Best Places to Buy an Airbnb: How to Choose a Market

Last updated: August 12, 2026

Search for the best places to buy an Airbnb and you will find city lists, most of them a year old, none of them written about the money you actually have or the property you can actually finance. This guide takes the other approach: the six criteria that decide whether a market is worth buying into, the arithmetic that tells you whether a specific property clears its costs, and the one risk that can turn a good purchase into an illegal one overnight. It will not hand you a ranked list of cities, and the reason for that is the first section.

What makes a good place to buy an Airbnb?

Short answer: a market where the purchase price is low relative to the nightly rate it supports, where short-term letting is clearly permitted and likely to stay permitted, and where supply is not growing faster than demand. High occupancy is not on that list, because a full calendar at a competed-down rate is exactly what a saturating market looks like on the way down.

• Price-to-rate ratio — what a night earns against what the property costs to buy
• Regulatory certainty — permitted today, and unlikely to be restricted next year
• Supply trend — flat or falling listing counts beat a busy market with new listings appearing monthly
• Demand shape — weekday plus weekend beats weekend-only, whatever the annual average says
• Operating cost — cleaning rates, management availability, distance from you
• Exit liquidity — whether the property sells to an ordinary buyer if short-term letting stops being viable

Why this guide does not rank cities

A ranked table of cities would be the easiest thing to publish here and the least useful thing you could act on, for three reasons that apply to every such list you will read.

• They describe the past. A ranking is built on last year’s data, and the markets it names attract the buyers who erode the returns it measured
• A city is not a market. The part of a top-ranked city you can afford is rarely the part that produced the ranking
• They ignore your constraints. Your budget, your financing, your distance from the property and your appetite for regulatory risk change the answer more than the city does

What follows is the method those lists skip: how to test a specific market and a specific property yourself, in an afternoon, with numbers you can defend.

How much does an Airbnb property need to earn?

Short answer: enough to clear the platform fee, the cleaning, the running costs and the financing, with a margin wide enough to survive the months it earns nothing. That is a higher bar than gross revenue suggests, and it is why the arithmetic below eliminates most candidates before you look at a single photograph. All figures are illustrative; the structure is the point.

• Gross annual revenue: average nightly rate x nights sold — $165 x 190 nights = $31,350
• Minus platform fee at the host-only rate, roughly 15.5 percent = −$4,859
• Minus cleaning paid out, 60 turnovers x $85 = −$5,100
• Minus utilities, wifi, supplies, insurance: −$4,800
• Net before financing: $16,591
• Against a $280,000 purchase: a 5.9 percent net yield before mortgage costs

In plain English: the nightly rate is the headline and the turnover count is the tax. Every stay costs you a clean, so two hundred one-night bookings and fifty four-night bookings produce the same gross revenue and very different profits. When you compare two markets, compare the net, and count the turnovers.

How do I know if short-term letting is allowed there?

Short answer: check before you make an offer, not after, and check the city rather than the country. Some places require a permit and a registration number, some cap the number of licences, some allow letting only in a primary residence, and some do not regulate it at all. The answer is local, it changes, and it is the single risk that can make a property unusable for the purpose you bought it for.

• Where to look: the city or municipal government site, usually under short-term rental, tourist accommodation or lodging licensing
• What to establish: whether permits exist, whether new ones are still being issued, and whether there is a cap
• The building layer: an HOA, a condo board or a lease can forbid it even where the city allows it
• Airbnb’s own summary of host obligations by area sits in its responsible hosting guidance, which is a starting point rather than legal advice

A capped market is not a bad market. For the hosts already holding a permit it is the most protective condition there is, because supply cannot grow. The danger is buying in expecting to join them and finding the list closed.

Meet Nadia: two properties, same yield, different decision

Nadia had a fixed budget and two candidates. All figures below are illustrative.

• Property A: $240,000, coastal, $210 average rate, 140 nights = $29,400 gross
• Property B: $265,000, university city, $140 average rate, 220 nights = $30,800 gross
• Turnovers: A ran 42 stays, B ran 71 — a difference of 29 cleans, about $2,465
• Seasonality: A earned 78 percent of its revenue in four months; B earned evenly all year
• What decided it: not yield, which was close, but cash flow — B paid its mortgage every month, A did not

Before: Nadia was comparing annual gross revenue and finding the two almost identical. After: she compared the months, and found that one property had eight months where it did not cover its own costs. Why it wins: an annual figure hides the shape of the year, and it is the shape that decides whether you can hold the asset through a bad season.

How to test a market before you buy

Short answer: sample it by hand. Pick a window 45 to 75 days out, find ten listings genuinely comparable to what you would buy, count how many of their next 30 nights are unavailable, and note the spread between the cheapest and dearest. Repeat a month later and compare listing counts. That is a defensible read on demand and on supply growth, and it costs nothing.

The full method, and where each source of occupancy data stops being reliable, is in how to find Airbnb occupancy rates. What separates a durable market from one that merely looks busy is set out in which markets have the highest Airbnb occupancy rates, and the reason city-level figures mislead is in Airbnb occupancy rate by city and zip code.

Which type of market suits which buyer

Read this as an investment filter rather than a ranking. The best places for Airbnb investment are wherever the price-to-rate ratio is currently favourable and the regulatory position is durable — a combination that is a moment in a market rather than a permanent property of a city, which is exactly why published investment lists age badly.

Notice that none of these rows is better than the others in the abstract. They are matched to a buyer, and the mismatch that causes the most regret is a seasonal property bought by someone whose budget assumes twelve even months.

What about buying to run rental arbitrage instead?

The model is explained in full in what Airbnb rental arbitrage is, the arithmetic in is it profitable, and the two permissions it depends on in is rental arbitrage legal. The short version: it removes the purchase price and replaces it with a fixed monthly obligation and no asset.

Short answer: that is a different business and it does not involve buying. Rental arbitrage means leasing a property long-term and re-letting it short-term, which removes the purchase price from the equation and replaces it with the landlord’s permission — in writing, because most residential leases forbid subletting outright. If your reason for buying is that you want to operate rather than to own, that route deserves its own analysis rather than a footnote here.

How much cash do I need beyond the purchase price?

Short answer: budget for furnishing, a working reserve and the licensing before you budget for the mortgage. A property that is bought but not equipped earns nothing, and the gap between completion and first booking is where under-capitalised purchases fail.

• Furnishing and equipping: the largest post-purchase line, and the one where buying twice costs more than buying well once
• Linen and consumables: three full sets per bed, not one
• Photography: the cheapest line with the biggest effect on how often you appear
• Self check-in: a lockbox or smart lock, which removes the most common reason a guest calls you
• Insurance that covers paying guests: a standard residential policy usually does not
• A reserve of several months of costs: a new listing places poorly until it has reviews, so the first sixty days are a cost of entry rather than a forecast

That last point is the one buyers underestimate. Your first two months are not representative of anything, because the platform has no history to rank you on. Model the year from month three onwards and treat what comes before as setup.

Best places to own an Airbnb: is owning different from buying?

Short answer: the purchase decision and the ownership experience are two different questions, and the best places to own an Airbnb are not always the best places to buy one. Buying is judged on entry price and yield; owning is judged on what the property demands from you every week for years afterwards.

• Best cities to own an Airbnb long term: places with steady year-round demand, a stable regulatory position and a supply of reliable cleaners — dull markets age well
• Best places to buy today: wherever the price-to-rate ratio is currently favourable, which is a moment rather than a permanent condition
• Where the two diverge: a seasonal resort can be an excellent purchase and an exhausting thing to own, because four months carry twelve and every one of them is intense
• Distance: irrelevant to a spreadsheet, decisive to an owner — a property you cannot reach in a day needs systems and people you do not yet have

If you intend to hold for years rather than flip, weight the ownership criteria above the purchase ones. A slightly worse entry price in a market you can actually operate beats a bargain you come to dread.

Myths about buying an Airbnb

Myth: buy in the city with the highest occupancy.

Reality: high occupancy often means rates have been competed down until a full calendar is the only way the numbers work. Compare revenue per available night, and compare supply growth.

Myth: a published ranking of the best cities is a shortlist.

Reality: it is a description of last year that has already attracted the buyers who change it. Use it to generate candidates, never to choose between them.

Myth: regulation is something to check after the offer.

Reality: it is the one factor that can make the property unusable for its intended purpose, and it is free to check first.

Mistakes buyers make

• Budgeting from gross revenue. The platform fee, the cleans, the supplies and the empty months come out of that number, and together they are usually more than a first-time buyer assumes.
• Ignoring turnover count. Two markets with identical gross revenue can differ by thirty cleans a year, which is real money and real coordination.
• Buying a seasonal property on an annual average. Twelve months of costs against four months of revenue is a cash-flow problem no yield calculation shows.
• Skipping the building rules. A city can permit short-term letting while your HOA, condo board or freeholder forbids it, and the second one wins.
• Forgetting the exit. If short-term letting is restricted where you buy, the property has to work as a long-term rental or as an ordinary sale. A place that only makes sense as an Airbnb is a concentrated bet.

What happens after you buy

The purchase is the part everyone researches and the smaller half of the work. What decides whether the numbers above survive contact with reality is the operation: replying to guests at the hour they message, filling the one and two-night gaps between bookings, getting reviews posted inside the window, and dispatching a cleaner without a phone call.

• First, the setup order: how to start an Airbnb covers what to do in which sequence
• What the platform does and does not do for you: how Airbnb works for owners
• What your listing has to achieve: Airbnb listing tips that actually change bookings
• How to lift the occupancy you modelled: how to increase your Airbnb occupancy rate, and what counts as a good rate for your market
• Running it from elsewhere: managing an Airbnb remotely

If you are buying a second or third property, the arithmetic that changes is not the purchase but the coordination, because it multiplies while your attention does not. BnBGenius automates the parts that repeat — replies around the clock, gap-night and extension offers through the Upsell Engine, cleaning tasks created on checkout, and reviews posted the day after — at $10 per month flat for any number of listings, with the first 500 messages free. It does not choose your market, price your nights or meet your guests at the door. Where that sits against paying a manager a share of revenue is worked through in AI property management for 1-5 Airbnb listings.

Where to buy an Airbnb: the short version

Generate candidates from anywhere, including the rankings. Then test each one yourself: is it legal and likely to stay legal, is supply flat, does midweek sell, what does a night earn against what the property costs, how many turnovers does that imply, and does the property still make sense if short-term letting stops being an option. A market that clears all six is a better buy than one that tops a list, and you can check all six in an afternoon without paying for anything.