Is Berkeley Springs a Good Short-Term Rental Investment in 2026? Single-Unit?

Jacob Mishalanie
Aug 16
13 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Open lawn and spa buildings at Berkeley Springs State Park

Can you invest in a Berkeley Springs short-term rental? Only if your definition of invest includes the stated median, not an August screenshot. AirROI’s 2026-08-08 file puts the median month at $3,213, the typical year at $39,580, occupancy at 41.8 percent, advertised daily rate at $278, and RevPAR at $122. Peak-three are August, October, and December. Lows are February, March, and September. A single unit at those cells is a hard sell as a stand-alone note. Two porches, or one top-quartile 3-bed, is the honest buyer.

This page is the investor memo the other five posts were not. It is not a buy recommendation. It will not invent a purchase price, a cap rate, an LTV, or a DSCR threshold.financingpost is the note conversation without those invented lines.rulespost is the parcel test, and revenue does not repeal a boundary. A license does not invent an August. If you needed one annual number to feel brave, stop here and open the dated file yourself.

The risk stack on this porch is jurisdiction, product class, PM concentration, seasonality, and stay length. Miss one and the median is no longer the median you thought you bought. Statewide traveler spending is a different object. West Virginia’s 2025 tourism-economics work puts traveler spending at $6.6 billion and total impact at $9 billion. That is statewide, and it is not Morgan. It is not your rent roll. Do not pair those billions with a listing month. The tourism post later in this cluster will say that again. This page underwrites the cottage, and it does not underwrite the state.

budget 3,213, not August

The locked extract’s median month is $3,213, and typical year is $39,580. Those two lines are not interchangeable, and median is the middle listing’s month. Typical year is a constructed annual, and use the one you mean. Top-quartile month is $5,225, and top 10 percent is $8,055-plus. Bottom 25 percent is $1,841. Peak-season average is about $4,762 at 50.2 percent occupancy. Low-season average is about $3,310 at 40.7 percent, and august is the peak cell. August is not the year.

A lender, a partner, or a future you who annualizes August will overstate the file. A lender who treats 41.8 percent as a dead market will understate it. The honest underwrite is the median month, twelve times, then a haircut for the three low months, then a second case at $5,225 only if the house, the photos, and the license can defend the top quartile. Do not send anyone the $8,055 line as if it were the mean. Do not send them $1,841 as a reason to walk without looking at the published market year.

This cluster will not turn $3,213 into a mortgage payment. Purchase prices, cap rates, LTV, and DSCR thresholds are not in the public record we are using, and we will not invent them. Bring the dated extract, your own trailing twelve if you have one, and the Bath or county paper. The financing post is how those files sit next to a second-home conversation. This page only needs the revenue cell you are allowed to quote. If the cell is $3,213, Keep $3,213. If your own trailing twelve is different, Keep that and date it.

Jurisdiction risk: Bath versus Morgan

Guests say Berkeley Springs. The clerk says Town of Bath or unincorporated Morgan. Those are not the same stamp. Ordinance 2024-03-08 and Info Sheet v5.24 put a $200 non-refundable per-unit license on in-limits doors, hedge the $200, at 271 Wilkes Street, or. One license per unit, and this draft did not find a numeric cap. Leave out unverified one, and unincorporated Morgan does not inherit that form. Do not paste it county-wide, and Leave out unverified a county STR chapter.

Occupancy is 6 percent at the county with Laura Breeden,, and 6 percent in Bath with Scott Merki,. West Virginia sales tax is 6 percent. Bath’s 1 percent municipal sales tax began 1 January 2025; hedge whether lodging nights sit in that base. This is not an Ohio 3 percent lodging excise. AirROI’s Low badge is a vendor label, not the ordinance. A deal that underwrites “no rules” from the badge is already the wrong deal.

If the published market year is on the line, treat jurisdiction as a go/no-go, not a closing tweak. Call the town. Call the county. Date the calls. A pretty porch on the wrong desk is still the wrong desk. Cacapon Resort State Park at 818 Cacapon Lodge Drive is a competitor, not a lodging overlay. Hancock, Maryland, is last fuel, not a sibling market. Confirm the green boundary map before you model a night. A pretty ridge cabin on the wrong desk is not a Bath thesis. It is a different file you have not opened.

Product class: the 3-bed weekend cottage

Three-plus-bedroom listings are 67.5 percent of, and eight-plus-guest listings are 45.8 percent, flagged WATCH. Entire-home share is 98.8 percent, and average stay is 2.9 nights. Two-night minimums sit on 51.2 percent of the sample. The product this town already makes is a weekend house for a Washington or Baltimore household, 89.5 percent domestic, lead time 51 days. A studio thesis is a different file, and an eight-guest reunion thesis is a crowded file.

Underwrite the house you can operate, not the watch flag. A Fairfax Street two-bed that walks to 2 South Washington Street is a bath-weekend product. A ridge house that sleeps ten is a group product competing with 45.8 percent of the search page. Cleaning is 14.8 percent of gross, median fee $130, average $143. Eight guests raise the turn. They do not raise the median unless your own folio says so. Do not buy bunks to chase the watch flag.

Cacapon’s lodge and cabins are the commercial set you do not get to average into a short-term cell. The Roman bath is a park ticket, not a house amenity. Confirm prices on the park page, and Leave out unverified them in a pro forma. A product class that needs a lift, a cavern, or another state’s hot spring is not this town. Keep the cottage you can license and turn, and then decide if $3,213 still works. A product class you cannot staff on Sunday is not a product class. It is a review.

PM concentration at 33.1 percent

Professionally managed share is 33.1 percent WATCH. Cottage Rentals’ 28 doors print $697,631, ADR $244, occupancy 32.4 percent, rating 4.84. Tony’s 18 doors print $854,478, ADR $286, occupancy 53.1 percent, rating 4.65. Evolve shows 6, and tony & Blue Maple shows 4. Independent entire-homes still make up most of the sample. Superhost share is 65.7 percent, and you can enter as a porch. You enter next to books that already have a cleaner on a route.

Concentration risk cuts both ways. A 28-door desk can take Friday nights you are slow to answer. Instant Book is only 10.2 percent, so inbox speed is the scarce skill. A 28-door desk can also print 32.4 percent occupancy, which is not a reason to panic and not a reason to copy their ADR. Do not underwrite Tony’s 53.1 percent as your year-one case. Do not underwrite a 20 percent split on $3,213 as free. About $643 a month is a real cell.

If your model needs twenty identical doors in one town, this is the wrong town and the wrong license. Bath is one license per unit, not a franchise overlay. If your model is one or two houses you can actually operate, 33.1 percent is competition, not a veto. The property-manager post did the fee math. This page only needs the investment implication: a single median porch paying a brand tax is a weaker buyer than two doors sharing a cleaner. Concentration is competition. It is not a reason to outsource the first sentence.

Seasonality: three peaks, three floors

Peak month is August, and peak-three are August, October, and December. Lows are February, March, and September. September sits between spa-summer and Apple Butter, October 9-11, 2026, and still prints as a low. That shape is the cash-flow fact. A DSCR conversation that assumes flat months is fiction, which is why this page will not invent a DSCR threshold. Show the six named months. Show your own trailing twelve if you have one. A flat twelve-cell model is how August gets annualized and March gets ignored.

Low-season average is about $3,310 at 40.7 percent occupancy and an ADR near $260. Peak-season average is about $4,762 at 50.2 percent occupancy and an ADR near $278. The gap is real and it is not a lift calendar. Do not staff, price, or underwrite as if a mountain winter is coming. Mineral water at 74.3°F does not close in March. Demand still drops, and budget the drop. Do not cover it with statewide tourism language, and mineral water is the product. It is not occupancy, and the extract already named the quiet months.

Apple Butter is a dated weekend, not a season. Leaf is a different October product. December is the third peak and it is not Apple Butter. A buyer who models “fall festival” as a quarter is blending two cells and a parade. Hedge chamber attendance claims, and hedge hours and admission. Underwrite the extract’s October, then add the weekend only as upside you can take off without breaking the year. A parade is not a quarter. Hedge the chamber’s attendance claim and keep the month.

Stay length: 2.9 nights and 36.1 percent thirty-plus

Average stay is 2.9 nights, and two-night minimums are 51.2 percent of the sample. Thirty-plus-night minimums are 36.1 percent, and those are two products. The first is the DC and Baltimore weekend on I-270, I-70, and US-522, Travelmath 1 hour 46 minutes and 105 miles, Rome2Rio about 1 hour 57 minutes and 101 miles. The second is a remote month you add only if the house has a desk and a closed door. Blending them into one occupancy story would be a mistake, since they're two different theses. A weekend machine and a remote month are two theses. Pick the one the house can actually run.

Under Town of Bath’s under-30-night license, a 28-night stay is still a short-term rental. Hedge the ordinance’s 30-plus line before you treat a month as a different class. A 28-night February desk can fill a low month. It does not repeal 271 Wilkes Street. It does not repeal Laura Breeden or Scott Merki. It does not turn 41.8 percent into a corporate-housing thesis this file does not support. Ask the desk how they want the folio coded.

Lead time is 51 days. Exact location is hidden on 49.4 percent of listings. A buyer who needs same-week urban fills is in the wrong town. A buyer who hides a Fairfax Street walk is throwing away the only sentence a ridge cabin cannot copy. Stay length, lead time, and the published market year are the same product decision. Underwrite the weekend first. Treat 28 nights as optionality, not as the base case that makes $3,213 look like a different number. The weekend is the file, and the month is a later product.

Visitor spend is not listing revenue

West Virginia’s tourism-economics work, published with the WVDT annual report dated 2026-03-13, puts statewide traveler spending at $6.6 billion and total economic impact at $9 billion, with $1.1 billion in tax revenue. Those figures measure what visitors spent in the state economy, lodging, food, retail, recreation, transport. They do not measure what a Berkeley Springs host earns. They are not ADR, and they are not a rent roll. They are not a town occupancy-tax take.

Morgan County prints as its own polygon on the state map. The dollar Keep on that polygon was not cleanly readable at draft. This page will not invent a Morgan visitor-spend figure. It will not use a Jefferson County line. It will not use an old Eastern Panhandle combined line. Occupancy tax at 6 percent county and 6 percent Bath is how lodging shows up in public finance. It is not a visitor-spend study. Ask what a figure measures before you put it in a memo.

Never put statewide billions in the same sentence as a listing month. Never divide traveler spending by 166 listings, and never midpoint two tourism figures. The later tourism post in this cluster is the desk that holds those rules. This page only needs the investment warning: a pitch that opens with $9 billion and closes with a cottage is teaching a false pairing. Open with $3,213. Close with whether you can operate the house when March is quiet. Statewide billions belong in a tourism memo, not in this underwrite.

The buyer is two units or the top quartile

A single unit at $3,213 is a hard sell. It is a hard sell as a stand-alone investment that must carry a retainer, a reshoot, and a note this cluster will not invent. Bottom 25 percent is $1,841. That band is a second-home with some nights, not a thesis.

Two units at the median is a different cost structure, one cleaner on a route, one inbox, two licenses if both sit in Bath. A single top-quartile 3-bed at $5,225 a month is the other honest buyer, and only if the house, the photos, and the published market year can defend that band. Top 10 percent at $8,055-plus is an example, not a year-one case. Cottage Rentals’ 28 doors and Tony’s 18 doors are separate portfolios, not figures to blend into your closing binder.

If you already live here, or will live here, and the house works as a house when the extract is ugly, keep going. File the license. Remit the 6 percent that belongs to your desk. Keep the 2.9-night weekend, and price February like February. If you need a vacant turnkey, a 20 percent brand, and a flat twelve months, this file is not your file. The mineral water will still be 74.3°F, and the median will still be $3,213. That sentence is true without a spreadsheet. If you needed a vacant turnkey and a flat year, this extract already told you no.

Frequently Asked Questions

What median month should a Berkeley Springs buyer underwrite in 2026?

AirROI’s 2026-08-08 Berkeley Springs file puts the median month at $3,213, the typical year at $39,580, occupancy at 41.8 percent, and ADR at $278. Underwrite the stated median, not an August screenshot and not the $8,055 top-10-percent line. AirROI’s 2026-08-08 file puts the median month at $3,213, the typical year at $39,580, occupancy at 41.8 percent, advertised daily rate at $278, and RevPAR at $122.

Is A single unit at $3,213 a good standalone investment?

Usually no as a stand-alone note that must also carry a full-service retainer. One porch at the median is a household strategy if you can operate it. The honest investment buyer on this file is two units at the median, or one documented top-quartile 3-bed around $5,225 a month. It is a hard sell as a stand-alone investment that must carry a retainer, a reshoot, and a note this cluster will not invent.

Does Town of Bath or unincorporated Morgan change the underwrite?

Guests say Berkeley Springs; the clerk says Town of Bath or unincorporated Morgan. In-town doors need Ordinance 2024-03-08 and a $200 per-unit license, hedge the fee, at 271 Wilkes Street. Unincorporated Morgan does not inherit that form. Confirm the boundary map before you model a night. Ordinance 2024-03-08 and Info Sheet v5.24 put a $200 non-refundable per-unit license on in-limits doors, hedge the $200, at 271 Wilkes Street, or.

What does the 45.8 percent 8-guest share mean for a buyer?

It is a WATCH on product class, not a reason to add bunks. Three-plus-bedroom listings are already 67.5 percent of 166 actives. A Fairfax Street two-bed is a bath-weekend product. A ten-sleep ridge house competes with nearly half the search page. Underwrite the house you can turn on Sunday. A ridge house that sleeps ten is a group product competing with 45.8 percent of the search page.

Should I treat Cottage Rentals 28 or Tony 18 as my year-one case?

They are named comps on a 33.1 percent professionally managed WATCH, not your occupancy. Cottage Rentals prints about 32.4 percent occupancy; Tony prints about 53.1 percent. Do not underwrite either book as your first year, and do not treat a 20 percent split on $3,213 as free. Do not underwrite Tony’s 53.1 percent as your year-one case.

Which months carry a Berkeley Springs year?

Peak-three are August, October, and December, and lows are February, March, and September. September sits between spa-summer and Apple Butter and still prints as a low. A DSCR conversation that assumes twelve flat months is fiction. This page will not invent a qualifying ratio. A DSCR conversation that assumes flat months is fiction, which is why this page will not invent a DSCR threshold.

What does West Virginia’s $6.6 billion traveler-spend figure measure?

Visitors spent that money in the statewide economy, lodging, food, retail, recreation, transport, per the WVDT 2026-03-13 report. It is not Morgan County, not a listing year, and not $3,213. Morgan’s own dollar Keep was not cleanly readable at draft, so this page does not invent one. Those figures measure what visitors spent in the state economy, lodging, food, retail, recreation, transport.

Can I use $3,213 as a promised mortgage payment?

This cluster will not invent a purchase price, cap rate, LTV, or DSCR threshold. Bring the dated AirROI extract, your own trailing twelve if you have one, and the Bath or county paper to a West Virginia-licensed lender. Bring the dated extract, your own trailing twelve if you have one, and the Bath or county paper.

What is occupancy on this market sample?

Occupancy is 6 percent on this market sample. A busy walk or a festival weekend is demand. It is not that occupancy file and it does not fill the slow month by itself. It does not turn 41.8 percent into a corporate-housing thesis this file does not support. Independent host share is a market fact, not a hire slogan on this page.

Does a 30-night setting fill the slow month?

A 30-night minimum is a platform filter. Typical stay on these extracts is still a short trip. The filter is not a filled slow month and it is not a remote-work product you did not photograph. Under Town of Bath’s under-30-night license, a 28-night stay is still a short-term rental. A 28-night February desk can fill a low month.

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