Des Moines STR Market Report 2027: What Hosts Recheck First

Jacob Mishalanie
8 hours ago
14 min read

Empty Iowa State Capitol grounds in Des Moines, no people

If you host in Des Moines and you are sitting down this summer to plan the year ahead, you have probably noticed something: the market report you keep bookmarked still shows last year's numbers. That is not an oversight on our end, and it is not a shortcut either. It is the honest state of the data right now, and this piece exists to walk you through what that means for your planning instead of pretending a new number exists when it does not.

Here is the short version. Our most recent confirmed read on the Des Moines short-term rental market came from the 2026 report, which put total host earnings at roughly $16,916 across a sample of 619 active listings, with an average daily rate near $171. That post is live now at crestcove.co/post/des-moines-ia-str-market-report-2026, and if you have not read it yet, it is worth pulling up alongside this one. We are not replacing it. We are building the next chapter on top of it, and being upfront that the next chapter's numbers have not been re-pulled from the vendor sources yet.

That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. A lot of market content on the internet quietly rolls a stale number forward and slaps a new year on the headline, and hosts end up making budget and pricing decisions off a figure nobody actually re-checked. We would rather tell you plainly: this is a 2027-vintage planning document built on 2026-vintage confirmed data, and we are handing you the exact checklist to re-verify it yourself before you lean on it for anything that touches your P&L.

This is not legal advice, and none of the marketing guidance on this page replaces reading your own contracts or confirming local rules with the relevant office.

The Last Confirmed Des Moines Numbers, and Why We Are Not Touching Them

Let's start with what we actually know, because it is still useful even a year later. The 2026 Des Moines report showed the citywide short-term rental market generating approximately $16,916 in average annual host revenue, drawn from a sample of 619 listings, with an average daily rate of about $171. That put the city's typical host earnings comfortably under the $45,000 mark that shows up in a lot of national STR headlines, which is a useful reality check if you have been comparing yourself to sunbelt vacation markets instead of your actual regional peers.

Those three numbers, revenue, sample size, and ADR, came from a specific pull of Des Moines official visitor and lodging data cross-referenced against AirROI and AirDNA market panels at the time. We are not re-running that pull for this 2027 piece, and we want to be direct about why: doing so responsibly means going back to the source dashboards, confirming the sample size hasn't shifted meaningfully, and checking whether the trailing-twelve-month window has actually moved forward or whether the vendor is still effectively showing you last year's window with a new date stamp on it. That is real work, and it has not been done yet for 2027. Rather than guess at what those numbers might now be, we are presenting the 2026 figures as exactly what they are: the last confirmed vintage, not a current one.

This matters for a very practical reason. If you are building a pricing strategy, setting revenue expectations for a new co-host relationship, or deciding whether a Des Moines property still pencils against your mortgage and expenses, you want to know whether the number in front of you is fresh or a year stale. We would rather you know it is a year stale and adjust your confidence accordingly than have you treat it as gospel.

One more thing worth flagging plainly here so it does not get lost: we did not invent a 2027 figure to make this post feel current. There is no new average, no new ADR, no new listing count in this piece that was not already published in the 2026 report. Anything that looks like a number in the sections below is either the 2026 figure repeated with its vintage labeled, or a description of the process you should run to get a real 2027 number.

It is also worth naming what this report is not trying to do. It is not trying to talk you into a bigger revenue expectation than the market can support, and it is not trying to talk you out of investing in your listing either. It is trying to separate two things that get blurred together far too often in host-facing content: the confidence you can have in a number because it was actually checked, and the confidence you might feel simply because a number is printed in bold with a dollar sign in front of it. Those are not the same thing, and the gap between them is exactly where a lot of bad planning decisions get made.

Why Des Moines Metro Data Gets Muddled, and Why West Des Moines and Ankeny Stay Off This Report

One of the more common mistakes we see in market reporting for the Des Moines metro is treating the whole region as a single blended number. Des Moines proper, West Des Moines, and Ankeny are three distinct submarkets with different guest profiles, different regulatory postures, and in some cases meaningfully different rate structures. West Des Moines pulls a mix of corporate travel tied to the Jordan Creek retail corridor and suburban family visits. Ankeny has its own dynamic shaped by Iowa State commuter traffic and youth sports tournaments that fill hotel and STR inventory on specific weekends throughout the year.

If you mash all three together into one metro-wide average, you get a number that does not actually describe any single host's real market. A West Des Moines host chasing a blended metro ADR might underprice relative to their actual submarket, while a Des Moines proper host comparing themselves to an inflated blended figure might chase revenue targets that were never realistic for their specific listing location. That is why the 2026 report, and this 2027 companion, keep Des Moines proper as its own line item and leave West Des Moines and Ankeny out of the headline figures entirely.

This is not a data limitation we are apologizing for. It is a deliberate choice to keep the numbers honest and locally meaningful rather than convenient and metro-wide. If you host in West Des Moines or Ankeny specifically, that is worth its own dedicated report with its own vendor pull, and lumping your numbers into a Des Moines proper figure would do you a disservice either direction, inflating or deflating your realistic expectations depending on which way the blend skews that quarter.

So when you see $16,916, n=619, and $171 ADR in this piece, understand that this describes Des Moines proper specifically, using the same city boundary and listing sample the 2026 report used. If your listing sits in West Des Moines or Ankeny, treat this report as directionally useful context about the broader region's health, not as your submarket's actual benchmark.

It also helps to think about why this separation matters beyond just accuracy for its own sake. Marketing decisions, from how you title your listing to which neighborhoods you emphasize in your description, work better when they are grounded in the actual submarket a guest is booking into. A guest searching for a downtown Des Moines stay near the East Village or the Sherman Hill neighborhood is looking for a different experience than a guest booking a suburban West Des Moines stay near the outlet shopping, and pricing or positioning your listing off the wrong submarket's data can quietly cost you bookings even when your property itself is perfectly competitive.

The Re-Verification Checklist: What To Pull Before You Trust Any 2027 Number

Since we are not treating the 2026 figures as a new 2027 typical year, the most useful thing we can hand you is the actual process for checking them yourself, in the order that will save you the most time. This is the same sequence we would run before publishing an updated figure, and there is no reason a host with an afternoon and a spreadsheet cannot run it too.

Start with the Iowa and Des Moines official tourism and lodging desks. These are the closest thing to ground truth on visitor volume and lodging tax receipts for the metro, and they typically publish updated annual or quarterly figures well before most third-party STR vendors refresh their dashboards. Cross-reference any visitor volume trend against what you are personally seeing in your own booking calendar. If the official desk shows visitor growth but your calendar looks flat or down, that gap is worth investigating rather than ignoring.

Next, pull a fresh AirROI read specifically filtered to Des Moines proper, not the broader metro. Check three things: whether the trailing-twelve-month revenue figure has actually rolled forward to a new window versus still reflecting the same period as last year's pull, whether the active listing count near 619 has moved meaningfully in either direction, and whether the reported ADR has shifted. A same-window repeat, where the trailing twelve months quietly still ends on roughly the same date it did during last year's pull, is the single biggest tell that a vendor page has not actually refreshed yet, and it is worth checking the page's own "last updated" or data-through date rather than assuming a website with a 2027 label in the URL means 2027 data underneath it.

Third, run the same check against AirDNA if you have access, since the two vendors do not always agree and a meaningful divergence between them is itself useful information about how confident you should be in either single figure. Fourth, and this is the step most hosts skip, compare whatever fresh number you land on against your own actual performance for the trailing twelve months. Vendor averages describe a blended market; your listing is one data point in that blend, and the gap between your number and the market average tells you more about your specific pricing and positioning than the market average alone ever will.

Finally, if you make any changes to pricing, minimum stay rules, or marketing spend based on a newly verified number, give yourself a review checkpoint sixty to ninety days out rather than locking in assumptions for the full year. Des Moines is not a market prone to wild swings, but a state fair season, a major convention calendar shift, or a change in short-term rental permitting can move the numbers enough that a mid-year check is worth the twenty minutes it takes.

If you want a shortcut for prioritizing this list against a busy summer schedule, do the official tourism desk check and your own calendar comparison first, since those two steps take the least time and give you the clearest early signal about whether anything has actually shifted. Save the deeper AirROI and AirDNA cross-checks for a dedicated planning session, ideally the same sitting where you are already reviewing your calendar and rates for the coming months, so the verification work feeds directly into a decision instead of becoming a research exercise that never turns into action.

Reading the 2026 Baseline in Context: Under $45K, and What That Actually Tells You

It is worth sitting with the $16,916 figure for a moment longer, because the number by itself does not tell the whole story without some context around it. Under $45,000 in average annual host revenue puts Des Moines firmly in the category of a steady secondary market rather than a boom-town short-term rental destination. That is not a criticism of the market. It is a description of what kind of market you are operating in, and it should shape how you think about growth strategy.

In a market like this, the biggest wins for most hosts come from occupancy and guest experience improvements rather than chasing rate increases that the local demand base cannot support. An average daily rate near $171 leaves some room to test modest increases around known high-demand windows, state fair season, major convention dates downtown, Drake University move-in and graduation weekends, but it is not a market where aggressive year-round rate hikes are likely to hold occupancy steady. Hosts who have done well in Des Moines tend to treat the $171 figure as a floor to defend through consistency and reviews rather than a ceiling to push past through pricing alone.

The 619 listing sample size also tells you something useful: this is a market with real competitive density but not oversaturation. You are not fighting for visibility against thousands of competing listings the way you might in a major metro, which means individual listing quality, photography, and response time can move the needle on your booking rate more noticeably than they would in a flooded market. If your 2026 performance sat meaningfully below the reported average, that gap is worth diagnosing directly rather than assuming the whole market underperformed with you.

None of this is legal advice, and if any of your season planning touches permitting, zoning, or lodging tax registration specifics for your property, that conversation belongs with a licensed local professional who can look at your specific address and situation, not a market report that is necessarily describing the metro in general terms.

Building Your 2027 Season Plan Around Verified, Not Assumed, Numbers

With all of that groundwork laid, here is how we would suggest actually building out a 2027 season plan for a Des Moines listing. Treat the checklist above as step one, not an optional appendix. Before you set a revenue target, adjust nightly rates, or make a case to a lender or partner about expected performance, run the re-verification steps and get your own current AirROI or AirDNA pull for Des Moines proper specifically. That confirmed number, not the 2026 figure sitting in this post, is what should anchor your actual planning.

Once you have a verified baseline, layer your own listing's trailing-twelve-month performance against it. If you are tracking close to or above the confirmed metro average, your 2027 plan is largely about defending what is working: keeping your calendar current, protecting your review score, and testing small rate adjustments around known demand windows rather than making sweeping changes. If you are tracking meaningfully below the average, the gap is your starting point for a listing audit, covering photography, pricing calendar accuracy, minimum stay settings, and guest communication response times, before you assume the market itself is the problem.

Build in seasonal checkpoints tied to Des Moines specific events rather than generic quarterly reviews. The Iowa State Fair in August, major conventions and sporting events downtown, and the university academic calendar all create predictable demand windows that a generic national STR calendar template will miss. A season plan that accounts for these specific dates will outperform one built purely off a blended annual average, confirmed or otherwise.

Finally, keep this report and the 2026 sibling both bookmarked as a pair rather than treating either one in isolation. The 2026 post at crestcove.co/post/des-moines-ia-str-market-report-2026 gives you the fuller narrative behind how that $16,916 figure was built. This 2027 piece gives you the discipline to treat that figure as a starting point for verification rather than a number to simply carry forward unchecked. Used together, they should leave you better equipped to plan a realistic season than either a stale headline number or a guess would on its own.

If you take away one habit from this piece, let it be this: treat any market figure attached to a year you have not personally checked as a hypothesis rather than a fact, and build the fifteen minutes of verification into your planning routine the same way you already build in a calendar review or a rate audit. Des Moines hosts who do this consistently tend to make steadier, less reactive decisions over time than those who either ignore market data entirely or treat every published number as settled truth the moment they see it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the $16,916 figure a 2027 number or a 2026 number?

It is the 2026 figure, and we are labeling it that way on purpose rather than presenting it as new. That number, along with the 619 listing sample and $171 average daily rate, came from the 2026 Des Moines report published at crestcove.co/post/des-moines-ia-str-market-report-2026. No 2027 vendor pull has been completed yet, so rather than invent a current figure, this report presents the last confirmed vintage and gives you the exact steps to verify a fresh number yourself before relying on it.

Why didn't Crest and Cove just pull new 2027 numbers before publishing this?

Because doing that responsibly takes more than swapping a date on a webpage. It means re-checking the Des Moines official lodging desk, confirming AirROI and AirDNA have actually rolled their trailing-twelve-month window forward rather than just re-labeling the same period, and cross-checking the sample size hasn't shifted. That work has not been completed for Des Moines yet, so we chose to be transparent about the gap rather than publish an unverified guess dressed up as a confirmed figure.

Does West Des Moines or Ankeny data get folded into this Des Moines figure?

No, and that is intentional. West Des Moines and Ankeny are distinct submarkets with different guest profiles, from corporate travel near Jordan Creek to university and youth sports traffic around Ankeny, and blending them into a single metro average would distort what any individual host's real market actually looks like. This report and its 2026 sibling both keep Des Moines proper as its own line item, separate from those two neighboring cities.

What should I actually do with this report if I'm setting 2027 rates right now?

Use it as a starting point, not a final answer. Run the re-verification checklist in this piece, pulling fresh Des Moines proper data from AirROI or AirDNA and comparing it against the official tourism desk's latest figures, before locking in rate decisions. Then compare whatever confirmed number you land on against your own trailing-twelve-month performance, since the gap between your listing and the market average usually tells you more than the average alone.

How do I tell if a vendor dashboard has actually updated to 2027 data or is just showing last year's window again?

Check the page's own data-through or last-updated date rather than trusting a 2027 label in the URL or headline. Compare the trailing-twelve-month end date shown against today's date; if it still ends around the same point it did during a prior pull, the underlying window likely has not rolled forward yet. Also watch the listing count and ADR for movement, since a dashboard that has genuinely refreshed will usually show at least small shifts in both.

Is Des Moines a strong short-term rental market compared to other Iowa or Midwest cities?

Based on the confirmed 2026 figures, Des Moines sits solidly under the $45,000 average annual revenue mark that gets used as a rough national benchmark, which places it in the steady secondary-market category rather than a boom destination. That is not necessarily a downside; markets like this tend to reward consistency, good guest experience, and event-aware pricing more than aggressive rate hikes, and they carry less volatility than markets built around a single seasonal peak.

What events should shape my Des Moines pricing calendar for the year?

The Iowa State Fair in August is the most reliable citywide demand spike, followed by major downtown conventions and sporting events that vary year to year. Drake University's academic calendar, particularly move-in and graduation weekends, also creates predictable local demand windows worth pricing around. Building your calendar off these specific dates tends to outperform relying on a single blended annual average, confirmed or not.

Should I trust the 619 listing sample size from 2026 as still accurate?

Treat it as a reasonable starting reference point but not a confirmed current figure. Active listing counts in a market like Des Moines tend to move gradually rather than swing wildly year to year, so 619 is a fair anchor for expectations, but it should still be checked against a fresh AirROI or AirDNA pull before you use it in any calculation that matters, like estimating your competitive density for a new listing launch.

Does this report replace the 2026 Des Moines market report?

No, it is meant to be read alongside it, not instead of it. The 2026 report at crestcove.co/post/des-moines-ia-str-market-report-2026 contains the fuller original narrative and context behind the $16,916, 619 listing, and $171 ADR figures. This 2027 piece exists to flag that those numbers have not yet been re-verified for the new year and to walk you through exactly how to do that re-verification yourself.

Are there any legal or permitting issues I should check before the 2027 season?

Des Moines short-term rental permitting and lodging tax rules can shift, and this report is describing market performance, not regulatory status. This is not legal advice, and any specific permitting, zoning, or tax registration question for your property should go to a licensed local professional or the city's own permitting office rather than being answered from a market data report like this one.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Your 2027 Des Moines season deserves a number you can stand behind, not a stale one wearing a new date stamp. Get the honest baseline and the steps to verify it before setting a single rate.

Bookmark both the 2026 and 2027 Des Moines reports and run the verification checklist before your next pricing update. A season built on a checked number beats one built on a guess every time.

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