Wichita, Kansas Airbnb Market Data 2026

If you're pricing a house in Wichita and wondering what it might earn on Airbnb, the first thing to settle is whose numbers you're reading. The market that carries Wichita's name reaches 39 Kansas counties, from Dodge City in the southwest to the Republic and Smith county line up against Nebraska, and Wichita itself accounts for barely two listings in every five.

Only about half of those listings sit within 25 miles of downtown, a third of them are more than 60 miles out, and the farthest is roughly 180. So a market average here is a Kansas average with Wichita folded into it.

That matters twice over. It matters for money, because the median house inside the city limits earns roughly a fifth more than the same size of house out in the smaller towns, and it matters for the law, because Wichita's short-term rental ordinance ends where the city ends. Unincorporated Sedgwick County runs a different rule, and Hutchinson, Salina, Hays and every other town in this market run their own. So pin down the jurisdiction before you pin down anything else.

The encouraging part is that the market underneath all this is growing, and growing in a way that holds up when you push on it. Listings ran about 21% higher over January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025, and that growth showed up in every house size rather than piling into one, while nightly rates climbed about 13%. Occupancy slipped. I'll work through what that combination means for a buyer, and I'll start where you'd want to start, with the money.

How Much Do Wichita Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

The middle of this market is modest and the top of it isn't. As of September 2026 a median listing here brought in roughly $16,400 across the trailing twelve months, on a median nightly rate of $149 and median occupancy near 30%. In a market at those levels, the numbers only work if you buy cheaply enough, which in Kansas you often can.

Inside Wichita's boundary that median rises to about $18,700, while everywhere else in the market it falls to about $15,200.

So the city premium is real, although it's a premium of roughly a fifth rather than a different league, and it holds at every size you might buy.

Listing size	Median inside Wichita	Median elsewhere in the market
1 bedroom	$13,103	$10,466
2 bedrooms	$16,408	$13,573
3 bedrooms	$21,510	$17,425
4 or more bedrooms	$34,433	$24,284

Median trailing-twelve-month revenue from BNBCalc market data, pulled 29 September 2026, with listings split by the Census boundary of Wichita. Studios inside the city are too thin a group to report.

One-, two- and three-bedroom homes inside the city run about 20 to 25% ahead of their counterparts elsewhere in the market, which is roughly what you'd guess. The four-bedroom row is the one to look at twice, because that gap widens to about 40%. Large houses are where Wichita's own demand concentrates, the weddings and the reunions and the visiting families who want everybody under one roof, and a six-bedroom place two counties out doesn't get the same calendar.

Keep in mind that these are medians, so half the listings in each row earn less than the figure printed.

If you want a number to underwrite against, the median for your size and your side of the city limit is the honest starting point. The 75th percentile is the other end of the same question: inside Wichita it sits near $25,900 against that $18,700 median, so the gap between a middling listing and a good one runs close to 40%. That gap is execution, not address, and it's the part of the return you actually control.

Is the Wichita Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

Mildly, yes, though not in the way that usually hurts. Listings grew about 21% over those eight months while occupancy fell, which is the textbook crowding signal: more competition sharing a calendar that didn't expand as quickly.

Eight months is the window, by the way, because BNBCalc changed how it measures this market at the start of 2025, so a comparison reaching further back would be putting two different rulers against each other.

What keeps this from reading as a glut is that nightly rates went up about 13% at the same time. A truly oversupplied market fights on price, and this one didn't.

A rate rise can lie, though, so I checked it. If a market fills up with four-bedroom houses, its average nightly rate climbs even when nobody has raised a price, because the mix of what's for rent got more expensive. To rule that out I recalculated the increase as if the market still held the same proportions of studios, one-beds and family houses it held in 2025, and almost all of it survived: of the 13 points, the drift toward larger homes accounts for about one.

Hosts were charging more for the same sort of house, then, rather than quietly listing bigger ones.

The supply growth passes a similar check, and it passes more clearly. It didn't arrive as one wave of investor buying in a single tier: studios grew the least at about 12%, four-bedroom-plus homes the most at about 26%, and every size in between landed inside that range. That's a market broadening rather than a single trade getting crowded.

So the honest read is that Wichita absorbed roughly a fifth more competition without a price war, and each individual calendar got a little thinner in the process. If you're buying here, that's survivable, yet it does mean you shouldn't underwrite on last year's occupancy. Pull the calendars of eight or ten similar listings within a short drive of the address, note how full they run, then repeat the exercise a few months later, because that's the number that moves first if the balance tips.

When Is Wichita's Peak Airbnb Season?

Late spring into midsummer, and the shape is steep. Since occupancy is what tightened this year, look at how unevenly it's spread across the calendar before you assume an annual average applies to your month.

Month, 2026	Occupancy	Nightly rate
January	25%	$145
February	24%	$147
March	30%	$156
April	35%	$162
May	42%	$173
June	45%	$178
July	44%	$175
August	35%	$158

Market-wide monthly occupancy and nightly rate from BNBCalc market data, this year only. Months from different years aren't compared here, because the stored history changed definition at the start of 2025 and month-to-month comparisons across that change don't reconcile.

June and July carry nearly twice the occupancy of January and February, and they carry the year's best nightly rates on top of that. Winter is where Wichita listings go quiet, so if your financing only works on a full twelve months of summer-level bookings, it doesn't work.

The week has almost as much shape as the year. Friday and Saturday run roughly 28% above the week's average occupancy, while Monday sits about 20% below it, and the two weekend nights also carry nightly rates around 18% above average, with Tuesday the cheapest night to be sitting empty. A weekend-heavy calendar is normal here rather than a sign you've priced badly. Make sure your minimum-stay rules don't strand an orphan Wednesday that nobody was going to book anyway.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Wichita?

Weekends fill first, though where the house sits decides how much those weekends are worth, and inside the city the spread between neighborhoods runs about three and a half to one.

Wichita neighborhood	Median revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quartile revenue
Westlink	$36,518	$288	32%	$41,358
Orchard Park	$23,660	$198	38%	$29,310
Riverside	$23,621	$239	30%	$35,818
North Riverside	$21,210	$158	30%	$28,791
College Hill	$20,740	$181	34%	$26,641
East Front	$20,151	$193	27%	$24,315
Southwest	$17,002	$146	37%	$23,642
Delano	$15,967	$148	32%	$21,476
Sunflower	$15,418	$122	31%	$17,800
Sunnyside	$14,596	$138	32%	$18,418
Historic Midtown	$13,886	$123	31%	$15,351
Fairfax	$12,842	$104	34%	$19,543
The Hyde	$10,470	$107	29%	$14,431

Trailing-twelve-month medians from BNBCalc market data, pulled 29 September 2026, assigned to the City of Wichita's own published neighborhood boundaries, and leaving out any neighborhood too thin to measure reliably. The thinnest rows that survive will still move between refreshes.

Riverside and College Hill are the two I'd look at hardest, because they combine a strong median with enough listings behind it that the number means something. Riverside sits a couple of miles northwest of downtown, and it commands the second-highest nightly rate in the city while running mid-pack occupancy, which is the signature of a place guests choose deliberately rather than settle for. College Hill does something different: it holds a good median on a much gentler nightly rate, so it's filling more nights at a friendlier price.

Delano is the volume play. More hosts have listed here than in any other Wichita neighborhood on the table, and it sits barely a mile west of downtown, yet its median lands below the city's, which tells you a lot of people have had the same idea. That's not a reason to avoid it, though it is a reason to expect real competition and to bring something the block doesn't already have.

Westlink leads the table and I'd treat it cautiously. It sits almost seven miles west of downtown, it clears the reporting floor by a hair, and a handful of large, expensive houses can carry a row that thin. The Hyde at the bottom is the mirror image: small homes, modest rates, and a median that would leave very little after a mortgage.

Outside the city, the market's other towns sort themselves differently, and the ranking has almost nothing to do with how far out a town sits. Bel Aire is six miles from downtown and Dodge City is 147, yet they land seven rows apart.

Elsewhere in the market	Median revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	Top quartile revenue
Bel Aire	$30,326	$286	32%	$36,966
Lindsborg	$23,602	$217	32%	$27,704
Derby	$20,557	$179	31%	$22,862
McPherson	$19,644	$159	32%	$21,094
Salina	$16,993	$165	28%	$23,002
Great Bend	$16,159	$126	32%	$19,394
Hays	$15,267	$134	29%	$22,789
Dodge City	$14,513	$156	28%	$19,114
Hesston	$13,835	$125	33%	$17,986
Newton	$13,110	$137	31%	$16,898
Hutchinson	$12,535	$133	29%	$14,934
Medicine Lodge	$11,549	$110	32%	$12,844
Russell	$9,664	$111	24%	$14,599

Trailing-twelve-month medians from BNBCalc market data, pulled 29 September 2026, assigned to US Census municipal boundaries. This table and the Wichita one use different boundary sources at different scales, so read them side by side rather than as one ranking.

Lindsborg is the surprise worth understanding. It's a small town north of McPherson that leans hard into its Swedish heritage, down to a biennial festival honoring the settlers who founded it, and it holds the second-highest median and the second-highest nightly rate of any town on the list. Hutchinson is its mirror image: more listings than anywhere else in this market outside Wichita, and a median close to the bottom. One of those towns gives people a reason to drive out and stay the night, and the other mostly has rooms.

Hays is the other one to watch, because its median sits mid-table while its top quartile runs about half as much again, one of the widest median-to-top-quartile gaps on the list. That's what you get in a university town on I-70 that also serves as the hospital and shopping center for the northwest corner of the state: a wide spread of outcomes, where the middle listing tells you less than usual about what a good one does.

If you'd rather compare submarkets inside Wichita in more detail, BNBCalc's guide to the best Wichita neighborhoods for short-term rentals goes block by block in a way a data table can't.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Wichita?

Wherever you land, one amenity moves the needle here more than any other, and it isn't a close race. A hot tub is the single feature BNBCalc publishes an open revenue figure for at every listing size in this market.

Listing size	Revenue lift from a hot tub
1 bedroom	+18%
2 bedrooms	+16%
3 bedrooms	+16%
4 or more bedrooms	+14%

Per-bedroom amenity values from BNBCalc market data, pulled 29 September 2026. These come from a model that measures each amenity against comparable listings, so they estimate the amenity's own contribution rather than the gap between listings that have one and listings that don't.

Notice that the lift is strongest on the smallest homes and tapers as houses get bigger. That makes sense if you think about what a guest is buying: in a one-bedroom, the hot tub is the reason for the trip, whereas in a four-bedroom house it's one attraction among several and the space itself is doing the selling. If you're fitting out a small unit here and can only afford one upgrade, this is the one the data actually supports.

Several other features register a real effect here without an open number attached, and they're worth knowing by name: a pool, lake access, EV charging, a sauna, a barbecue, bicycles, and at some sizes a gym. Those values sit behind BNBCalc Markets, so I'm not going to invent figures for them. What I will say is that the list skews toward things a Kansas house can plausibly have, and an amenity you can't install isn't an insight.

Is Airbnb Legal in Wichita?

Yes, with a license, and the licensing system is genuinely built rather than improvised. Wichita created Chapter 3.40 of its city code by Ordinance No. 52-265 in September 2023: the council signed the package off on 12 September and it took effect ten days later. The code defines a short-term rental as a residential dwelling rented to transient guests for 28 days or less.

One amendment has landed since. Ordinance No. 52-540, adopted in August 2024, added a short section of rules that bind your guests rather than you, covering noise, gathering size and outdoor amplified sound after 10:00 p.m., and those apply to the people staying in a house whether or not it holds a license.

The license costs $225.00 a year, and you need one for each unit you rent out, so a duplex where both halves go on Airbnb needs two. You'll also need to carry $250,000 of liability insurance on each unit, though the code accepts coverage provided by a booking platform as proof, which spares most hosts a separate policy. Every listing you advertise needs to show its license number, the license lapses twelve months from issue, and it doesn't travel with the house, so buying a licensed property puts you back at the application stage in your own name.

The rule that decides your path is whether you'll live there. Under the Wichita-Sedgwick County zoning code, an owner-occupied short-term rental is permitted wherever the district lists the use, and "owner-occupied" is stricter than it sounds: the home has to be where you actually live, and you have to be onsite while guests are staying. A non-owner-occupied rental in the SF-10, SF-5, TF-3, MF-18 or MF-29 districts needs an administrative permit or a conditional use approved first, and the city won't take your license application until that zoning approval is in hand. Anywhere else in the city, a non-owner-occupied rental is permitted where the district lists the use.

Two operating limits catch people out. The code allows two adults per bedroom overnight, plus two more for the unit itself, so a two-bedroom house tops out at six and a three-bedroom at eight, and anyone over 12 counts as an adult. Gatherings can run to twice the overnight cap or 20 people, whichever is smaller, and they have to be finished by 10:00 p.m. Most violations of the chapter give you 30 days to fix the problem, yet those two don't: a gathering that breaks the cap or runs late can draw a criminal complaint straight away. A conviction is a misdemeanor carrying up to $500 and up to six months, with each day of a continuing violation counted on its own.

Unfortunately for anyone shopping just past the city line, the county is harder rather than easier. In unincorporated Sedgwick County there's no by-right path at all: every short-term rental needs an administrative permit or a conditional use, the approval lasts five years before you reapply, and whoever manages the property has to live within 30 miles and be reachable around the clock. BNBCalc's Sedgwick County short-term rental guide covers that framework, and since most of this market lies beyond both boundaries, the Kansas state guide is the better starting point for a property in Hays, Salina or anywhere else out there.

On tax, the layer your guests pay differs by town, which is easy to miss when you're comparing two properties in the same market. Wichita levies a 6.00% transient guest tax, and Kansas adds its state sales tax of 6.5% plus the local rate. Drive out of town and the guest tax alone moves: Hutchinson charges 7.00%, Salina 7.75%, Hays 8.25%, Hesston 5.00%. Every one of those is added to what the guest pays rather than deducted from what you keep, and BNBCalc's Kansas short-term rental tax guide sets out who files and when. For the full Wichita picture, including the permit process and who to call, read BNBCalc's Wichita short-term rental guide.

Where Does This Wichita Airbnb Data Come From?

The guide I just pointed you at handles the permit side. Every figure above comes instead from BNBCalc Markets, where BNBCalc does market research rather than property math, and Markets sorts places by gross yield instead of by revenue. In Kansas that's the sort that matters, since two houses here can earn within a few thousand dollars of each other while costing wildly different amounts to buy. BNBCalc's Kansas rankings by gross yield show where each market lands, and the Wichita market page carries the current levels behind everything above.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Wichita Property?

Begin with the median for your bedroom count, on whichever side of the city boundary you're buying, then adjust for what you can verify. A three-bedroom inside Wichita starts at roughly $21,500 and the same house in a smaller town starts near $17,400, and those are middles rather than targets, so a property with no differentiating feature should be underwritten at or slightly below them.

From there, three checks change the answer more than anything else.

Confirm the zoning path first, because a non-owner-occupied purchase in one of the five permit districts can stall for weeks and the neighbors get a say. Then pull the calendars of comparable listings within a mile or so and count occupied nights across a full year rather than a good month, since that's the input this market is currently squeezing. Finally, price the amenity you're planning to add against the lift it earns at your bedroom count instead of the market-wide figure, because the two aren't the same number.

On the cost side, the compliance line is small enough that people forget it and large enough to notice on a modest listing: $225 a year for the license, whatever your insurance costs to reach the $250,000 minimum, and $50 for a re-inspection if a complaint ever brings one. The zoning permit carries its own fee on top of that, which the planning department will quote you, so ask before you budget.

The top-quartile column in the neighborhood and town tables is the ceiling to plan for. If your deal only clears at that level, you're underwriting a top-quartile operation before you've run one, and in a market adding a fifth more listings a year that's a thin place to stand.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does an Airbnb make in Wichita, Kansas?

A median listing in the Wichita market brought in about $16,400 over the year to September 2026. Inside Wichita's city limits the median is about $18,700, and elsewhere in the market it's about $15,200. By size, median revenue inside the city runs from roughly $13,100 for a one-bedroom to roughly $34,400 for a home with four or more bedrooms. Half of all listings in each group earn less than these figures.

Do you need a license to run an Airbnb in Wichita?

Yes. Chapter 3.40 of the Code of the City of Wichita requires an annual short-term rental license for each dwelling unit, at a fee of $225.00, and the license expires one year after it is issued. Applicants must carry $250,000 of liability insurance per unit, and coverage provided by a booking platform is accepted as proof. Operating or advertising an unlicensed short-term rental in the city is a misdemeanor.

Does the Wichita market data cover only the city of Wichita?

No. The market spans 39 Kansas counties, reaching Dodge City and Hays in the west and the Nebraska border in the north. Wichita's city limits hold about 42% of the measurable listings, so market-wide figures blend the city with towns including Hutchinson, Salina, Hays, Great Bend, McPherson and Derby. Wichita's own median revenue runs above the market-wide median at every bedroom count.

What is the occupancy rate for Airbnbs in Wichita?

Median occupancy across the market is about 30%, and it swings hard by season. Monthly occupancy in 2026 ran near 24% in February and about 45% in June, with July close behind. Occupancy fell over January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025, while the count of listings rose about 21%, so newer listings are sharing a calendar that hasn't grown as fast.

What taxes do guests pay on a Wichita short-term rental?

Wichita imposes a transient guest tax of 6.00%, and Kansas sales tax of 6.5% applies on top, plus the applicable local sales tax rate. These charges appear on the guest's bill. Rates vary across this market: as of July 2026 the transient guest tax is 7.00% in Hutchinson, 7.75% in Salina, 8.25% in Hays and 5.00% in Hesston, so two properties in the same market can carry different totals.

Can you run a short-term rental you don't live in, in Wichita?

Yes, though the path is longer. In the SF-10, SF-5, TF-3, MF-18 and MF-29 zoning districts, a non-owner-occupied short-term rental needs an administrative permit or a conditional use approved before the city will accept a license application. In every other district in the city it is permitted where the district lists the use. Being onsite during guest stays is what separates owner-occupied from non-owner-occupied under the code.

Which amenity adds the most revenue in Wichita?

A hot tub, at every listing size. The published lift is about 18% on one-bedroom listings, 16% on two- and three-bedroom listings, and 14% on homes with four or more bedrooms. Several other amenities register a measurable effect in Wichita without an open figure attached, among them a pool, lake access, EV charging, a sauna, a barbecue and bicycles.

Markets like this one reward reading the map before reading the spreadsheet. A single average can hide a three-and-a-half-to-one spread between one street and another, a gap of two-fifths between the same big house inside a city and outside it, and five different lodging-tax rates sitting inside one set of numbers. Wherever you're buying, find out how wide the thing you're averaging actually is, and then go looking for the corner of it you can afford.