizer was built for: it audits a running Airbnb listing, combs through up to 100 of the guest reviews on it, and orders the fixes by which to tackle first. A lender or an investor screening long lists of beach addresses has a different need, wanting the numbers inside their own systems, and the BNBCalc API is a usage-billed way to pull the Calculator's property analysis, cash flow and comps included, straight into that software.

To sanity-check the market before you get to the address, the Norfolk market page in BNBCalc Markets is the place to size up the whole market first. If you haven't picked a market yet, BNBCalc Markets sorts US markets by gross yield, and the Virginia gross yield ranking puts the Norfolk market third in the state.

Then hold your own plan up against three Virginia Beach checks. If it needs more than about 30% of the year's nights booked, it's assuming better than the city's median listing manages (28.4%), so make sure the house has a real reason to beat the typical one. If it prices your nights near the city median of $404 without the bedrooms to back it, compare it with the bedroom table, because a one-bedroom's median is $232. And if it can't name which of the three permit routes the address uses, it isn't a short-term rental plan yet.

Is a Virginia Beach Airbnb a Good Investment in 2026?

It can be, if the address qualifies. The median listing inside Virginia Beach earned $38,251 over the past year, about 32% more than one elsewhere in the Norfolk market, and Sandbridge's median reached $54,723, while the wider market saw fewer listings and higher occupancy this year. The catch is the permit rule. The city limits whole-home rentals to grandfathered properties, the Sandbridge Special Service District and overlay-district homes with a conditional use permit, so the next step is pricing that exact address in the BNBCalc Calculator against houses of the same kind only.

Wherever this article splits listings by size or location, from the city against its neighbors to Sandbridge and the four-bedroom row, the top earner is also the one booking the fewest nights, which tells you a beach market pays for what a night can charge more than for how many nights you fill.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in Virginia Beach?

BNBCalc's listing data puts the median whole-home listing inside Virginia Beach at $38,251 a year (October 2026), with a $404 median nightly rate and 28.4% occupancy. The top quarter of listings in the city starts at $55,820. Those figures describe listings that were already operating, and only a property on one of the city's permit routes can run as a whole-home nightly rental, so to price a single qualifying house, the BNBCalc Calculator estimates what that address can earn from comparable listings.

How much does a Sandbridge Airbnb make?

BNBCalc's listing data puts Sandbridge's median at $54,723 a year (October 2026) for listings inside the Sandbridge Special Service District, where every property can apply for the city's permit, with a $656 median nightly rate and 24.9% occupancy, and the top quarter starts at $69,706. Most Sandbridge listings are large homes, with about seven in ten at four bedrooms or more. To price a specific Sandbridge house, use the BNBCalc Calculator with comparable Sandbridge homes.

How many bedrooms should a Virginia Beach Airbnb have?

BNBCalc's listing data shows median annual revenue inside Virginia Beach rising with size: $22,523 for a one-bedroom, $35,879 for a two-bedroom, $45,772 for a three-bedroom and $59,889 for four bedrooms or more, as of October 2026. Occupancy falls as homes get bigger, from 29.7% for one-bedrooms to 26.0% for four-plus. These cover operating listings, permitted or not, so the BNBCalc Calculator is the way to project an address that qualifies.

What is the busiest month for Airbnbs in Virginia Beach?

BNBCalc's market data across all Norfolk-market listings, Virginia Beach included, puts July as the busiest month: in July 2026 occupancy reached 58.1% at an average $483 a night. January was the quietest month, at 25.8% occupancy and $191 a night. June and August price close to July, so the summer months carry the year.

Do Virginia Beach Airbnbs earn more than others in the Norfolk market?

Yes. BNBCalc's listing data puts the median Virginia Beach listing at $38,251 a year (October 2026), against $28,979 at the median outside the city but inside the Norfolk market. The gap comes from the nightly rate, a median $404 inside the city against $244 elsewhere, since Virginia Beach listings book fewer nights (28.4% occupancy against 32.9%). Those medians include listings the data can't confirm hold a city permit.

How do you check what a specific Virginia Beach property would earn?

Start with the BNBCalc Calculator: type in the address and it compares the property with similar listings nearby, as many as 50 of them, to estimate revenue, occupancy and nightly rate, then models expenses, financing and returns. With four or more comparables available on a US property, the AI Underwriter keeps only the best fits. Running the exact address matters in Virginia Beach, where a large Sandbridge home and a two-bedroom near the Oceanfront earn very different amounts.