Geneva-on-the-Lake, OH STR Market Report 2026: Revenue and Rules

Sep 2

14 min read

Lake Erie shoreline at Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio, photograph

Geneva-on-the-Lake is $23,170 on 151 listings. Typical listings in Geneva-on-the-Lake earned about $23,170 last year, from 151 active rentals on Air ROI's extract filed as August 2025 through July 2026. That single figure sits underneath a $301 average daily rate, 32.3 percent occupancy, and $97 in revenue per available night, and it is the number every other figure in this report should be checked against before it goes into a pricing plan, a buyer packet, or a lender file.

Cleveland listings earned about $17,631 last year from 1,918 active rentals on the same window. Two years sit next to each other, not inside each other: Geneva-on-the-Lake's 151-listing file and Cleveland's 1,918-listing file describe two different towns, two different guest pools, and two different regulatory desks, and this report keeps them on separate lines throughout.

This pass does not guess a village STR permit dollar figure beyond what the extract and the village's own remaining schedule support, and it does not blend a bigger city's headline into a smaller town's file. Hosts who underwrite Geneva-on-the-Lake stays should keep $23,170 on 151 listings, check with the desk that matches the parcel, and leave Cleveland on a separate line throughout every document that leaves their desk in 2026. This is not legal advice.

How Much Did Typical Geneva-on-the-Lake Listings Earn Last Year

Typical listings earned about $23,170 last year from 151 active rentals on Air ROI's extract filed as August 2025 through July 2026. Active supply is 151 listings, which makes Geneva-on-the-Lake a small, specific market rather than a broad regional average, and every figure in this report describes that same 151-listing sample rather than a wider Ashtabula County or northeast Ohio pool.

This is a typical-listing figure, not a top-decile figure, and that distinction matters for anyone reading a seller's pro forma or a management pitch built around this market. Sellers and listing agents often lead with the strongest comp available rather than the middle of the distribution a new host or buyer is actually likely to land in, and $23,170 describes that middle, not the ceiling.

File $23,170 on 151 listings next to Cleveland's $17,631 on 1,918 listings, and keep the two side by side rather than blended, whenever this report's numbers get pulled into a buyer packet, a lender file, or a marketing plan. The two figures are both real, sourced numbers, but they describe different files entirely.

Two Years Sit Next to Each Other, Not Inside Each Other

Cleveland listings earned about $17,631 last year from 1,918 rentals on the same window, and this report treats that figure the way it should always be treated in Geneva-on-the-Lake documentation: as a separate, clearly labeled comparison, not a substitute or a benchmark that quietly replaces the town's own numbers. Cleveland Ordinance 561-2026 is another hall, governing a different city's short-term rental rules entirely.

The two markets differ by more than just revenue. Cleveland's 1,918-listing supply base is more than twelve times the size of Geneva-on-the-Lake's 151 listings, which means the two towns are not competing for the same slice of guest demand, are not governed by the same permit desk, and should not be evaluated with the same benchmarks for occupancy, rate, or growth.

A host, buyer, or lender reading this report should treat every Cleveland figure as context only, useful for understanding that Geneva-on-the-Lake's typical revenue sits above a much larger nearby city's typical figure, but never as a stand-in number when the underlying question is specifically about this 151-listing town.

The Desk Is the File, Not a Listing Scrape

Geneva-on-the-Lake sits in Ashtabula County, and the town's own remaining registration requirements flow from that county placement alongside the village's own rules. This report treats the desk, meaning the actual village and county offices that govern registration, tax, and inspection, as the authoritative source for compliance figures, not a general listing-platform scrape that may not reflect current requirements.

Remaining village residential rental business license is 270 dollars, due April 30. That figure should be confirmed directly with the Village of Geneva-on-the-Lake at genevaonthelake.org before it is used in any 2026 planning document, since remaining fee schedules can shift and a report like this one is a starting point for verification, not a substitute for it.

Remaining Ashtabula County lodging tax is 5 percent, and this too should sit on its own clearly sourced line in any host, buyer, or lender document. Do I need a Geneva-on-the-Lake registration before I advertise in 2026? Yes, and the answer runs through both the village license and the county tax obligation, confirmed at the desk rather than assumed from a prior year's paperwork.

Occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR: How the Number Gets Built

The $23,170 typical annual figure is built from three underlying numbers: a $301 average daily rate, 32.3 percent occupancy, and $97 in revenue per available night. Multiplying occupancy against rate and scaling to a full year of available nights produces a figure that lands close to the $23,170 typical annual revenue this report leads with, which is a useful gut check for anyone evaluating a specific property's own performance against the town average.

A $301 average daily rate on its own tells only part of the story, since a high rate paired with low occupancy can still produce modest annual revenue, which is roughly what this sample shows: a meaningfully priced night, at 32.3 percent occupancy, producing $97 in revenue per available night rather than a higher figure a purely rate-focused read of the market might imply.

Anyone using this report to model a specific property should request that property's actual trailing occupancy and rate history rather than assuming the 151-listing average applies unit for unit. A well-located, well-photographed listing near the strip can outperform this average, and an underperforming one can fall well below it, and the average alone cannot distinguish between the two.

Year-Over-Year: Revenue Down, Supply Up

Year over year is minus 14.7 percent while supply is plus 14.4 percent on the August 2025 through July 2026 extract. That combination, falling revenue against rising supply, is the single most important trend line in this report, because it means more listings are dividing a shrinking pool of guest-night revenue, which puts real downward pressure on per-listing performance heading into 2026.

This trend should shape how every other figure in this report gets used. A pro forma or lender file that assumes the $23,170 typical figure holds flat, or grows, into 2026 without accounting for this trend is presenting an optimistic case rather than a conservative, sourced one. A more defensible approach models a flat or slightly declining per-listing figure given the direction revenue and supply have both been moving.

It is also worth separating cause from description here. this sample documents that revenue fell and supply grew over the trailing year; it does not, on its own, explain why. A host or investor drawing conclusions about the cause, whether increased competition, a softer travel year, or something else entirely, should treat that explanation as a hypothesis to test, not a fact this report itself establishes.

Peak Months and the February Hole

August, July, and June are the busiest revenue months in this sample, and February is still the slow revenue month, the town's clearest hole. That pairing gives anyone planning a 2026 calendar a specific, sourced target for both ends of the range: an aggressive pricing and marketing push around the summer peak, and an honest, differently positioned approach to the February trough rather than a flat, undifferentiated year-round strategy.

Named event weekends are demand, not occupancy in this sample, meaning a single festival or walk can spike inquiry for one weekend without lifting the underlying 32.3 percent occupancy figure that describes the town's full calendar. Anyone pricing or marketing around a named weekend should treat it as a discrete event, not a signal about the surrounding weeks.

A host, buyer, or investor building a 2026 plan around this report should expect a genuine seasonal curve, not a flat annual average, and should model cash flow, staffing, and marketing spend accordingly: heavier around August, July, and June, and deliberately different, not merely reduced, around February.

Guest Origin, Stay Length, and Lead Time

Most guests arrive from Pittsburgh, then Columbus, and typical stay is about 2.6 nights. That guest profile, a short, regionally sourced getaway rather than a long-distance or long-duration stay, should inform everything from listing copy to turnover staffing decisions for any Geneva-on-the-Lake property in 2026.

A 2.6-night typical stay implies frequent turnovers relative to markets with longer average stays, and anyone budgeting cleaning and turnover costs against the $23,170 typical annual figure should build that turnover frequency into the operating model directly rather than assuming a single weekly changeover.

Booking lead time in this sample runs about 74 days, which means calendar visibility and pricing accuracy need to be in place well ahead of the summer peak. A listing that is still running outdated copy or pricing into the spring is already missing part of the booking window that Pittsburgh and Columbus origin guests are actively searching within.

Is a 30-Night Minimum the Same as Occupancy in Geneva-on-the-Lake

About 48.3 percent of listings set a 30-night minimum, which is a substantial share of the 151-listing market. Remaining registration is ordinance, not occupancy, meaning the village's own rules do not require or reward a particular stay-length structure; the 30-night pattern reflects host choice, not a compliance requirement built into the registration process itself.

That 48.3 percent figure should not be read as evidence that long-stay bookings drive the market's overall performance, since typical stay across the full extract is still about 2.6 nights. The two figures describe different segments of the same 151-listing sample, and anyone using this report to model a specific property's revenue should be clear about which segment, nightly or 30-night, the property in question actually competes in.

A report reader weighing whether to adopt a 30-night structure should treat the 32.3 percent occupancy and $301 average daily rate figures as describing primarily the nightly-stay side of the market, since that is where the 2.6-night typical stay is actually generated, and should seek separately sourced data before assuming those same figures apply directly to a 30-night operating model.

Who Actually Runs These 151 Listings

Independent hosts still write most of this 151-listing desk, which means Geneva-on-the-Lake is not a market dominated by large, professionally managed portfolios pricing units algorithmically at scale. For a host or investor entering the market, that has a practical implication: pricing discipline and marketing quality likely vary more property to property here than in a market already saturated with optimized professional listings.

This also means there may be more room to improve underperforming comps through better pricing, photography, and guest communication than in a market where most listings are already professionally optimized. A buyer or new host evaluating this 151-listing field should not assume every comp is already performing near its ceiling; the independent-host-dominant structure of this market suggests real variance in execution quality across otherwise similar properties.

It also means a would-be buyer or investor should ask specifically how a given property is currently marketed and managed, rather than assuming a uniform level of professionalism across the comp set, since the answer in a market this independently run can vary widely from one listing to the next.

What This Report Means for 2026 Planning

Anyone building a 2026 plan around Geneva-on-the-Lake, whether a current host, a prospective buyer, or a lender reviewing a DSCR file, should anchor every figure to this report's sourced numbers: $23,170 typical annual revenue on 151 listings, $301 average daily rate, 32.3 percent occupancy, and $97 revenue per available night, all from Air ROI's August 2025 through July 2026 extract.

That plan should account for the year-over-year trend, revenue down 14.7 percent against supply up 14.4 percent, rather than assuming flat or growing performance by default. It should also reflect the real seasonal curve, with August, July, and June leading and February trailing, and the real guest profile, Pittsburgh and Columbus origin, 2.6-night typical stay, and roughly 74 days of lead time.

Above all, every 2026 planning document, whether a marketing calendar, a buyer packet, or a lender file, should keep Geneva-on-the-Lake's own numbers separate from Cleveland's, and should confirm remaining village and county registration figures directly at genevaonthelake.org rather than carrying forward a prior year's assumption. A plan built on those disciplines is a plan built on this report's actual sourced file, not a borrowed regional headline.

Reading This Report Alongside a Buyer or Lender Packet

This report is built to sit underneath, not replace, the specific underwriting documents a buyer or lender will assemble for an individual transaction. A buyer packet for a specific Geneva-on-the-Lake parcel should carry $23,170 on 151 listings, remaining registration status, and Cleveland kept on a fully separate line, exactly as this report structures the same information, but a buyer still needs the specific property's own trailing revenue and occupancy history layered on top of the town-wide averages presented here.

A lender reviewing a DSCR application for a Geneva-on-the-Lake property should expect the borrower's packet to trace back to this same sourced extract, the same August 2025 through July 2026 window, rather than a differently dated or differently sourced figure that cannot be reconciled against this report. Consistency of source, not just consistency of headline number, is what makes a packet defensible under underwriting scrutiny.

Anyone assembling either kind of document should treat this report as the town-wide baseline and layer property-specific evidence on top of it, rather than substituting the town average directly for a specific property's own performance. The $23,170 figure describes the typical listing across 151 properties; it does not describe any single property with certainty, and documents that conflate the two invite exactly the kind of questions an underwriter or a skeptical buyer is trained to ask.

What This Report Does Not Claim

This report does not claim a specific village STR permit dollar figure beyond what the remaining schedule and this sample actually support, and it does not guess occupancy or rate figures for the 30-night-minimum segment of the market, since this sample's headline numbers primarily describe the nightly-stay side of the 151-listing sample. Anyone needing figures beyond what is sourced here should confirm them directly with the relevant desk rather than assuming this report covers every possible scenario.

It also does not explain why revenue fell 14.7 percent while supply rose 14.4 percent over the trailing year, only that both movements occurred in this sample. Competing explanations, more competition, a softer regional travel year, a shift in guest behavior, are all plausible, but this report treats them as open questions rather than settled conclusions, and a host or investor drawing a causal story from these numbers should treat that story as a hypothesis, not a fact this report itself establishes.

Finally, this report does not substitute for a specific property's own booking history, nor for direct confirmation of remaining 2026 registration, tax, and inspection requirements at the Village of Geneva-on-the-Lake and Ashtabula County. It is a sourced starting point for 2026 planning, built entirely from this town's own 151-listing extract, and it is most useful when the reader treats it exactly that way.

A Quick-Reference Summary of the 2026 Numbers

For a reader who needs the figures in one place before returning to the detail above: typical annual revenue is about $23,170 on 151 active listings, the average daily rate is about $301, occupancy is 32.3 percent, and revenue per available night is about $97, all from Air ROI's extract covering August 2025 through July 2026. Year over year, revenue is down 14.7 percent while supply is up 14.4 percent on the same window.

Peak months on the extract are August, July, and June, with February standing as the revenue hole. Most guests arrive from Pittsburgh, then Columbus, for a typical stay of about 2.6 nights, with roughly 74 days of average booking lead time, and about 48.3 percent of listings currently run a 30-night minimum rather than the nightly-stay structure the headline figures primarily describe.

On compliance, the remaining village residential rental business license is 270 dollars, due April 30, and remaining Ashtabula County lodging tax is 5 percent, both confirmed directly at genevaonthelake.org. Cleveland, for comparison only and never as a substitute figure, sits at about $17,631 typical revenue on 1,918 listings over the same window, governed by its own Ordinance 561-2026 and its own separate desk.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did typical Geneva-on-the-Lake listings earn last year?

Typical listings earned about $23,170 last year from 151 active rentals on Air ROI's extract filed as August 2025 through July 2026. That figure sits on a $301 average daily rate and 32.3 percent occupancy, producing $97 in revenue per available night. Treat this as a typical-listing figure describing the market middle, not a top-performer figure describing the best available comp in the town.

Can Cleveland's revenue figures be used to describe Geneva-on-the-Lake?

No. Cleveland listings earned about $17,631 last year from 1,918 rentals on the same window, a separate city with its own Ordinance 561-2026 and a supply base more than twelve times larger. The two towns do not share a permit desk or a guest pool. Keep $23,170 on 151 Geneva-on-the-Lake listings and $17,631 on 1,918 Cleveland listings on clearly separate lines in any document.

Do I need a Geneva-on-the-Lake registration before I advertise in 2026?

Yes. The remaining village residential rental business license is 270 dollars, due April 30, and remaining Ashtabula County lodging tax is 5 percent. Confirm both directly at genevaonthelake.org before advertising, since remaining fee schedules and requirements can shift year to year and this report is a starting point for verification, not a substitute for checking with the desk.

Is a 30-night minimum the same as strong occupancy in this market?

No. About 48.3 percent of listings set a 30-night minimum, but typical stay across the full extract is still about 2.6 nights. Remaining registration is ordinance, not occupancy, meaning the village's rules do not favor either stay-length structure. The 32.3 percent occupancy and $301 average daily rate figures primarily describe the nightly-stay side of the market, not the 30-night segment.

Is Geneva-on-the-Lake's short-term rental market growing or shrinking?

in this sample, revenue is down 14.7 percent year over year while supply is up 14.4 percent, meaning more listings are splitting a smaller revenue pool. A 2026 plan should account for that trend rather than assuming the current $23,170 typical figure holds flat or grows, and should model a conservative, sourced case rather than an optimistic one built on last year's number alone.

When is peak season in Geneva-on-the-Lake, and when is the slow season?

August, July, and June are the busiest revenue months in this sample, and February is the slow revenue month and the clearest hole in the calendar. A 2026 plan should price and market the summer months aggressively while treating February as its own honest, differently positioned month rather than simply a discounted version of what summer already offers guests.

Where do most Geneva-on-the-Lake guests come from, and how long do they stay?

Most guests arrive from Pittsburgh, then Columbus, and typical stay is about 2.6 nights, with roughly 74 days of average booking lead time. That points to a short, regionally sourced getaway pattern rather than long-distance or long-duration travel, and it should inform everything from turnover staffing to how far ahead pricing and copy need to be finalized each year.

Are most Geneva-on-the-Lake listings professionally managed or independently run?

Independent hosts still write most of this 151-listing desk, meaning the market is not dominated by large professionally managed portfolios. That suggests more variance in pricing discipline and marketing quality across otherwise similar comps than in a market already saturated with optimized professional listings, which can mean more room to improve underperforming properties through better execution.

What is the biggest mistake to avoid when using this report?

Blending Geneva-on-the-Lake's numbers with Cleveland's, or assuming this year's $23,170 typical figure will hold flat or grow into 2026 without accounting for the year-over-year trend. Revenue is down 14.7 percent while supply is up 14.4 percent in this sample, and every figure used in a buyer packet, lender file, or marketing plan should be sourced specifically to this 151-listing town's own file.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Geneva-on-the-Lake is $23,170 on 151 listings, not the bigger city figure some pro formas quietly borrow from down the shore. Here is the full 2026 market report, sourced line by line to this town's own file.

The numbers in this report only pay off if a listing's pricing, calendar, and marketing actually reflect them before the next August peak arrives. If you want your Geneva-on-the-Lake strategy built directly against this year's real revenue, occupancy, and calendar instead of a generic regional guess, we can help you put it together.

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