Chatham STR Market Report 2026: Elbow of the Cape, Not P-town

Jacob Mishalanie
3 days ago
12 min read

Lighthouse Beach - Chatham, Massachusetts, USA - September 30, 2023, Chatham, Massachusetts, photograph

Chatham sits at the elbow of Cape Cod, where the peninsula bends and the water changes from Nantucket Sound to the open Atlantic in the space of a short drive. Chatham Light stands over that bend, the fish pier still unloads working boats a few blocks from Main Street, and Monomoy stretches south into a wildlife refuge that draws birders as reliably as the beaches draw families. None of that is Provincetown's tip-of-the-Cape carnival, and none of it is the National Seashore corridor that Truro and Wellfleet host. Chatham is its own town with its own guest, and any host or buyer sizing this market needs a year filed under Chatham's own name — not folded into an Outer Cape average that doesn't describe what's actually happening here.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. Cape Cod gets treated as one market in a lot of casual analysis — one occupancy curve, one seasonal story, one revenue range applied town to town. It isn't. Chatham's calendar, guest mix, and even its regulatory desk are specific to Chatham. This report walks through what the data actually says about Chatham as its own line item: revenue, occupancy, ADR, the mix of listing types, and the seasonal shape hosts are pricing against, sourced and dated so it can be checked rather than taken on faith. This is not legal advice.

What Chatham Actually Earns a Typical Listing

AirROI's Chatham pull, refreshed August 8, 2026 and covering the August 2025–July 2026 window, puts the typical active listing at roughly $46,875 in annual revenue across 378 tracked units. Average daily rate lands at $582, occupancy at 38.5%, and RevPAR at $256. Those four numbers belong together — a host who quotes the revenue figure without the occupancy figure is telling half the story, because $46,875 comes from a fairly high rate riding a fairly modest fill rate, not the other way around.

That combination is worth sitting with. A 38.5% occupancy rate means Chatham listings are booked a little more than a third of the year on average. The revenue still clears the $45,000 threshold that separates a hobby rental from a real income property, but it clears it on rate, not on volume. A host trying to force higher occupancy by dropping rate across the board risks giving away exactly the lever that's carrying the number in the first place.

Reading the Seasonal Shape Behind the Average

AirROI's month-by-month data shows August as Chatham's single strongest revenue month, with June and July also running at peak. March comes in as the softest month, with February and December close behind — a trough that runs, in practical terms, from late fall into early spring. That's a summer-town curve, not a shoulder-heavy market with two comparable seasons. The bulk of Chatham's annual number gets earned in a compressed stretch, and the rest of the calendar is where hosts either protect margin or bleed it.

For a host building a pricing calendar, that shape is the actual planning document — more useful than the annual average by itself. Peak months should be priced to the calendar's edge, not left flat because a host is nervous about empty nights. The trough months are a different problem entirely: less about maximizing rate and more about deciding whether to chase occupancy with minimum-stay flexibility or accept a quiet stretch and use it for maintenance and reset.

The Listing Mix: Entire Home Dominates

Of the 378 active Chatham listings in AirROI's extract, entire home or apartment units make up 93.9% of supply. Private-room and shared listings are a small minority. That tells a buyer or host something concrete about what the market expects: Chatham guests are largely booking whole houses, not rooms in an occupied home, and a listing that doesn't compete on that basis — private outdoor space, a full kitchen, room for a family or a group — is competing against a mix it doesn't match.

This also shapes what 'competitive' means here. A host converting a spare bedroom into a private-room listing in Chatham is fishing in a much smaller pond than a host offering a full cottage near the fish pier or Chatham Light. Neither approach is wrong, but the entire-home dominance in the data should inform which comparable listings a host actually studies when setting rate and amenities.

Chatham Is Not Orleans and Not Provincetown

Two nearby AirROI pulls make the comparison concrete rather than hand-wavy. Orleans, the town just north along the same stretch of Cape, shows a leftover annual figure of roughly $35,761 across 196 listings, with ADR at $526 and occupancy at 39.5%. Provincetown, at the very tip of the Cape and built around a completely different — nightlife-forward, Outer Cape — guest, shows roughly $39,853 across 729 listings, ADR $459, occupancy 37.3%. Both numbers sit meaningfully under Chatham's $46,875.

That gap isn't noise. Provincetown's much larger listing count (729 versus Chatham's 378) reflects a market built around volume and a different kind of visitor, and its lower ADR shows it. Orleans, immediately adjacent to Chatham, still runs a lower rate and a lower annual total despite a comparable occupancy rate — evidence that Chatham's specific identity, not just its zip code on the Cape, is carrying part of the premium. A host or buyer using an Outer Cape or countywide blended figure instead of Chatham's own number is quietly averaging away real money, in either direction.

None of this makes Orleans or Provincetown weaker markets in any absolute sense — they're different products for different guests. It does mean a Chatham listing shouldn't be priced, marketed, or projected off either neighbor's numbers.

The Regulatory Layer Behind the Revenue Number

None of the revenue figures above operate independently of Chatham's compliance requirements, and skipping that layer produces a paper projection rather than a usable one. Effective July 1, 2023, the Town of Chatham requires a short-term rental certificate from the Health Division before any residential dwelling or bedroom is rented for 30 days or less. The certificate is issued to the owner, is non-transferable, and must be renewed annually — certificates run March 1 through the following February 28. A live listing is expected to display its Chatham registration number.

The town's page also states that occupancy is limited to two guests per legal bedroom, tied to septic and Board of Health definitions rather than an arbitrary host preference, and that first-time applications require an inspection. Existing rentals are being phased through inspection as well, roughly a third of the listing stock per year, with the town aiming to have all existing rentals inspected by the end of 2027. The town's own page is explicit that accepting a rental registration is not a zoning determination — a separate question a host may still need to confirm.

As of this writing, the town's published fee for the certificate is $50, renewed annually. Local reporting from the Cape Cod Chronicle indicates the Select Board voted to raise that fee to $200; hosts should confirm the current, live fee on the town's page before budgeting, since a voted change and an updated published schedule aren't always the same date. This is not legal advice — hosts should confirm current Health Division certificate requirements and Massachusetts Department of Revenue registration directly before listing.

One more desk note worth flagging early: Barnstable County is not the certificate authority here. The Chatham Health Division is the town-level desk that issues the rental certificate, and a host who assumes the county handles it — because that's how it works in some other jurisdictions — will find themselves at the wrong counter.

Reading the $45,000 Threshold Correctly

The $45,000-a-year mark gets used informally as a line between a rental that's a serious income property and one that's closer to a hobby with a mortgage attached. Chatham's $46,875 clears that line, but it clears it by a modest margin, not a comfortable one — roughly $1,875 above the threshold on the town's typical listing. That's worth sitting with before treating Chatham as an obviously strong buy or an obviously strong market to enter without underwriting the specific property.

A margin that thin means the gap between a well-run Chatham listing and a mediocre one probably matters more here than it would in a market clearing the threshold by a wide margin. Photography, pricing discipline through the shoulder months, and matching the entire-home expectation documented above aren't optional polish in a market like this — they're plausibly the difference between a listing that comfortably clears $45,000 and one that quietly falls short of it while its owner assumes the town average applies evenly to every property in it.

Why RevPAR Tells a Different Story Than ADR Alone

It's worth separating ADR from RevPAR here, because the two numbers point a host toward different decisions. Chatham's $582 ADR describes what a booked night actually sells for. RevPAR — revenue per available night, $256 in AirROI's pull — blends that rate against every night in the calendar, booked or empty. The gap between $582 and $256 is a direct measure of how much of Chatham's calendar sits unbooked, and it's a more honest planning number than ADR by itself, because ADR only describes the nights that already worked.

A host who tracks ADR alone can convince themselves a listing is performing well because the booked nights look strong, while ignoring how many nights never got booked at all. RevPAR forces both halves of the equation into view at once. Chatham's RevPAR sitting at less than half its ADR is consistent with the 38.5% occupancy figure — it's the same story told two ways, and hosts should use both numbers together rather than quoting whichever one sounds better.

Tourism Volume Is Not the Same Data as Occupancy

Cape Cod Chamber visitor figures and Town of Chatham lodging-tax receipts describe a real trend, but they describe a different thing than the AirROI occupancy figure above, and the two shouldn't be substituted for each other. Visitor counts and TOT collections aggregate every form of paid lodging in town — inns, hotels, and second-home stays alongside short-term rentals — and Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge visitation is its own separate series tracking a specific destination, not town-wide occupancy.

A host who sees rising visitor-spending or Chamber traffic numbers and assumes that automatically means rising short-term rental occupancy is mixing two different data sets. The AirROI figures in this report are the closest read on actual booked-night performance for the short-term rental category specifically; tourism volume is useful context, but it belongs on its own line, not folded into the occupancy conversation as if it were the same measurement.

What This Means for a Host Sizing the Year Ahead

Put together, Chatham's 2026 profile reads as a market that rewards rate discipline over occupancy-chasing, runs on a compressed summer peak with a long, genuine off-season, and carries a real compliance step that a serious operator treats as part of the cost of doing business, not an afterthought. The $46,875 figure is a real number from a named, dated source, not a rounded-up sales pitch — and it's specific to Chatham, not to Cape Cod as an undifferentiated whole.

For a host already operating here, that means benchmarking rate and occupancy against actual Chatham comparables — not Orleans, not Provincetown — and pricing the shoulder and off-season deliberately rather than defaulting to a flat discount. For a prospective buyer, it means underwriting this town's specific ADR and occupancy, not a blended Cape Cod number pulled from a broader market report.

It also means treating any single data source, AirROI included, as a starting range rather than gospel. Aggregator figures can drift from a host's own trailing-twelve-month numbers depending on methodology, listing set, and timing of the pull. A host with their own booking history should compare that history against this report's numbers as a sanity check, not replace their own records with an aggregator average. Where the two disagree by a wide margin, that gap itself is useful information — it usually means the listing is over- or under-performing its comparable set for a specific, findable reason, whether that's photography, pricing strategy, or amenities that don't match what Chatham guests are actually booking.

What a Fee Change in Motion Looks Like for a Host's Budget

The gap between the $50 fee published on Chatham's town page and the $200 fee reported by local news as a Select Board vote is a useful case study in how municipal rule changes actually reach the public. A vote and a published, effective fee schedule aren't always the same date — there's often a lag while the new rate gets formally adopted, publicized, and applied to renewals. A host budgeting for a Chatham rental certificate should treat $50 as the last confirmed published figure and $200 as a documented, credible signal that the fee is moving, then check the live town page immediately before submitting payment rather than relying on either number from memory.

This kind of gap shows up regularly in small-town regulatory pages, and it's a reasonable habit for any Chatham host to build: recheck the certificate fee, the inspection schedule, and the registration process at renewal time rather than assuming last year's numbers still apply. A $150 swing on a single line item is minor against $46,875 in annual revenue, but it's the kind of detail that turns into a late fee or a lapsed certificate if it's ignored.

Setting Expectations for a New Chatham Host

Someone entering the Chatham market for the first time — whether by buying a property or converting an existing one — is best served by treating this report as a starting range, not a guarantee. The AirROI figures describe the town's typical active listing across a full year, not any single property's outcome. A house two blocks from Chatham Light with direct water views is not the same product as a comparable-square-footage house set back from the water, even if both sit inside town limits and both carry a valid Health Division certificate.

The realistic approach is to use the town-wide numbers — $46,875 typical annual revenue, 38.5% occupancy, $582 ADR — as the range to underwrite against, then adjust based on the specific property's location, condition, and how closely its marketing matches what Chatham guests are actually booking. A property that undersells its proximity to the fish pier or Chatham Light, or that photographs like a generic Cape Cod rental instead of a Chatham one, is likely to land below this report's average rather than at it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a short-term rental earn in Chatham, MA?

AirROI's Chatham data, refreshed August 8, 2026 for the August 2025–July 2026 window, shows a typical active listing earning roughly $46,875 a year across 378 tracked units, with average daily rate around $582 and occupancy near 38.5%. That figure is specific to Chatham and shouldn't be swapped for a Cape Cod-wide or Outer Cape average.

Is Chatham's short-term rental market the same as Provincetown's?

No. AirROI shows Provincetown running a lower annual figure, roughly $39,853, across a much larger pool of 729 listings with a lower average daily rate near $459. Provincetown draws a different, nightlife-forward Outer Cape guest, and its numbers shouldn't be blended into a Chatham projection.

How does Chatham compare to Orleans for short-term rental income?

Orleans, just north of Chatham, shows a leftover annual figure of roughly $35,761 across 196 listings with ADR around $526. Chatham's figure runs meaningfully higher despite similar occupancy, suggesting the difference is tied to Chatham's specific identity and guest demand rather than a general Cape Cod premium.

What is Chatham's peak season for short-term rentals?

AirROI data marks August as the strongest revenue month, with June and July also running near peak. March is the softest month, with February and December close behind. That's a compressed summer peak with a long shoulder-into-winter trough, and pricing calendars should reflect that shape rather than a flat year-round rate.

Does Chatham require a permit for Airbnb or short-term rentals?

Yes. Effective July 1, 2023, the Town of Chatham requires a short-term rental certificate from the Health Division before renting a residential dwelling or bedroom for 30 days or less. Certificates are issued to the owner, are non-transferable, and run March 1 through the following February 28. This is not legal advice — confirm current requirements directly with the Health Division before listing.

How much does a Chatham short-term rental certificate cost?

The town's published fee is $50, renewed annually, as of this writing. Local reporting indicates the Select Board voted to raise the fee to $200; hosts should check the town's live, current fee schedule before budgeting, since a voted change may not yet be reflected everywhere.

Does Barnstable County issue Chatham's short-term rental certificate?

No. The Town of Chatham Health Division is the certificate authority, not Barnstable County. Hosts should direct registration questions to the town desk rather than the county.

What type of listing dominates the Chatham short-term rental market?

Entire home or apartment listings make up 93.9% of Chatham's 378 tracked active rentals. Private-room and shared listings are a small minority, which means most Chatham demand is built around whole-house stays rather than room rentals.

Is there an occupancy limit for Chatham short-term rentals?

The town limits occupancy to two guests per legal bedroom, tied to Board of Health and septic definitions. This is a town rule, not a host preference, and applies regardless of how a listing is furnished or marketed.

Why shouldn't hosts use a Cape Cod-wide average to price a Chatham listing?

Because Chatham's own numbers diverge meaningfully from neighboring towns — its ADR and annual revenue run above both Orleans and Provincetown despite geographic proximity. A blended Cape Cod figure would understate or misrepresent what Chatham specifically supports, in either direction depending on which towns get folded into the average.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Most Chatham listings still get priced and photographed off a generic Cape Cod template. That approach leaves real revenue on the table in a town with its own guest and its own numbers.

A marketing audit checks whether a Chatham listing's rate calendar, photos, and copy actually match this town's demand. If they're still built for a generic Cape Cod guest, that's fixable. Send the live listing draft and the facts you can actually cite.

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