Top Airbnb Investment Investment Locations

Real Estate Consultant · Charleston, SC · Member since 2024 · 29 posts · 9 votes

Port Arthur, TX - “Best Place to Invest in Short Term Rentals 2026"
465 active listings.
Occupancy 72%
35.8% required a 30 night minimum stay.
49.1% were full time STRs.
29.5% were private rooms in a home.
https://www.airdna.co/vacation-rental-data/app/us/texas/port...

Rockford, IL: "Best Hidden Gem Airbnb Location 2026"
389 active listings.
Occupancy 66%
36.6% 30 night minimum stay.
53.4% full time STRs.
12.7% private room in a home.
No PMs in the market
https://www.airdna.co/vacation-rental-data/app/us/illinois/r...

Solid places to invest but I can't be the only one raising my eyebrows.. Mid term rentals and pad-splits are not short term/vacation rentals.

....Right?

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Michael Eskenasy

Investor · Pacific Northwest · Member since 2026 · 531 posts · 298 votes

18h

Sarah, you’re catching the right problem.

This isn’t really about whether Port Arthur is secretly a great vacation market.

It’s a denominator problem.

If 36% of the inventory requires 30+ nights, and another big chunk is private rooms, then "72% occupancy" may be perfectly accurate while being almost useless to someone trying to buy a traditional whole-home STR.

Those are different businesses sharing one average.

Different customer.

Different length of stay.

Different turnover.

Different pricing.

Different regulation.

Different operating cost.

So before I believed any "top STR market" list, I'd split the market apart and rerun it.

Whole-home under 30 days against whole-home under 30 days.

Same bedroom count.

Same availability profile.

Same price tier.

Then look at occupancy, ADR, RevPAR and actual annual revenue inside that cohort.

If Port Arthur still looks great after that, now you’ve found something interesting.

If it falls apart, the market wasn’t great. The classification was.

We run into this constantly in property data. A number can be completely correct and still answer the wrong question.

That’s usually the first thing we try to break.

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John UnderwoodPro Member
Investor · Greer, SC · Member since 2014 · 13k+ posts · 17k+ votes
20h
You can do a search and get different results on each search.
It comes down to finding a location where there is a reason for people to go to that area.
Then you need a good location in that area.
Then you need a great property with great ammenities.
Takes a lot to identify that great investment.
1 Reply
- Sarah Vann
  OP
  Real Estate Consultant · Charleston, SC · Member since 2024 · 29 posts · 9 votes
  20h
  Of course... Port Arthur TX is not it (in my universe) lol
  2 Reply
- Mike GrudzienPro Member
  Lender · Eugene, OR · Member since 2019 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votes
  10h
  Quote from @Sarah Vann:
  Of course... Port Arthur TX is not it (in my universe) lol
  John hit it spot on!
  0 Reply
Mark Miles
Rental Property Investor · Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2016 · 541 posts · 715 votes
20h
The top locations got oversaturated with STR so now the "top STR" lists all list obscure locations that don't really have great demand for STR, but that's all that's left.
Imagine two lakes, one is filled with trout, one barely has any trout. The lake filled with trout is also filled with fishermen, but no one is at the other lake which has 3 trout. It’s so supremely difficult to catch a trout in the overcrowded lake, even though there’s tons of trout, because there’s barely any space to cast your line.
So now all of the “top Lake” lists tell you to go to the empty lake that has only three trout but no one fishing in it, and to hope for the best
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- Sarah Vann
  OP
  Real Estate Consultant · Charleston, SC · Member since 2024 · 29 posts · 9 votes
  19h
  @Mark Miles totally get that.. the biggest thing for me Is that both of these selections (with under 500 listings) are 35% mid/longer term rentals and are deemed the top choice for STR investing.. I may be alone in this but in my opinion STRs are under 30 days. A large portion of our industry is built around the tax benefits, regulation, pricing, etc etc for true short term rentals. The causal combining of the two is just interesting .. and definitely could skew the occupancy rates
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Michael Eskenasy
Investor · Pacific Northwest · Member since 2026 · 531 posts · 298 votes
18h
Sarah, you’re catching the right problem.
This isn’t really about whether Port Arthur is secretly a great vacation market.
It’s a denominator problem.
If 36% of the inventory requires 30+ nights, and another big chunk is private rooms, then "72% occupancy" may be perfectly accurate while being almost useless to someone trying to buy a traditional whole-home STR.
Those are different businesses sharing one average.
Different customer.
Different length of stay.
Different turnover.
Different pricing.
Different regulation.
Different operating cost.
So before I believed any "top STR market" list, I'd split the market apart and rerun it.
Whole-home under 30 days against whole-home under 30 days.
Same bedroom count.
Same availability profile.
Same price tier.
Then look at occupancy, ADR, RevPAR and actual annual revenue inside that cohort.
If Port Arthur still looks great after that, now you’ve found something interesting.
If it falls apart, the market wasn’t great. The classification was.
We run into this constantly in property data. A number can be completely correct and still answer the wrong question.
That’s usually the first thing we try to break.
1 Reply
Andrew SteffensBusiness Member
Tampa, FL · Member since 2022 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes
11h
Weekie Wachie Florida and Apollo Beach FL were named top places several years back. They are small niche areas that quickly got saturated and sunk. I would look for larger areas that can support ebbs and flow of inventory. That is one reason I like my market in Tampa FL - a growing city with a cruise port, beaches, international airport, 3 pro sports teams etc that keeps people coming and hedges against saturation a bit.
[email protected]813-563-0877
Vacation Rentals of Florida53 Reviews
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Ashish AcharyaBusiness Member
CPA, CFP®, PFS · FL · Member since 2017 · 5k+ posts · 3k+ votes
4h
Sarah, I think your concern is fair. The data may still be useful, but I would not read “Best Place to Invest in Short-Term Rentals” as meaning every listing in that market is actually operating like a traditional vacation rental.
AirDNA currently shows Port Arthur at 465 active listings and 72% occupancy, and Rockford at 389 active listings and 66% occupancy. Those headline numbers are real within AirDNA’s dataset.
But the important part is the listing mix underneath the headline. If a meaningful share of the inventory requires 30-night minimum stays, those properties are behaving much more like mid-term rentals operationally, even if the data provider groups them into a broader short-term-rental dataset. Private rooms can muddy the comparison further because their economics are very different from whole-home vacation rentals.
So before calling either market an STR "winner," I'd filter the comps down to properties that actually match the strategy: whole-home versus private room, minimum-stay requirement, bedroom count, guest profile, seasonality, ADR, and realistic operating expenses.
Port Arthur is a good example of why that matters. AirDNA reports 72% occupancy, but also only about a $95 ADR and $23K average annual revenue. That tells a different story than occupancy alone.
From the tax side, the distinction between true short stays and 30+ day stays matters too. Average guest stay can affect whether the activity is treated under the traditional rental rules or potentially outside them for passive-activity purposes. So I would not lump STR and MTR properties together when evaluating either operating returns or tax strategy.
Feel free to DM me, I'd be happy to send over a few resources that might help with comparing STR versus MTR underwriting and the tax treatment of each.
[email protected]941-914-7779
INVESTOR FRIENDLY CPA®5241 Reviews
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