Buying a St. Francisville, LA Rental in 2026: The Real Numbers

Sep 2

12 min read

Myrtles Plantation house under live oaks, St. Francisville, Louisiana, photograph

St. Francisville, Louisiana is a small short-term rental market, and that is exactly why the numbers matter more here than in a big metro. On the August 2025 through July 2026 extract from Air ROI, only 27 active listings sit in this town, and the typical listing earned about $20,301 over that year. That is a small enough sample that one bad guess about permits, one borrowed comparison city, or one recycled national statistic can send a buyer's underwriting sideways. This page sticks to what the extract and the town's own posted ordinance actually say about St. Francisville, and nothing else.

A lot of buyer research for small Louisiana towns quietly leans on the nearest big city because that is where the sample size is comfortable. For St. Francisville, the nearest reference point most people reach for is Baton Rouge, and Baton Rouge is a genuinely different market: about $16,564 typical annual revenue across 806 active listings on the same extract window. That is a larger, denser, more heavily supplied market with its own city ordinance. It is not a stand-in for a 27-listing town, and a buyer packet that blends the two numbers together is misreading both markets at once.

What follows covers the revenue, rate, and occupancy figures a buyer should actually underwrite against, the seasonal pattern the extract shows across the year, who the guest actually is, and the registration facts a buyer needs to confirm with the town before closing. None of it is guesswork, and where the source data does not answer a question cleanly, that gap is called out rather than filled in with a plausible-sounding guess.

The point of grounding a buyer packet in this town's own numbers is not caution for its own sake. A purchase decision that leans on the wrong comparison city, or on a seasonal pattern that does not match St. Francisville's actual calendar, produces a first-year cash-flow projection that is wrong in a specific, predictable direction, and that kind of miss shows up fastest in the months a buyer least expects it, which in this sample is February.

Buyers coming to St. Francisville from a bigger short-term rental market sometimes expect a 27-listing town to behave like a scaled-down version of a 500-listing market, just with smaller totals. That assumption does not hold up against this sample. A small sample means individual listings can move the average more than they would in a larger market, and it means the seasonal swings, the registration requirements, and the guest-origin pattern all deserve a closer, town-specific look rather than a proportional scale-down of a bigger city's numbers. This is not legal advice.

What the extract says about typical revenue

Typical annual revenue across St. Francisville's 27 active listings is about $20,301 on the August 2025 through July 2026 extract. That works out to an average daily rate of about $236 and an occupancy rate of about 30.0 percent, which together produce a revenue-per-available-room figure of about $64. Those four numbers belong together as one underwriting set; pulling just the ADR or just the occupancy figure out of context and applying it to a different assumption set will distort the projection.

Year over year, revenue in this sample is up about 10.3 percent, but supply is up about 50.0 percent over the same period. A buyer reading only the revenue growth number would assume demand is simply expanding. Reading both numbers together tells a more complete story: more listings are competing for guest nights than a year ago, and revenue per listing has to work harder to keep pace with that growth in supply. A new listing entering this market in 2026 is entering a meaningfully more crowded field than a listing that opened even twelve months earlier.

For a buyer building a first-year pro forma, the practical move is to underwrite against the $20,301 typical figure rather than against a best-case comparable listing pulled from a review site or a neighbor's word of mouth. A single high-performing listing can skew a casual comparison well above what the 27-listing sample actually supports, and a purchase priced against that outlier carries more downside risk than one priced against the extract's own typical figures.

Reading the seasonal calendar before you set a purchase-year budget

in this sample, November, October, and December are the strongest revenue months in St. Francisville, with November standing out as the single busiest month for booked revenue. February is the revenue hole for the year, the month where booked revenue is lowest across the extract. Occupancy tells a slightly different story: the weakest occupancy month is August, not February. Those are two different months for two different reasons, and a buyer's year-one budget should treat them as separate line items rather than assuming the slow revenue month and the slow occupancy month are the same stretch of the calendar.

That distinction matters for financing conversations too. A lender or partner who only asks about "your slow season" is asking an incomplete question in this market. The honest answer has two parts: August is when the calendar sits emptiest, and February is when the booked nights that do happen bring in the least revenue. Underwriting a purchase around a single averaged slow month understates the actual cash-flow dip a new owner should plan for.

The three strongest revenue months, November, October, and December, sit right next to the weakest occupancy month, August, on the calendar's opposite end, which is a useful reminder that the strong stretch and the weak stretch are not evenly spaced across the year. A buyer setting cash reserves for a first year of ownership should size those reserves against the actual gap between the February revenue low and the November peak, rather than assuming a flat, evenly distributed revenue curve across all twelve months.

Who is actually booking a St. Francisville stay

The extract shows most guests arriving from Baton Rouge, then New Orleans, and the typical stay length is about 2.3 nights. That is a short, regional getaway pattern, not a long-distance vacation-rental pattern. A buyer pricing a purchase around a longer average stay, or around a guest base pulled from farther away, is underwriting against a guest that this sample does not actually show booking St. Francisville listings.

About 11.1 percent of the 27 listings in this sample already set a 30-night minimum stay. A 30-night minimum is a platform setting, not evidence of long-term occupancy, and it should not be read as a second, separate class of demand layered on top of the 2.3-night guest. A buyer evaluating an existing listing with that setting in place should ask why it is there and what actual booking pattern sits behind it, rather than assuming it reflects filled nights.

A 2.3-night typical stay also shapes what a buyer should expect from turnover costs and cleaning schedules. Short regional stays mean more turnovers per booked week than a market built around week-long vacation stays, and a buyer's operating-expense line for cleaning and turnover labor should reflect that higher turnover frequency rather than a generic vacation-rental assumption borrowed from a longer-stay market elsewhere.

Registration a buyer needs to confirm before closing, not after

The Town of St. Francisville requires both an occupational license and a short-term rental permit before a listing can advertise. Under Ordinance 2024-1, the occupational-license tax has a posted minimum of $25. This page does not go beyond what the town has published on that ordinance, and a buyer should treat the exact current fee schedule and any additional short-term rental permit cost as something to confirm directly with the town's registration desk rather than something a market extract can answer.

This is a real, practical step in a purchase timeline, not a formality to handle after closing. A buyer underwriting cash flow against day-one bookings needs the license and permit status resolved before the first guest checks in, and the safest way to build that into a purchase timeline is to confirm current registration status with the town directly rather than assuming a prior owner's paperwork transfers with the sale.

This page does not carry a specific short-term rental permit fee figure, because the town's own ordinance page used for this research did not publish one alongside the $25 occupational-license minimum. Rather than estimate a number that has not been confirmed, the honest instruction here is for a buyer to ask the registration desk directly what the current combined cost of both the occupational license and the short-term rental permit actually is before finalizing a purchase budget.

Keeping Baton Rouge on its own line in a buyer packet

Baton Rouge's roughly $16,564 typical annual revenue on 806 listings is a real, useful number, but it describes a different city, a different ordinance, and a different guest base than St. Francisville's 27-listing market. A buyer packet built for a St. Francisville purchase should carry the $20,301 figure, the 27-listing sample, and the town's own registration requirements on their own line, with Baton Rouge's numbers noted separately if they are referenced at all. Averaging or blending the two produces a number that describes neither market accurately.

If a buyer is evaluating property in both towns, the cleanest approach is two separate underwriting packets, one per city, each built from that city's own extract and that city's own posted ordinance. That keeps the registration facts, the revenue figures, and the seasonal pattern attached to the correct market instead of drifting into a generic "Louisiana short-term rental" average that does not match either town's actual numbers.

It is also worth being direct about what this page will not do: it will not manufacture a blended St. Francisville-Baton Rouge figure, and it will not stretch the 27-listing sample into a confidence level it cannot support. Where the extract is thin, that thinness is the honest answer, and a buyer is better served by a smaller set of confirmed numbers than by a larger set padded with borrowed figures from a market forty minutes down the highway.

A buyer working with a real estate agent, a lender, or a property manager who is more familiar with Baton Rouge than St. Francisville should ask directly which market that person's figures come from before accepting them into an underwriting model. It is a fair, simple question, and the answer should always trace back to St. Francisville's own 27-listing sample when the topic is a St. Francisville purchase, not to a comparable pulled from the bigger market next door because it was the number readily on hand.

What a 27-listing sample can and cannot tell a buyer

A 27-listing sample is large enough to establish a real typical-revenue figure, a real ADR, and a real occupancy rate for St. Francisville, and this page treats those figures as reliable. It is not large enough to support fine-grained claims about, say, a specific street or a specific property type performing meaningfully better than the town-wide average, because splitting 27 listings into smaller sub-groups quickly leaves too few data points per group to trust. A buyer asking about a specific address should treat the $20,301 town-wide figure as the starting baseline, then verify anything more granular against that specific property's own booking history rather than a sub-segment of this sample.

The same caution applies to projecting multiple years forward. this sample covers one twelve-month window, August 2025 through July 2026, and while the year-over-year revenue and supply figures inside that window are useful, they are not a multi-year trend line. A buyer building a five-year pro forma should treat the 10.3 percent revenue growth and 50.0 percent supply growth as a single data point describing one year's change, not as a rate to compound forward without checking future extracts as they become available.

None of this means a St. Francisville purchase is a bad idea; it means the purchase should be priced against what the town's own 27-listing sample actually supports, with the seasonal pattern, the guest-origin data, and the registration requirements all treated as real inputs rather than footnotes. A buyer who does that homework before closing is working from the same numbers this page is built on, and is far less likely to be surprised by the February revenue dip, the August occupancy low, or a registration requirement that should have been confirmed before the first guest checked in.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is typical annual revenue for a St. Francisville, LA short-term rental?

On the August 2025 through July 2026 Air ROI extract, typical annual revenue across St. Francisville's 27 active listings is about $20,301. That figure pairs with an average daily rate of about $236 and an occupancy rate of about 30.0 percent, producing a revenue-per-available-room figure of roughly $64. Treat these four numbers as one underwriting set rather than picking one in isolation, since ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR only make sense together against the same 27-listing sample and the same twelve-month window.

Is Baton Rouge a fair comparison for underwriting a St. Francisville purchase?

No. Baton Rouge shows about $16,564 typical annual revenue across 806 active listings on the same extract window, which describes a much larger, more heavily supplied market operating under its own city ordinance. St. Francisville's 27-listing sample and $20,301 typical revenue describe a meaningfully smaller town. A buyer packet should rather than blending or averaging the numbers, since doing so distorts the picture for both markets.

What permits does a buyer need before listing a St. Francisville rental?

The Town of St. Francisville requires both an occupational license and a short-term rental permit before a listing can advertise. Under Ordinance 2024-1, the occupational-license tax has a posted minimum of $25. This page does not go beyond what the town has published on that ordinance, so a buyer should confirm the current full fee schedule and permit requirements directly with the town's registration desk as part of the purchase timeline, not after closing.

How fast is supply growing in the St. Francisville market?

in this sample, active listing supply is up about 50.0 percent year over year, while revenue is up about 10.3 percent over the same period. A buyer reading only the revenue growth figure would miss that meaningfully more listings are now competing for the same guest base. That gap between supply growth and revenue growth is worth building into a purchase-year projection rather than assuming recent revenue trends will hold steady as more listings enter the market.

Which months should a buyer plan around as the slow season?

Two different months, not one. February is the revenue hole in this sample, the month where booked revenue is lowest across the year. August is the weakest month for occupancy specifically. A buyer should not assume these are the same month or average them into one generic slow season; they represent two separate dips in the calendar, and a year-one cash-flow plan should account for both rather than budgeting around a single blended slow period.

Which months earn the most revenue in St. Francisville?

November, October, and December are the strongest revenue months in this sample, with November standing out as the single busiest month for booked revenue. A buyer setting a purchase-year budget should weight these three months more heavily than the rest of the calendar, and should make sure any pricing strategy protects rates during this stretch rather than discounting it to match a slower month elsewhere in the year.

Who actually books a St. Francisville short-term rental?

Most guests in this sample arrive from Baton Rouge, then New Orleans, and the typical stay is about 2.3 nights. That points to a short, regional getaway pattern rather than a long-distance vacation rental market. A buyer underwriting a purchase around a longer average stay length, or around guests traveling from farther away, is pricing against a guest profile this sample does not actually show booking St. Francisville listings.

Does a 30-night minimum stay mean higher occupancy in St. Francisville?

No. About 11.1 percent of the 27 listings in this sample already set a 30-night minimum, but that is a platform setting, not a measure of filled nights. The extract's typical stay length is still about 2.3 nights across the broader market. A buyer evaluating an existing listing with a 30-night minimum in place should ask what actual booking history sits behind that setting rather than treating the setting itself as evidence of stronger occupancy.

Should a buyer use a DSCR loan to finance a St. Francisville purchase?

DSCR underwriting for this market should start from the $20,301 typical annual revenue figure on St. Francisville's own 27-listing sample, not from Baton Rouge's roughly $16,564 figure on its 806-listing sample. Mixing the two produces a debt-service coverage projection that does not match either city. A lender or buyer building a DSCR packet should keep St. Francisville's revenue, occupancy, and registration facts on their own line, separate from any neighboring-city figures.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

St. Francisville's 27-listing market earned about $20,301 typical revenue last year. Supply grew five times faster than revenue did, and that gap belongs in every buyer's underwriting.

Build your St. Francisville purchase packet around the town's own $20,301 revenue figure and its posted occupational-license and short-term rental permit requirements, and confirm both with the registration desk before closing. Keep Baton Rouge's separate numbers off this packet entirely so your underwriting reflects the market you are actually buying into.

Reach out at crestcove.co or (256) 998-7502.