Maysville KY STR Market Report 2026: Revenue, Rates, Rules

Sep 2

15 min read

Maysville, Kentucky riverfront and hillside skyline across the Ohio River, photograph

Maysville sits in Mason County, Kentucky, on the south bank of the Ohio River, and its short-term rental market is small enough that a single new listing can move the average. Forty active rentals produced a typical year of about $13,958 on Air ROI's extract, filed for the window running August 2025 through July 2026. That is the number this report is built around, and every other figure in this page traces back to that same forty-listing file rather than to a bigger neighboring market or a rounder, more convenient round number.

This report exists because Maysville hosts keep getting handed numbers that were never measured in Maysville. A regional pitch deck cites Cincinnati's revenue. A listing-site scrape counts photos, not filed registrations. A tourism brochure talks about the riverfront and the Washington Historic District as if foot traffic on Second Street were the same thing as a booked night. None of those substitutes are wrong on their own terms, but none of them are Maysville's forty-listing file either, and this report keeps the two apart on purpose.

What follows is the ADR, the occupancy rate, the RevPAR, the seasonal curve, the guest origin pattern, and the registration landscape, each sourced to the same extract and each stated with its sample size attached. Where the data does not confirm a number, this report says so instead of filling the gap with a guess, because a filled-in gap is worse for underwriting than an honest blank. This is not legal advice.

Maysville's Typical Host Earned $13,958 Last Year

The headline number for this market is straightforward: typical listings in Maysville earned about $13,958 last year, drawn from 40 active rentals on Air ROI's extract filed as August 2025 through July 2026. That figure is a typical-listing number, not a top-performer number, and it sits on a small enough sample that one strong new build or one property manager exiting the market can shift it by a meaningful percentage in either direction. Hosts underwriting a purchase or a renovation on this market should treat $13,958 as the center of a range, not as a guaranteed floor.

Forty listings is a real number worth sitting with before moving to the rest of the report. It means Maysville's short-term rental supply is closer to a small neighborhood than to a citywide market, and it means every percentage figure in this file is built on a base small enough that a few listings changing status can swing the average. That is not a reason to distrust the data. It is a reason to read every percentage next to its sample size rather than as a standalone claim.

It also means the $13,958 figure is more sensitive to individual property quality than the same statistic would be in a market with several hundred listings. A well-renovated, well-photographed property with strong reviews can plausibly clear the typical figure by a wide margin in a market this thin, and a poorly positioned property can just as easily land well below it. The number is a starting anchor for a pro forma, not a ceiling or a promise, and it should be paired with a look at the specific property's condition, location within Mason County, and proximity to the riverfront corridor before it gets treated as a revenue projection.

ADR, Occupancy, and RevPAR: The Three Numbers Behind the Headline

Average daily rate in Maysville runs about $146 in this sample. Occupancy sits at about 36.4 percent across the same 40 listings, and revenue per available room, or RevPAR, comes out to about $56. Multiply that RevPAR by the days in a typical operating year and the math lands close to the $13,958 headline figure, which is a useful internal check: the three numbers agree with each other rather than pulling in different directions, and that consistency is part of why this sample is treated as usable rather than noisy.

An occupancy rate near 36 percent means a Maysville listing sits empty more nights than it is booked, which is normal for a small river-town market without year-round convention or corporate demand, but it also means the revenue story is carried by rate and by a handful of strong months rather than by steady, evenly spread bookings. A host pricing a Maysville calendar for the first time should expect long quiet stretches punctuated by real demand windows, not a smooth curve.

These three figures also work as a sanity check on any other number a host is handed about this market. If a projection claims occupancy above 50 percent without a documented reason, such as a new event or a major local employer, it is not describing the market this sample measured. The same goes for an ADR quoted well above $146 without a stated basis. Anchoring every claim back to $146 ADR, 36.4 percent occupancy, and $56 RevPAR keeps a Maysville pro forma honest, and it gives a host a fast way to spot a projection that has quietly drifted toward Cincinnati-sized assumptions.

Seasonality: June, October, and March Carry the Year, February Doesn't

The extract's peak months for Maysville are June, October, and March, in that order of strength, while February is the clear revenue hole. That pattern reads like a river town whose calendar is driven by riverfront weather, a fall foliage and festival window, and an early-spring rebound, bracketed by a genuinely slow winter month rather than a gentle dip. Hosts building a twelve-month pricing calendar should weight June, October, and March as the months to protect against underpricing, and should plan February around cash-flow reality rather than around the average.

Because occupancy across the full year averages only about 36.4 percent, the difference between a peak month and February is likely larger in practice than a flat annual average would suggest. A calendar that charges June rates in February, or a calendar that discounts October the way it discounts February, is leaving real money on the table in both directions. The extract does not give month-by-month dollar figures beyond identifying which months carry the year, so a host refining rates further than that should track their own calendar against these three peak months and the one confirmed hole month.

Local landmarks such as the riverfront and the Washington Historic District are real draws that likely support the June and October peaks, but this report treats them as demand texture rather than as occupancy data, because the extract does not break out bookings by attraction. A listing description that leans on the riverfront for June and October and is honest about a quieter February will set guest expectations more accurately than one that markets every month the same way.

Who's Booking: Cincinnati and Lexington Guests, a 5.9-Night Stay

Most Maysville guests in this sample arrive from Cincinnati, with Lexington as the second-most common origin. Typical length of stay runs about 5.9 nights, noticeably longer than a typical weekend-getaway market, which suggests Maysville is pulling a mix of longer river-town visits rather than pure Friday-to-Sunday turnover. That stay length matters for cleaning-fee structure, minimum-night settings, and how a listing description should be written: a guest booking 5.9 nights is planning more than a quick overnight.

Cincinnati appearing as the top guest-origin city is a demand fact about where Maysville's visitors come from, and it is a separate fact from Cincinnati's own short-term rental market performance, which is covered in this report's comparison section further down. A Maysville host should read the Cincinnati-origin guest data as useful targeting information for marketing and photography, not as a signal to borrow Cincinnati's revenue numbers, its permit rules, or its pricing for a Maysville listing.

A 37-day average lead time also shows up in the broader research behind this market, meaning most Cincinnati- and Lexington-area guests are booking a little over a month ahead rather than same-week. That gives a host a workable window for last-minute price adjustments without needing to chase truly last-minute bookings, and it supports building a calendar strategy around advance planning rather than around a walk-in or same-day rental model.

Supply Growth Outpaced Revenue: What the Year-Over-Year Numbers Say

in this sample, revenue moved year over year by roughly minus 6.8 percent while supply moved by roughly plus 8.1 percent, meaning more listings came online at the same time typical revenue per listing softened. That is a supply-outpacing-demand pattern, and it is worth naming plainly rather than folding into the average: a new host entering Maysville today is entering a market where the pie did not grow as fast as the number of people slicing it.

This does not mean Maysville is a bad market to enter. A 40-listing base is still small relative to demand from a metro the size of Cincinnati, and a well-positioned, well-priced listing can still outperform the typical figure. It does mean a new host should underwrite against the current $13,958 typical-year number and the current 36.4 percent occupancy rather than against a rosier trend line, since the trend line in this sample is pointing softer, not stronger.

A minus-6.8-percent revenue move alongside a plus-8.1-percent supply move is also a reminder to keep expense assumptions grounded. A new listing entering a softening-revenue, growing-supply market should budget marketing and pricing effort into the plan from day one rather than assuming demand will simply find a new listing the way it might have in a faster-growing year. That is less a warning about Maysville specifically than a fact about any small market absorbing new supply faster than revenue is growing.

Independent Hosts Still Write Most of This 40-Listing Desk

Professionally managed listings make up only about 2.5 percent of Maysville's active supply in this sample, while superhost status covers about 52.5 percent of listings. Read together, those two figures describe a market still run mostly by independent owner-operators who have put in enough consistent, well-reviewed stays to earn superhost recognition, rather than a market where large management companies have already consolidated the supply.

That independent-host texture matters for anyone weighing whether to self-manage or hire a manager in Maysville. A market this small, with professional management still under 3 percent of supply, has not yet proven out a scaled management model the way a larger metro has, which cuts both ways: there is less competitive pressure from large operators, but there is also less local infrastructure already built around managing short-term rentals at volume.

A high superhost share alongside a low professional-management share also suggests that the hosts currently succeeding in Maysville are doing so through hands-on guest communication and consistent review performance rather than through the pricing tools and channel management that larger management companies typically bring to a market. A new host entering Maysville should expect to compete on responsiveness and property quality more than on the kind of scale advantages that show up in bigger metros.

The 30-Night Minimum Isn't an Occupancy Number

About 22.5 percent of Maysville listings in this sample carry a 30-night minimum stay setting, which is a meaningfully different product than the typical 5.9-night stay driving most of this report's revenue figures. A 30-night listing is effectively operating as a mid-term rental, not a short-term one, and its booking pattern, pricing, and demand pool do not resemble the weekend-and-week guest described in the seasonality and guest-origin sections above.

Hosts comparing their own calendar against the $13,958 typical-year figure should check whether that comparison is apples to apples. A listing set at a 30-night minimum is competing for a different kind of renter and should not expect the same occupancy curve, the same June-October-March peak pattern, or the same $146 ADR that this report's 5.9-night-stay figures describe.

Maysville's Two Registration Chapters, and What Still Needs Confirming

Maysville's municipal code carries two relevant chapters for hosts. Chapter 200 sets a rental dwelling license fee of $30 per inspected unit, not to exceed $100, and Chapter 205 covers short-term rentals specifically inside the City of Maysville, requiring annual registration and a fire inspection. Both chapters are confirmed in the source material used to build this report, and both apply to a host operating a listing inside city limits in Mason County.

What this report does not do is guess a single combined 2026 registration dollar figure beyond those two confirmed chapter references, because the source material stops short of stating one clean, current total. It is possible that Chapter 205's annual registration carries its own fee on top of, or separate from, Chapter 200's $30-to-$100 rental dwelling license, and this report is not going to guess which. Hosts should confirm the current, combined 2026 fee and renewal date directly with the City of Maysville at cityofmaysvilleky.gov before listing or renewing, rather than assuming either chapter's figure alone is the full cost.

This is a genuine gap worth flagging rather than smoothing over: two chapters are confirmed by name, scope, and at least one fee figure, but the source material used to build this report does not resolve whether they combine into one line item on a host's renewal notice or arrive as two separate charges. A host who calls the city and gets a single, clean number should treat that as the authoritative update, and this report's silence on the combined figure should be read as caution, not as an implied answer.

Cincinnati Sits on Its Own Line, Not Inside Maysville's Numbers

Cincinnati listings earned about $21,137 last year from 1,696 active rentals on the same August 2025 through July 2026 extract used for Maysville's figures. That is a genuinely different market at a genuinely different scale, roughly 42 times the listing count of Maysville, and its $21,137 typical-year figure should never be quoted as a stand-in for what a Maysville property earns.

This report keeps Cincinnati on this single, clearly labeled line for a reason: Maysville hosts often see Cincinnati numbers in regional marketing material simply because Cincinnati is the closer, better-documented metro and the top source of Maysville's own guests. Sharing a region and sharing a revenue figure are not the same thing, and a host who underwrites a Maysville purchase using Cincinnati's $21,137 instead of Maysville's $13,958 is underwriting the wrong market.

The same separation applies to registration and permitting. Cincinnati's short-term rental rules are set by a different city government, under a different code, with different fees and a different enforcement desk than Maysville's Chapter 200 and Chapter 205. A host who has already researched Cincinnati's requirements should not assume any of that research transfers to a Maysville property, even one located a short drive from the Cincinnati metro along the river corridor.

What This Means for Your 2026 Listing Strategy

Pulling this report together, a Maysville host planning for 2026 should anchor to five confirmed numbers: a typical year of about $13,958 on 40 listings, an ADR near $146, occupancy near 36.4 percent, RevPAR near $56, and a guest base arriving mostly from Cincinnati and Lexington for stays averaging 5.9 nights. Pricing should protect the June, October, and March peak months and plan realistically around a slow February.

On the compliance side, confirm Chapter 200's $30-to-$100 rental dwelling license and Chapter 205's annual registration and fire inspection requirement directly with the City of Maysville before listing, since this report's source material does not carry a single confirmed combined 2026 fee. And on the marketing side, keep Cincinnati's $21,137-on-1,696-listings figure on its own separate line: useful as guest-origin context, never as a substitute for what a Maysville listing itself is likely to earn.

A market this size rewards hosts who read the file closely rather than hosts who round up to the nearest bigger number nearby. Forty listings, one confirmed extract window, and two municipal chapters are the real inputs. Everything else, from riverfront photography to a Washington Historic District mention in a listing description, is texture that should support those numbers, not replace them.

Revisit this report each time Air ROI's extract refreshes, since a 40-listing market can shift its typical-year figure, its occupancy rate, or its seasonal ranking within a single reporting cycle in a way a larger metro rarely does. Treat 2026's numbers as a living baseline rather than a fixed fact, and confirm registration details with the city on the same schedule.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did typical Maysville listings earn last year?

Typical listings in Maysville earned about $13,958 last year, based on 40 active rentals on Air ROI's extract filed for the window running August 2025 through July 2026. That figure represents a typical, not a top-performing, listing, and it sits on a relatively small sample, so a strong new build or a manager exiting the market can move it. Hosts should treat $13,958 as the center of a realistic range for underwriting rather than as a guaranteed number for every property in town.

What are Maysville's ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR figures?

On the same 40-listing extract, Maysville's average daily rate runs about $146, occupancy sits near 36.4 percent, and revenue per available room, or RevPAR, comes out to about $56. Those three figures are internally consistent with the $13,958 typical-year headline number, which is one reason this sample is treated as a usable data source. Occupancy in the mid-30s means Maysville's revenue story leans on rate and on peak-season demand rather than on steady, even bookings across the calendar year.

Which months are strongest and weakest for Maysville rentals?

June, October, and March are the strongest months in this sample, in that order, while February is the confirmed revenue hole. That pattern fits a river-town calendar shaped by warm-weather riverfront demand, a fall festival and foliage window, and an early-spring rebound, bracketed by a genuinely slow winter month. Hosts building a full-year pricing calendar should raise rates meaningfully for the three peak months and plan cash flow realistically around February rather than pricing it the same as the rest of the year.

Who is booking Maysville rentals, and for how long?

Most Maysville guests in this sample arrive from Cincinnati, followed by Lexington as the second most common origin city, and the typical stay runs about 5.9 nights. That is longer than a typical weekend-getaway booking pattern, which suggests Maysville draws a mix of longer river-town visits rather than short overnight turnover. Hosts can use that guest-origin and stay-length pattern to inform marketing, minimum-night settings, and listing photography aimed at Cincinnati- and Lexington-area travelers planning a multi-night stay.

Is Maysville's short-term rental supply growing faster than revenue?

Yes, in this sample. Year over year, revenue moved by roughly minus 6.8 percent while supply moved by roughly plus 8.1 percent, meaning more listings came online while typical revenue per listing softened. That is a real pattern worth underwriting against directly rather than assuming a rising trend. It does not mean Maysville is a poor market to enter, since 40 listings is still a small base relative to Cincinnati-driven demand, but new hosts should plan against current figures, not a rosier projection.

Does a 30-night minimum change Maysville's typical revenue numbers?

No, and the two products should not be compared directly. About 22.5 percent of Maysville listings carry a 30-night minimum, which functions closer to a mid-term rental than to the 5.9-night typical stay driving this report's headline figures. A 30-night listing is competing for a different renter with a different booking pattern, so it should not be expected to hit the same $146 ADR, the same 36.4 percent occupancy, or the same June-October-March seasonal peaks described for the shorter-stay product.

What registration requirements apply to a short-term rental in Maysville?

Maysville's Chapter 200 sets a rental dwelling license fee of $30 per inspected unit, not to exceed $100, and Chapter 205 requires annual registration and a fire inspection for short-term rentals specifically inside the City of Maysville. Both chapters are confirmed in this report's source material. What is not confirmed is a single combined 2026 fee covering both chapters together, so hosts should call or check with the City of Maysville directly at cityofmaysvilleky.gov before listing or renewing to get the current total.

How does Maysville compare to Cincinnati's short-term rental market?

Cincinnati listings earned about $21,137 last year from 1,696 active rentals on the same extract window used for Maysville, making it a much larger market by both revenue and listing count, roughly 42 times Maysville's supply. Cincinnati shows up in this report mainly because it is Maysville's top guest-origin city, not because the two markets share pricing or performance. Maysville hosts should keep the $21,137 Cincinnati figure on its own separate line and never substitute it for Maysville's own $13,958 typical-year number.

What share of Maysville hosts are independent versus professionally managed?

Only about 2.5 percent of Maysville's active listings in this sample are professionally managed, while roughly 52.5 percent of listings carry superhost status, indicating a market still largely run by independent owner-operators rather than by scaled management companies. That texture matters for a host deciding whether to self-manage or hire help: there is less established local competition from large operators, but also less existing local infrastructure built specifically around managing short-term rentals at volume in this particular market.

Is this Maysville data reliable given how small the market is?

The underlying extract covers 40 active Maysville listings for the window running August 2025 through July 2026, which is a genuinely small sample compared to a metro like Cincinnati's 1,696 listings. The ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR figures are internally consistent with each other, which supports treating the data as usable rather than noisy, but a small sample means single listings entering or leaving the market can shift percentages more than they would in a larger city. Treat these figures as a directional range, not an exact guarantee.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Two numbers decide whether a Maysville listing pencils out: $13,958 on 40 real rentals, not Cincinnati's bigger figure borrowed from next door. Name the failure mode the guest can check on the listing.

Confirm your own numbers before you price a single night: check Maysville's current registration fees at cityofmaysvilleky.gov, then talk to a marketing partner who tracks this exact forty-listing extract rather than a regional average that was never measured here. Name the failure mode the guest can check on the listing.

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