Leavenworth, WA STR Market Report 2026: The Real Numbers

Jacob Mishalanie
5 days ago
13 min read

Bavarian Ritz Hotel exterior on Front Street in Leavenworth Washington photograph

Walk down Front Street in Leavenworth and it is easy to assume the whole town runs on the same math: half-timbered facades, an oompah soundtrack most weekends, and a line for pretzels that suggests every bed in town is booked solid. It is a genuinely unusual place to run a short-term rental, because the theming is not a marketing gimmick layered on top of a normal mountain town. It is the town. But a market report has to separate what the village looks like from what the numbers actually say, and this year those numbers come from three different sources that do not agree with each other closely enough to average.

This report treats Leavenworth as its own market, not a rounding error next to Cle Elum or a Seattle weekend footnote. Cle Elum already has its own file elsewhere in this series, built on its own figure near $4,974 a month. Leavenworth's number is not that number, and pulling from the wrong file is the fastest way to misprice a listing here or misjudge a purchase.

That gap matters for a very practical reason: the people reading a market report are not tourists, they are hosts and buyers trying to decide how to price a calendar, how much to offer on a listing, or whether a purchase pencils out at all. A report that hands them one clean number is doing them a disservice, because no single number here is clean. What follows treats the range as the finding, walks through why the sources diverge, lays out the zoning file that most revenue scrapes never mention, and closes with what a host or buyer should actually do with all of it — not just what the numbers say, but how to use them. This is not legal advice.

The Three Numbers, and Why They Do Not Get Averaged

AirROI puts Leavenworth at $4,254 a month, monthly, across a sample of 643 active listings, with occupancy at 40.7 percent and average daily rate at $374, covering the window from August 2025 through July 2026. Labeled as an annualized figure, that monthly number works out to roughly $51,048 to $51,053 a year — AirROI's own site shows both the monthly line and an annual figure in that same range, and the honest move is to say so rather than pick whichever number reads better.

AirDNA, pulled as of August 2026, shows a larger sample — 738 listings — with revenue near $56.6K, occupancy at 49 percent, and ADR at $361. Rabbu's figure, dated April 27, 2026, lands at $53,340. Three sources, three vintages, three sample sizes, and a spread that runs from roughly $51K to roughly $57K. That is not a rounding difference you smooth over with an average. It is a real range, and a host or buyer sizing this market should see all three lines rather than one blended number that erases how much the sources actually disagree.

Sample size matters here too. AirROI's 643 listings and AirDNA's 738 are both plausible counts for a town this size with this much tourist draw, but they are not counting the same universe of properties on the same date, which is part of why the revenue figures diverge. Treat the range, not a single dollar figure, as the honest answer to 'what does an Airbnb make in Leavenworth.'

None of this means the three sources are unreliable. It means they are measuring slightly different things on slightly different days, and a host who picks the AirDNA figure because it is the highest, or the AirROI figure because it is the most detailed, is choosing a story rather than reading the data. The more useful habit is to hold all three in mind as a band — roughly $51K on the low end, roughly $57K on the high end — and to understand that any individual property's actual result will land somewhere inside or, depending on how well it is run, outside that band entirely. A market report describes the market. It does not describe any one listing.

Occupancy and ADR: A Dual-Peak Town, Not a Steady One

The occupancy numbers — 40.7 percent from AirROI, 49 percent from AirDNA — read low next to the ADR figures of $374 and $361. That gap is the shape of Leavenworth's calendar: this is not a market that fills every week at a moderate rate. It fills hard around two peaks and goes quiet in between, which pulls the annual occupancy average down even while the peak-week rate stays high.

Per Rabbu's calendar data, July and August carry the summer peak, driven by river access, hiking into Icicle Canyon, and simple warm-weather tourism. December carries a second, sharper peak tied to the town's holiday lighting displays, with average nightly rates reported near $5,503 during that window — a number that dwarfs the annual ADR average and explains why hosts who price December like a normal winter month are leaving real money on the table. March and April are the confirmed trough. A host who prices flat across the year is pricing wrong for at least eight months of it.

The practical read for a host is that Leavenworth rewards a peak-aware calendar far more than it rewards a flat one. A property that holds a single nightly rate across fifty-two weeks is, in effect, underpricing December and July-August while overpricing the March-April trough — losing revenue on both ends at once. The towns that publish the biggest spreads between ADR and occupancy are almost always the towns where dynamic pricing does the most work, and Leavenworth's numbers describe exactly that kind of market: two hard peaks worth defending with minimum-stay rules and premium pricing, and a confirmed trough worth filling with a different offer entirely rather than pricing it like a slow version of peak.

The Zoning File Nobody Mentions in the Revenue Scrapes

Here is the part that revenue aggregators do not carry, and it matters more than any of the dollar figures above: the City of Leavenworth does not allow overnight, weekend, or vacation rentals under one month in any residential zone district within city limits or its Urban Growth Area. That includes Multifamily, RL-6, RL-10, and RL-12 zoning — in other words, most of the housing stock people picture when they picture 'a cabin in Leavenworth.'

There are two legal paths inside city jurisdiction. Commercial-zoned property can potentially operate as transient lodging after a building and life-safety conversion plus a business license. Residential-zoned property has a narrower path: an owner-occupied bed-and-breakfast operation with a Conditional Use Permit, per the city's own administrative interpretation on the subject. Outside city limits, in unincorporated Chelan County — which covers Icicle Canyon, Plain, and the broader Leavenworth 98826 area — the rules run differently again, through a tiered county permit system. A property that looks identical from the curb can be legal in the county and prohibited in the city, and revenue tools that describe this market as low-regulation are, on this point, simply wrong. This is not legal advice — confirm which jurisdiction and zone a given parcel actually sits in before pricing a purchase or a marketing plan around it.

It is worth sitting with why this matters more than any of the dollar figures above. A host or buyer who runs the AirROI, AirDNA, or Rabbu number through a spreadsheet without first checking which zone a parcel sits in is underwriting a number the property may not be legally allowed to earn. Revenue tools scrape booking data from active listings; they do not audit whether those listings are compliant, and they certainly do not flag a residential zone district where overnight rentals under one month are simply not permitted. A property can look identical from the curb to a legally operating short-term rental two doors down and still fall on the wrong side of the city's zoning map.

The owner-occupied bed-and-breakfast path deserves its own note, because it is easy to misread as a loophole rather than a genuinely different business model. A Conditional Use Permit for a residential-zone B&B assumes the owner lives on site, which rules out the classic whole-home, self-check-in short-term rental that most of the revenue figures above are describing. Anyone weighing a residential-zone property in Leavenworth against these numbers should be honest about which product they are actually allowed to run — a commercial-conversion transient lodging business, an owner-occupied B&B, or, if the parcel sits outside city limits, a county-permitted rental under an entirely different rulebook.

What the County Side Looks Like

Chelan County's short-term rental code — Chapter 11.88.290 for unincorporated areas — runs a tiered permit structure. The county's published fee table lists Tier 1 at $728 annual and renewal, Tier 2 at $728, and Tier 3 at $1,092, with renewals due on time between September 1 and October 31. Those figures should be re-verified against the county's current STR page before anyone builds a budget around them, since fee tables move.

New Tier 2 and Tier 3 applications are only accepted in areas the county has not capped, and the 98826 area — which covers Leavenworth, Plain, and Lake Wenatchee — has, per county notices, run over capacity for new Tier 2 and Tier 3 permits. Tier 1, generally the owner-occupied category, has been reported open year-round in county communications, but that status should be checked against the county's live STR statistics page rather than treated as permanent. A parcel inside the Urban Growth Area gets a joint city-and-county review, which is its own wrinkle worth confirming before anyone assumes a county permit alone clears them to operate.

Village Core vs. Icicle and Plain: One Town, Two Products

The village core and the cabins scattered along Icicle Road or out toward Plain are not the same guest product, even though they share a market report. The village core sells walkability to Front Street, festival proximity, and the theming itself. The canyon and Plain cabins sell quiet, river or forest access, and distance from the crowds — a different draw for a different guest, and in many cases a different zoning jurisdiction entirely, per the section above. There is no separate AirROI figure for the canyon versus the village; the dollar range above is the town-wide number, and it should not be split into an guessed sub-figure for either product without a dedicated data pull.

What This Means for Pricing and Positioning in 2026

Put together, the honest 2026 picture is: a town-wide revenue range of roughly $51K to $57K depending on source, an occupancy rate in the low-to-mid 40s to high-40s percent, an ADR around $360 to $375, a hard dual-peak calendar (July-August and December), a confirmed March-April trough, and a zoning file that restricts most residential-zoned city property to either a commercial conversion or an owner-occupied bed-and-breakfast path. None of that is a reason to skip Leavenworth. It is a reason to build a listing, a price calendar, and — if buying — an underwriting model around what this specific town's year actually looks like, not around a friendlier neighbor's number or a scrape that skipped the zoning page.

For a buyer, that means underwriting the low end of the range — closer to $51K than $57K — as the conservative case, and treating anything above that as upside rather than baseline. For a host already operating here, it means building a calendar that actively defends the two peaks, discounts the trough with a real reason to book rather than a flat percentage off, and keeps a folder with the property's own zone confirmation and, if applicable, county permit status, separate from the revenue numbers entirely. The two questions — what could this property earn, and is it legally allowed to earn it — have to be answered independently, and this report is only built to answer the first one.

A Self-Diagnosis Checklist Before You Trust Any of These Numbers

Before applying any of the figures above to a specific property, run the property through a short checklist rather than assuming the town-wide average applies. First: confirm the parcel's actual zone and whether it sits inside city limits, inside the Urban Growth Area, or in unincorporated Chelan County — the same address can carry three very different legal paths depending on which line it falls on. Second: if the property is inside the county, confirm which permit tier it would need and whether that tier is currently accepting new applications in the 98826 area, since Tier 2 and Tier 3 have reportedly run over capacity there. Third: pull the property's own trailing-twelve-month numbers if it has an operating history, rather than assuming a brand-new listing will land at the town median in its first year.

Fourth: separate the village-core question from the Icicle or Plain question. A cabin priced against the town-wide $360–$375 ADR range without accounting for whether it is a walkable Front Street property or a quiet canyon retreat is comparing two different guest products against one blended number. Fifth: check the December and July-August weeks on the calendar specifically — a listing that is not capturing premium rate during the lighting season or the summer peak is very likely leaving money on the table regardless of what the annual average shows. None of this checklist replaces a direct conversation with the city's Community Development office or the county's STR desk before committing to a purchase or a business plan; it is a way to stress-test the market report against the specific parcel in front of you before assuming the town average is your number.

Considering a Second Leavenworth Property

Hosts who already operate one legally compliant short-term rental in Leavenworth sometimes assume a second property in the same town will clear the same hurdles automatically. It will not. Each parcel carries its own zoning designation, and a property that is zoned commercially or already holds a valid conversion is not evidence that a second, residential-zoned property nearby will qualify the same way. The Conditional Use Permit path for an owner-occupied bed-and-breakfast is also, by definition, a single-residence model — it does not scale into a second unrelated property without its own owner-occupied arrangement and its own permit review.

The county side raises a different second-property question. If the first property sits inside unincorporated Chelan County under a Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 permit, a second property in the same 98826 cap area is subject to whatever capacity status applies at the time of the new application — not the status that applied when the first permit was issued. A host who assumes an open Tier 1 lane from a prior year will still be open when they apply again is making an assumption the county's own STR statistics page can confirm or contradict in a few minutes. The market-level revenue range in this report tells a buyer what the town is capable of producing; it says nothing about whether a specific second parcel is permitted to produce it, and that second question has to be answered by the city or county desk, not by AirROI, AirDNA, or Rabbu.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does a short-term rental in Leavenworth, WA actually make?

Reported figures range depending on source and vintage: AirROI shows $4,254 a month (labeled roughly $51,048 to $51,053 a year) across 643 listings at 40.7 percent occupancy and a $374 ADR, for the window August 2025 through July 2026. AirDNA, as of August 2026, shows roughly $56.6K across 738 listings at 49 percent occupancy. Rabbu's April 2026 figure is $53,340. The honest answer is a range, not a single number.

Why do AirROI, AirDNA, and Rabbu disagree on Leavenworth's revenue?

Different sample sizes (643 versus 738 listings), different pull dates, and different underlying methodologies. None of the three is wrong on its face, but averaging them into one blended figure hides how much they actually disagree and can mislead a host or buyer sizing the market.

Can I run a short-term rental out of a house I own inside Leavenworth city limits?

It depends on the zone. The city does not allow overnight, weekend, or vacation rentals under one month in residential zone districts, including Multifamily, RL-6, RL-10, and RL-12. A commercial-zoned property may qualify after a building and life-safety conversion plus a business license, and a residential property may qualify as an owner-occupied bed-and-breakfast with a Conditional Use Permit. This is not legal advice — confirm your parcel's zone with the city before assuming either path applies.

Is Leavenworth's short-term rental market the same as Cle Elum's?

No. Cle Elum runs its own separate market file, with a reported figure near $4,974 a month, built on its own guest base and its own regulatory desk. Leavenworth's numbers above should not be blended with Cle Elum's, and neither town's occupancy or ADR should be used to fill a gap in the other's data.

What are Leavenworth's peak booking months?

Per Rabbu's calendar data, July and August carry the summer peak, and December carries a second, sharper peak tied to the town's holiday lighting season, with average nightly rates reported near $5,503 during that stretch. March and April are the confirmed low season.

Do short-term rentals outside Leavenworth city limits follow different rules?

Yes. Unincorporated Chelan County, which covers areas like Icicle Canyon and Plain, runs its own tiered permit system under county code, separate from the city's zoning restrictions. Fees and cap status should be verified directly against the county's current short-term rental page, since new Tier 2 and Tier 3 permits have reportedly been capped in the 98826 area.

Is Leavenworth over capacity for new short-term rental permits?

In unincorporated Chelan County's 98826 area, which includes Leavenworth, Plain, and Lake Wenatchee, new Tier 2 and Tier 3 permits have been reported as capped per county notices. Tier 1, typically owner-occupied, has been reported open. Confirm current status against the county's live STR statistics page before assuming either way.

What is the difference between a village-core listing and an Icicle Canyon or Plain cabin in Leavenworth?

They are different guest products sold to different travelers. The village core sells walkable access to Front Street and the town's festival calendar. Icicle Canyon and Plain cabins sell distance, quiet, and river or forest access, and in many cases fall under a different regulatory jurisdiction than city-limit property. There is no separate revenue figure published for either sub-market individually.

What drives Leavenworth's December revenue spike?

The town's holiday lighting season pulls a concentrated wave of visitors, with Rabbu reporting average nightly rates near $5,503 during that window — well above the town's roughly $360 to $375 annual ADR average. Hosts who price December at a standard winter rate are underselling a genuinely unusual peak.

Should I use Leavenworth's numbers to estimate revenue for a nearby town like Plain or Peshastin?

No. Each of those areas can carry its own zoning status, permit tier availability, and guest draw, and none of them share Leavenworth's published AirROI, AirDNA, or Rabbu figures. Treat each town or unincorporated area as its own file until a dedicated data pull says otherwise.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Most Leavenworth marketing still leans on the town's theming alone and skips the zoning file entirely, which is how a host ends up pricing a listing that a residential permit was never going to allow in the first place. Name.

A Crest & Cove marketing audit checks your Leavenworth listing's calendar, photos, and search visibility against this year's actual numbers. It does not touch permits, financing, or legal filings — that stays with the city and county desks above.

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