Salt Lake City, Utah Airbnb Market Data 2026

Can you run an Airbnb in Salt Lake City now, and if you can, what does one earn? The first half has a new answer, and for most addresses in the city that answer is no.

Salt Lake City had no short-term rental license to apply for until Chapter 5.13 of the city code took effect on July 1, 2026, and the license it created reaches exactly seventeen zoning districts, none of them residential. So a house on the east bench, a bungalow in the Avenues, an apartment in a residential multi-family zone: none of those addresses can hold a short-term rental license, however carefully the application is filled in.

The data below reaches well past the city limit. It takes in listings in nine Utah counties, though six of them hold nearly all the listings, running from around Tremonton in the north to Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain in the south. Salt Lake County holds the middle, and only about three listings in ten sit inside Salt Lake City itself. Every city along the way writes its own rulebook. As for the money, the year to August 2026 was a price story, since across the whole market the listing count finished about where it began while average nightly rates climbed about 20% and occupancy slipped about 5%.

How Much Do Salt Lake City Airbnbs Earn in 2026?

A typical listing inside Salt Lake City earned $21,218 over the trailing twelve months, and a typical listing across the whole market, suburbs included, earned $21,044, so the city line barely moves the middle. To land in the best-earning quarter, a city listing needed about $30,400 a year, and a listing anywhere in the market about $30,800.

If you're buying inside the city, look past that to the land the new license actually reaches. Only about two in five of the city's listings sit there (about one in nine across the whole market), and their median came to $23,800 against $19,537 for city listings on land the license can't reach. Keep in mind that those twelve months ran mostly before anyone held a license, so that gap isn't the license at work. A good part of it is plain geography, because more than half the listings on licensable land are Downtown, one of the city's better-earning areas.

Size matters in this market, and so does what you do with it. Across the market, gross yield climbs with every bedroom: a four-bedroom-plus home returns more than a third more of its purchase price each year than a one-bedroom does, and a studio earns back under half the yield of a one-bedroom. Still, the range inside each size is wide enough that BNBCalc's figures show the strongest one-bedrooms clearing what a middling three-bedroom brings in, which is why pricing, fit-out and management decide nearly as much as the floor plan.

Inside the city the size question mostly answers itself. More than four in five listings on licensable land have two bedrooms or fewer, and hardly any have four, which is what you'd expect from downtown and mixed-use buildings. The big-house end of that yield curve belongs to the suburbs.

You'll be pricing against plenty of people who run rentals for a living, since a large share of this market sits with them rather than with somebody letting a spare room three weekends a year. A manager takes the turnovers and the small-hours phone calls off your hands, and the Salt Lake City property management roundup sets out who works this market. Inside the city the license can't sit with the manager, because the ordinance only licenses an owner or someone with the sole right to occupy the unit.

Is the Salt Lake City Airbnb Market Oversaturated?

No, not market-wide. The listing count finished the year about where it started, and a wave of new competition would've shown up there before anywhere else.

Metric	Year-over-year change
Average nightly rate	+20%
Purchase price	+2%
Booking lead time	Down
Occupancy	−5%
Active supply	Roughly flat

BNBCalc data covering every listing tracked in this market, September 2025 through August 2026 against September 2024 through August 2025, rounded. Each change is relative to the year before, so occupancy's −5% means the rate itself fell by about a twentieth, not by five percentage points. Booking lead time shows direction without a figure, because the size of that move isn't settled; any measure whose direction this year's data can't pin down is left out altogether. Purchase price follows home values rather than listings.

What moved was price. Average nightly rates rose about 20% over the year while occupancy slipped about 5%, which is the reverse of what hosts under real competitive pressure do, because they discount to win the calendar. I can't tell from these figures whether the higher rates cost those bookings or something else did. Either way, that isn't crowding. The best check you've got is the occupancy of listings like the one you're weighing, looked at again every few months.

Inside the city the new license pushes supply the same way. Roughly three in five of the city's current listings sit on land where no license can be issued, so the licensed field there should end up smaller than the one these figures describe, not bigger.

Bookings also drifted closer to arrival over the year, averaging roughly 34 days ahead of check-in over the twelve months to August. That average hides a lot, since a February ski weekend and a September Tuesday don't fill on the same runway, so you'll want to reset last-minute discounts each season. Minimum stays give you less room inside the city, where the ordinance puts the floor at two nights.

When Is Salt Lake City's Peak Airbnb Season?

Salt Lake City runs on two seasons, and they pay in different ways: winter on the rate, summer on the number of nights sold.

Month	Occupancy	Avg nightly rate
Sep 2025	41%	$181
Oct 2025	40%	$183
Nov 2025	31%	$178
Dec 2025	36%	$225
Jan 2026	38%	$226
Feb 2026	49%	$257
Mar 2026	48%	$239
Apr 2026	41%	$192
May 2026	45%	$203
Jun 2026	47%	$208
Jul 2026	50%	$222
Aug 2026	41%	$198

BNBCalc market data across every listing in the market, one row per month from September 2025 through August 2026. The two columns are averaged separately, so read each on its own terms.

February averages $257 a night, the highest of any month, and November averages $178, the lowest, so the same home earns about 45% more per night in February than in November. December through March all average roughly $225 or more, and July, the dearest month outside that run, stops at $222.

Winter doesn't fill its calendar evenly, though. December and January sit at 36% and 38% occupancy, below both June and July, and the nights only arrive in February and March, which fill 49% and 48% and lead every other month from September through April. November is the emptiest of those eight months at 31%.

Summer is the other season. June and July fill 47% and 50% of their nights at $208 and $222, and July is the fullest month from May through August, so a summer calendar earns its keep on volume at rates a notch below winter's.

Hold the license's 200-night cap against that shape. Two hundred nights works out near 55% of the year, while those twelve monthly rows average out to 42% occupancy, so a typical calendar never reaches the cap. Most units won't feel it, but the ones booking well ahead of the market's pace will, and if yours is one of them, remember that every cheap November night you sell is a night you can't sell in February.

On a smaller scale, the week has a shape too. Friday sits roughly 22% over an ordinary day on occupancy and Saturday about 19%, while Monday runs roughly 18% under it, yet Friday's rate is only about 13% over average. Demand swings a good deal harder than price does across the week, so make sure your pricing rules charge a weekend premium that matches it.

Where Should You Buy an Airbnb in Salt Lake City?

Whichever season you're chasing, the first choice in this market is which city, and only then which street, because most of the market sits outside Salt Lake City. I've built two tables off boundary sets that don't match, the city's own community areas and then the Census places around it, so only compare rows within the same table.

Inside Salt Lake City

The city splits itself into eleven official planning community areas, so I sorted every measurable listing within the boundary into whichever area holds it, then ranked the eight with enough data behind them. The last column adds the eligibility check, meaning roughly what share of each area's listings sit in one of the seventeen districts where a license can now be issued.

Rank	Community area	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue	Listings on licensable zoning (approx.)
1	Capitol Hill	$28,865	$214	36%	$38,598	40%
2	Downtown	$24,280	$198	36%	$32,514	75%
3	East Bench	$20,718	$157	30%	$28,313	None
4	Sugar House	$20,263	$184	31%	$30,661	15%
5	West Salt Lake	$18,982	$211	29%	$27,693	15%
6	Central Community (Central City to Liberty Wells)	$18,747	$158	34%	$25,858	30%
7	Northwest	$17,002	$153	34%	$23,200	10%
8	Avenues	$14,577	$143	31%	$20,924	Under 5%

BNBCalc 2026 listing data placed inside Salt Lake City's official planning community area boundaries, trailing twelve months. Revenue, rate and occupancy are medians; the 75th-percentile column is where a community area's strongest quarter of listings begins. Each column is worked out separately, so they don't multiply together, and areas with too little data to measure reliably are left out. The last column lays the same listings over the city's own zoning map, restricted to the seventeen districts Chapter 5.13 names, and is rounded to the nearest five points because listing locations are approximate.

Capitol Hill leads at $28,865, more than a third above the city's own median of $21,218. Downtown takes second place on one of the two deepest pools of listings in the city. It's also the row I'd lean on if you need a license, since about three-quarters of its listings sit on licensable land against roughly two in five in Capitol Hill.

Further down, the share falls away quickly, starting with Central Community, where about one in three listings sit on eligible land. From there Sugar House and West Salt Lake drop to about one in seven, Northwest to about one in nine, and the Avenues and the East Bench have next to none between them. East Bench and West Salt Lake also rest on thin samples, so treat those two rows as a hint and no more.

Be careful with that last column. The platforms only give a listing's location approximately, and the zoning districts change from one block to the next, so read an area's share as a ranking rather than a count. Before you write an offer, look the parcel up yourself. The city's Short-Term Rentals page on slc.gov links to its zoning map, where you can type in an address and see the district. A licensable district still isn't a license, either, since the building cap and the one-per-person rule come after it.

The occupancy column needs its own caution. Every figure there is the middle listing of its own area, taken from each listing's own twelve-month record. So don't set it beside the 42% in the monthly figures, which come from a different measurement across a wider set of listings. It's good for ranking areas against each other and not much else.

A bigger caution covers the whole table. No license existed to hold in this city until July 2026, so these rows describe what listings earned mostly under the old rules, not where the city will license one now. For daily life in these areas, this guide to where to buy in Salt Lake City takes that on, but it was written before the license existed, so check any area it suggests against the zoning map first.

The Rest of the Market

Do the suburbs pay better? On the median, no. A typical listing outside the city limits earned $20,984, a shade under the city's $21,218, so the real answer sits in the gaps between individual cities.

Rank	City or area	Median annual revenue	Median nightly rate	Median occupancy	75th-percentile revenue
1	Cottonwood Heights	$32,580	$350	29%	$48,169
2	South Salt Lake	$23,429	$186	36%	$29,056
3	Sandy	$23,178	$201	32%	$35,343
4	Millcreek	$23,054	$201	34%	$35,725
5	South Jordan	$22,883	$202	33%	$34,535
6	Salt Lake City	$21,218	$177	34%	$30,434
7	Draper	$20,862	$166	35%	$27,175
8	Lehi	$19,946	$174	33%	$25,897
9	Ogden	$18,743	$168	32%	$23,575
10	Wolf Creek	$18,488	$255	24%	$28,328
11	West Valley City	$18,174	$176	30%	$25,943

BNBCalc 2026 listing data placed inside US Census place boundaries, trailing twelve months, for the places holding the deepest pools of listings in this market, where all columns are medians except the 75th percentile and each is worked out separately. The eleven places sit in three of the market's nine counties: Salt Lake, Weber and Utah. Wolf Creek is a Census area in Weber County rather than a city, and Lehi sits in Utah County.

Cottonwood Heights runs away with it at $32,580, roughly half again the market's median revenue, on a $350 median nightly rate that nothing else on the table gets near. It sits at the mouth of Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, which puts Alta, Snowbird, Solitude and Brighton all within a drive up one canyon or the other.

Before you act on that row, read Cottonwood Heights' own rulebook, because it's stricter than the revenue makes it sound. The city licenses short-term rentals only through a conditional use permit, and the permit runs through a monthly administrative hearing you have to attend. On top of that, its own page says approved locations are mostly multi-family homes inside private condominium or homeowners' association communities, and its published fees, as of August 2026, are $350 for the conditional use application and $170 for the business license.

I couldn't work out from the city's own material how much of that $32,580 comes from condos that could hold a permit. For now, then, the row tells you what gets earned in Cottonwood Heights rather than what you'd be allowed to earn there.

Wolf Creek reads the opposite way. Only Cottonwood Heights beats its $255 median rate, and its 24% median occupancy is the lowest on the table. That's the profile of a resort second-home pocket, and Wolf Creek is one, a Census area in Weber County's Ogden Valley well north of the city and deep in ski country, whose owners plainly aren't chasing volume.

Salt Lake City itself lands sixth of eleven, and I'd put most of that down to house size. Size for size, a city listing out-earns a suburban one at one, two and three bedrooms. The catch is that the typical city listing has a single bedroom while most of the suburbs on this table run to three, which drags the city's median below what its location deserves.

Whatever you settle on, check that city's rules before you assume they travel with you. Utah law hands short-term rental regulation to cities and counties, so the rulebook changes at every boundary. Brighton, up at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon, caps licenses at 15% of the homes in two of its neighborhoods and fines unlicensed operators $650 a day, and the Salt Lake County guide covers the unincorporated pockets in between. Notice who isn't on either table, too: Park City. It's counted as a market of its own, so none of these figures reach it.

Which Amenities Make the Most Money in Salt Lake City?

Inside the unit, a hot tub is the one amenity the model puts a public number on. BNBCalc's amenity model attaches about 20% more revenue to a Salt Lake City hot tub, which isn't much of a shock where a good deal of the demand arrives cold and tired off a chairlift.

Eight more amenities carry a signal the model can measure here, but their values aren't public. Treat this as a shortlist, then, in no particular order: a gym, a sauna, bicycles, an EV charger, a pool, letting guests bring pets, lake access and a barbecue. Size changes which one leads, too. At one and two bedrooms a gym comes out on top of the model's ranking, whereas at three bedrooms and up the hot tub does, so a downtown one-bedroom and a canyon-adjacent house want different money spent on them.

A handful of fixtures get dropped from the model on purpose, since anything nearly every listing already has can't separate a strong one from a weak one.

Cleaning fees deserve a minute as well. Across the market, listings that charge one average about $122 a stay, and spread over the whole market, chargers and non-chargers alike, cleaning brings in about $1,620 a year. Nearly all of it walks straight back out the door with whoever cleans, so charge what the turnover costs you and stop there.

Is Airbnb Legal in Salt Lake City?

Yes, for the first time. The catch is that the address has to sit in one of seventeen zoning districts, and as of September 2026 that's the first thing to settle before any of the earnings figures apply to you.

Before July 1, 2026 there was no license to get. The city's zoning office had long said that no ordinance allowed short-term rentals, leaving nightly stays to hotels, hostels and bed and breakfasts in commercial and mixed-use zones, and a 2018 note saying so is still on the city's document site. Then Ordinance 38 of 2026, passed on June 16 and signed by the mayor on July 1, changed that by adding Chapter 5.13 to the city code.

That chapter treats any home rented for a fee for stays shorter than thirty days as a short-term rental. Running one without a valid license is unlawful, and so is advertising it or letting somebody else use your place that way.

Every unit needs a license of its own, and it doesn't move with you. Sell the place and the license ends with the sale, so the buyer starts again from the beginning.

The zoning list is the gate, since a license only goes to property zoned MU2, MU3, MU5, MU6, MU8, MU11, M1, M1-A, D1, D2, D3, D4, GMU, RP, BP, A or JRF. In plain language, that's downtown and the Gateway, mixed-use and light-manufacturing land, Research Park, Business Park, the airport and the Jordan River Fairpark.

By contrast, the city's zoning code lists its residential districts separately, as the FR, R-1, SR, R-2, RMF, RB, R-MU and RO series, and not one of those appears on the licensing list. Unfortunately for most people reading this, that takes single-family homes and apartments in residential zones off the table.

Two further limits settle it for a lot of buyers. Nobody can hold more than one Salt Lake City short-term rental license, and companies under the same ownership count as one person, so a small portfolio is out by design. Buildings are capped too, since a building of ten units or fewer gets one license at most and anything larger tops out at 10% of its units. If your building sits right on that line, call the city before you count on either number, because its own web page words the same cap as more than eleven units rather than more than ten.

Clear all that and the day-to-day rules get specific. Every stay has to run at least two consecutive nights, and a licensed home can't be rented more than 200 nights within an annual license period. The city's web page says per calendar year instead, so if your license year doesn't start in January, ask Business Licensing which count it'll hold you to. You also owe one off-street parking stall kept free for your guests.

Then there's the local contact. That person has to live or keep an office in Salt Lake County, answer around the clock including by text, and act on a city complaint within two hours. Your license number belongs in every advertisement on every platform, and it gets posted inside the place and by the front door along with that contact's phone and email. Make sure to keep records of the nights you sell, because the city can ask to see them.

Some applications fail before any of that matters. An unresolved nuisance citation, an outstanding building or zoning violation under Titles 18 or 21A of the city code, or a Dangerous Buildings designation will each stop a license. Where a lease or an association governs the unit, the written consent has to come in with the application as well.

On cost, the ordinance points to the city's consolidated fee schedule and makes the fee payable every year. The schedule the council adopted for fiscal 2027, Ordinance 29 of 2026, charges a short-term rental $342 per unit on top of the base business license fee, which went from $193 to $198 in September 2026. The copy the city links from its short-term rental page returned a not-found error when I checked in September 2026, so confirm the figure with Business Licensing before you budget it.

Operating without a license carries a $1,000 civil penalty that accrues every seven calendar days it continues. Licensed hosts face strikes instead: three verified nuisance or operational violations inside twelve months can suspend a license for the rest of that period, and if that happens three periods running, the city can revoke it, which locks both the dwelling and the licensee out for at least three years.

State law also hands the city two more tools. Under Utah Code 10-8-85.4, as amended by House Bill 256 in 2025, a city may ask a booking platform to take down a listing that breaks its licensing or zoning rules, naming the URL and the reason in its notice. It may also use a listing as evidence that a rental took place, as long as it has other information to back that up.

As for tax, it applies to the whole booking, cleaning fee included. A Salt Lake City stay carries 7.07% in transient room tax. That's the county's 4.25%, the state's 1.32%, a half-point county tourism levy and the city's own 1%, and another 8.45% in combined sales tax lands on top, so a guest pays roughly 15.5% over the listed price. Those are the Utah State Tax Commission's rates in effect as of January 2026. The ordinance also makes collecting and remitting the transient room tax one of the license's operating rules, and the Utah lodging tax guide walks through which return goes where.

Application steps, forms and phone numbers all sit in BNBCalc's Salt Lake City regulation guide.

Where Does This Salt Lake City Airbnb Data Come From?

That guide handles the paperwork, whereas the trend table and the monthly rates and occupancy you've read so far came out of BNBCalc Markets, BNBCalc's workbench for holding several cities up against each other while you decide where to hunt. Its Seasonality view spreads a market's year across the calendar, and because Salt Lake City earns in two seasons that pay in different ways, it's the view I'd open first for each city on your shortlist.

How Do You Estimate Airbnb Revenue for a Salt Lake City Property?

None of that prices a specific unit, and inside the city the unit you'd be buying is most likely an apartment or condo in a downtown or mixed-use building.

Start on the Salt Lake City market page, where today's revenue, occupancy and month-by-month pattern live. If Utah as a whole is still up for grabs, the best Utah markets by gross yield puts this market in order against the rest of them. Then put a real purchase price, real loan terms, real HOA dues and real running costs for one specific address into BNBCalc and see what it returns.

Hold that answer against four Salt Lake City realities before you believe it. Zoning comes first. It isn't negotiable, so look the parcel up on the city's zoning map before you write an offer, and read the suburb's own rules if you're looking outside the city. Budget month by month. February pays about 45% more per night than November while summer fills its nights at lower rates, so a year built on the average month will be wrong in both directions. Inside the city, remember the 200-night ceiling and the $342-a-unit license fee. And don't underwrite another 20% rate year, because rates that jump that far in twelve months rarely repeat the trick.

When a city draws a licensing line through a market that grew up without one, the earnings from before the line describe a crowd that's about to thin out. Nobody can say yet how many hosts on the wrong side will stop. Still, each one who does leaves booked nights behind for the hosts who can hold a license, and my guess is that's where the first surprise in the numbers shows up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Average Airbnb Income in Salt Lake City?

The median Salt Lake City listing earned $21,218 over the trailing twelve months on BNBCalc's 2026 listing data, and the median across the wider market, suburbs included, earned $21,044. The strongest quarter of city listings earned $30,434 or more. On the land where the city's new short-term rental license can be issued, the median was $23,800.

Is Airbnb Still Profitable in Salt Lake City in 2026?

It can be, though only for property in one of the seventeen zoning districts where the city will issue a license, none of which is residential. The median listing on that land earned $23,800 over the trailing twelve months before costs, and the license costs $342 per unit a year on top of the base business license fee. Across the whole market, the latest year held the listing count about level and lifted average nightly rates about 20%, while occupancy came down about 5%. Whether a particular unit profits then comes down to its purchase price, HOA dues and running costs, measured against the 200-night ceiling.

What Is the Best Month for Airbnb in Salt Lake City?

February was the strongest month on price across all listings, averaging $257 a night against November's $178, the year's lowest, and December through March all averaged roughly $225 or more. Summer is the second season, and it's built on nights sold, with June and July filling 47% and 50% of their nights at $208 and $222. Across the week, Friday and Saturday nights fill best.

Do You Need a License to Run an Airbnb in Salt Lake City?

Yes. Since July 1, 2026, Chapter 5.13 of the Salt Lake City Code, enacted by Ordinance 38 of 2026, makes it unlawful to operate, maintain, advertise or allow a dwelling to be used as a short-term rental without a valid license, and each dwelling unit needs its own. The city's fiscal 2027 fee schedule, Ordinance 29 of 2026, sets the short-term rental fee at $342 per unit on top of the base business license fee, which rose from $193 to $198 in September 2026, and the license renews annually.

Can You Buy an Investment Property in Salt Lake City and Run It as an Airbnb?

Only in the right zone, and only one of them. A license can be issued for property zoned MU2, MU3, MU5, MU6, MU8, MU11, M1, M1-A, D1, D2, D3, D4, GMU, RP, BP, A or JRF, and no residential district appears on that list. No person may hold more than one Salt Lake City short-term rental license, with entities under common ownership treated as one person, and buildings of ten units or fewer are limited to a single license.

Which Salt Lake City Neighborhood Is Best for Short-Term Rentals?

Measured on 2026 BNBCalc listing data within Salt Lake City's official planning community areas, Capitol Hill posts the highest median revenue at $28,865, more than a third above the city median, yet only around two in five listings there sit on land the new license reaches. Downtown follows at $24,280, with about three-quarters of its listings on licensable land, which makes it the strongest in-city option for a licensed host. The Avenues is lowest of the eight measurable areas at $14,577, and almost none of its listings sit in an eligible district. These figures cover twelve months that ran mostly before licensing began.

Which Suburbs Near Salt Lake City Earn the Most on Airbnb?

Cottonwood Heights leads the wider market with a $32,580 median, roughly half again the market's median revenue, on a $350 median nightly rate. It sits at the mouth of Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. South Salt Lake, Sandy, Millcreek and South Jordan bunch together between about $22,900 and $23,400. Each city sets its own rules: Cottonwood Heights licenses short-term rentals through a conditional use permit, mostly in condominium and homeowners' association communities.

How Much Is the Airbnb Tax in Salt Lake City?

A guest booking a Salt Lake City short-term rental pays roughly 15.5% on top of the listed price and cleaning fee. That's 7.07% in transient room tax, made up of Salt Lake County's 4.25%, the state's 1.32%, a 0.5% county tourism levy and the city's own 1%, plus 8.45% in combined sales tax. Those are Utah State Tax Commission rates in effect as of January 2026, and the city's license rules require the transient room tax to be collected and remitted.