This page prices the cost structure of a short-term rental — platform fee, per-turnover cleaning, management, furnishing — and computes the break-even occupancy your specific numbers require. It deliberately does not publish a national occupancy or ADR figure: no dataset in this site's source registry verifies one, so none is asserted here. Compare your own break-even against comparable active listings you can actually see.
Why this page won't give you an occupancy number
Most short-term-rental content publishes a national average occupancy or ADR figure. This one doesn't, on purpose. Neither figure has a verifiable primary source behind it in this site's research — the industry data that circulates (from booking platforms, listing aggregators, and STR-specific analytics firms) is proprietary, sampled inconsistently, or simply not published as a citable dataset the way a government release is. Rather than round a marketing statistic into something that looks authoritative, this calculator asks you to supply your own ADR and occupancy — ideally taken from comparable active listings you can see directly, not a citywide average that may not describe your neighborhood, property type, or season at all.
What this calculator does compute reliably is the break-even occupancy your own inputs require — the threshold at which your specific cost structure stops losing money — because that's arithmetic on numbers you control, not a market estimate borrowed from somewhere unverifiable.
A full worked example
A $310,000 property, 20% down ($62,000), $9,000 closing costs, $18,000 furnishing, financed at the Freddie Mac 30-year average of 6.71% (week ending September 3, 2026). Suppose a host models a $220 ADR at 55% occupancy — a scenario input, not a benchmark — with a 4-night average stay, $120 cleaning per turnover, the current 15.5% Airbnb host-only platform fee, 20% short-term management, $800/year supplies, $2,400/year utilities, and $6,200/year in fixed costs (tax, insurance, HOA).
Break-even occupancy on these same numbers: fixed costs ($19,222 debt service + $800 + $2,400 + $6,200 = $28,622) divided by the contribution margin per full year of occupancy ($220 × 365 × (1 − 0.355) − (365 ÷ 4) × $120 = $40,844), giving a break-even of about 70.1%. The modeled 55% occupancy sits well below that — which is exactly why the cash flow above came out negative. That gap, not the revenue figure, is the number that should decide whether this specific deal is worth pursuing.
What the same property would do as a long-term rental
The calculator runs the identical property as a conventional long-term rental for comparison. At a $1,750/month comparable rent and 5% vacancy: effective gross rent = $1,750 × 12 × 0.95 = $19,950. Less 10% long-term management ($1,995) and the same $6,200 in fixed costs, NOI comes to $11,755. Against the identical $19,222 in annual debt service, that's an annual cash flow of −$7,467 — worse than the STR's −$6,158 by about $1,309/year in this scenario, though neither configuration clears zero on these particular assumptions. Whichever property you're modeling, that comparison is the point: run both, and let the gap between them — not either number alone — inform the decision.
For context on the comparable long-term rent input specifically: the national rental vacancy rate was 7.3% and the median asking rent was $1,531 in the Census Bureau's Q2 2026 Housing Vacancy Survey, and rent of primary residence rose 2.9% over the 12 months to July 2026 per BLS CPI. Those are national figures, not a substitute for a local comp — use them only as a rough sanity check on a long-term rent assumption, never as the number itself.
Methodology
Revenue, cost, cash flow, cap rate, cash-on-cash, break-even occupancy, and the long-term-rental comparison are computed exactly as this calculator's own module does, using this article's own stated scenario inputs — none of which is presented as a market benchmark. The mortgage payment uses standard 30-year fixed amortization at the Freddie Mac PMMS 30-year average for the week ending September 3, 2026. The 15.5% platform fee is this calculator module's own documented constant. National rent and vacancy figures (Census HVS Q2 2026, BLS CPI) are cited only as context for the long-term-rental comparison's rent input, not as a short-term rental benchmark — no occupancy or ADR figure is sourced anywhere in this article because none could be verified.
Sources
- Freddie Mac — Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) — accessed 2026-09-07
- US Census Bureau — Housing Vacancy Survey, Q2 2026 — accessed 2026-09-07
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics — CPI, Rent of Primary Residence — accessed 2026-09-07