Nashville, Indiana STR Market Report 2026: The Real Numbers

Sep 2

14 min read

Nashville Indiana Main Street, Brown County woods, or civic landmark, no people in foreground. Wikimedia: Nashville, Indiana.png

Nashville, Indiana is a Brown County town, and the number that matters most to a host underwriting a property here is not a national average or an Indianapolis figure borrowed to fill a gap. It is the town's own extract: a typical listing earned about $36,557 last year, drawn from 280 active rentals on an AirROI dataset filed for the window running August 2025 through July 2026. That figure, and the supply count behind it, is the spine of everything else in this report.

This page reads the extract the way a host should read it before signing a purchase agreement or building a pro forma: revenue first, then the average daily rate and occupancy that produced it, then the calendar shape across twelve months, then supply, then the registration questions a listing has to clear before that revenue is real. Every dollar figure below traces back to the same AirROI extract and the same August 2025 through July 2026 window. Nothing here is a national blog average dressed up as a Nashville number.

Indianapolis shows up once, briefly, because the same extract carries an Indianapolis figure and hosts researching Brown County sometimes stumble on it first. It gets one paragraph of its own, clearly labeled, and it does not touch the Nashville math anywhere else on this page. Two years, two towns, two files.

None of the figures in this report are projections or estimates built from a smaller sample dressed up to look town-specific. They come from an extract with a named window and a named supply count, which means they can be checked, updated, and re-verified as new data becomes available, rather than treated as a fixed number that never changes. A host who returns to this page next year should expect the underlying figures to move, sometimes meaningfully, as the market itself moves. This is not legal advice.

Typical Listings Earned About $36,557 Last Year

The headline number for Nashville hosts is a typical annual revenue of about $36,557 per listing, measured across the August 2025 through July 2026 window on the AirROI extract this report draws from. That figure represents the middle of the distribution across active Nashville rentals, not a top-quartile outlier and not a worst-case listing that sat empty through the winter. It is the number a realistic new listing should expect to land near once it has a full year of bookings behind it, assuming comparable size, condition, and pricing discipline to the rest of the active supply.

Behind that revenue figure sit two supporting numbers that explain how it was built: an average daily rate of about $303 and an occupancy rate of about 36.9 percent across the same window. Multiply the two together against a 365-day calendar and the math lands close to the reported RevPAR of about $116 per available night. A host modeling a Nashville property should build a pro forma from ADR and occupancy separately rather than backing into them from the annual revenue figure alone, since local seasonality bends both numbers unevenly across the calendar rather than spreading them flat.

None of these figures should be treated as a ceiling or a floor for any individual property. A cabin close to Brown County State Park with strong reviews and professional photography can outperform the typical figure; a property mispriced against the local calendar or carrying deferred maintenance can underperform it by a wide margin. Use $36,557, $303, and 36.9 percent as the town's center of gravity for underwriting, then adjust up or down based on the specific property, not the other way around.

The Desk Is the File, Not a Listing Scrape

Nashville sits in Brown County, and the revenue figures above describe market performance on a booking platform extract. They say nothing about whether a specific parcel is eligible to operate as a short-term rental, what it costs to register, or what paperwork a host has to file before advertising. That is a separate question that belongs to local government, not to AirROI, and this report keeps the two apart on purpose.

In the Town of Nashville itself, eligibility for short-term rental use is determined by zoning, which means the first question for any prospective host is whether the parcel's zoning classification allows the use at all, before any revenue projection matters. In unincorporated Brown County, outside the town limits, the applicable process runs through a Special Exception filing, and remaining spacing requirements apply: 250 feet from the nearest residence and 1,320 feet from the nearest short-term rental. Both of those spacing figures come from the county's own file and should be confirmed against the specific parcel in question, since spacing rules are exactly the kind of detail that can rule a property in or out before a single booking is ever taken.

This report does not publish a dollar figure for a Nashville short-term rental permit fee, because the extract behind this page does not carry one. Hosts should confirm remaining Special Exception filing requirements, remaining tourist-home spacing rules, and remaining Board of Zoning Appeals filings directly with the Brown County Planning Department through browncounty-in.gov before treating any fee number found elsewhere as current. A listing scrape is not a substitute for that file, no matter how confident the number attached to it looks.

Supply: 280 Active Listings in this sample

The AirROI extract behind this report counts 280 active Nashville rentals across the August 2025 through July 2026 window, and that supply figure is what the $36,557 typical revenue number is measured against. Supply size matters to a host for two reasons: it sets the size of the comparable pool the typical figure is drawn from, and it signals how crowded or uncrowded the calendar is likely to feel against local demand drivers like Brown County State Park and the town's arts-colony reputation.

One inconsistency is worth flagging directly rather than quietly smoothing over. A single line in the underlying research file references a supply count of 33 active rentals rather than 280 for the same typical-earnings figure. Every other reference in the same file, and the file's own supply-tagged sentence, uses 280. This report treats 280 as the operative supply figure because it is the number repeated consistently across the extract, but a host who wants certainty on current active listing counts should still confirm supply directly against a live platform search for Nashville, Indiana rather than relying on either number from this page alone.

Supply is not static, and an extract filed for one twelve-month window will drift as new listings register and others exit the market. Treat 280 as a snapshot description of the comparable pool behind this report's revenue figures, not as a permanent ceiling on how many Nashville listings can or will exist going forward.

A small supply base also means a handful of standout or underperforming listings can shift the typical figure more than they would in a market carrying thousands of comparables. That is one more reason to treat $36,557 as a center point to be adjusted for a specific property rather than a fixed number every Nashville listing should expect to hit regardless of size, location, or condition.

Seasonality: Fall Carries the Year, February Is the Hole

in this sample, Nashville's strongest months run October, November, and September, in that order, which lines up with a Brown County calendar built around fall color and the walkable town center. A host pricing a Nashville calendar should expect the bulk of annual revenue to concentrate in that fall window rather than spreading evenly across twelve months, and should build minimum-stay and pricing strategy around protecting those specific weeks rather than treating every autumn weekend identically.

February is named directly in the extract as Nashville's revenue hole, the softest point on the annual calendar. That does not mean a Nashville listing should sit dark in February; it means a host should expect materially lower occupancy and softer rate strength during that stretch and plan cash flow, maintenance scheduling, and marketing spend accordingly rather than assuming February performs like a scaled-down October.

Named event weekends tied to the fall season are a demand signal in this sample, not a substitute for measured occupancy. A host can and should market toward known fall demand, but the underlying occupancy and ADR figures in this report already reflect how that demand actually converted into bookings across the full window, not an optimistic projection of how full a calendar could theoretically get during a single named weekend.

Who Books a Nashville Stay, and How Long They Stay

On the same extract, most Nashville guests arrive from Indianapolis, followed by Cincinnati, and the typical stay length across the window is about 2.6 nights. That combination points to a short-drive, short-stay guest base rather than a long-haul destination trip, which has direct implications for listing strategy: cleaning-fee structure, minimum-stay length, and even amenity choices should be built around a guest who is often driving in for a two- or three-night window rather than flying in for a full week.

A short average stay length also means turnover frequency matters more to a Nashville host's operating cost structure than it would in a market with longer average bookings. Cleaning, restocking, and check-in logistics repeat more often across the same total number of booked nights, and that operating reality belongs in a Nashville pro forma alongside the top-line revenue figure, not as an afterthought calculated later.

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

The same AirROI extract that produced Nashville's $36,557 typical revenue figure also carries an Indianapolis number: about $22,782 in typical annual revenue across 3,057 active rentals, measured on the same August 2025 through July 2026 window. Indianapolis is a much larger, much more urban short-term rental market, with roughly eleven times the active listing count of Nashville, and a lower typical per-listing revenue figure to go with it.

That comparison exists on this page for one reason: to keep a host from accidentally blending the two. Nashville's $36,557 on 280 listings and Indianapolis's $22,782 on 3,057 listings describe two different markets with two different supply scales, two different guest profiles, and two different local registration desks. A host underwriting a Nashville property should hold the Nashville figures as the operative numbers for that parcel, note that Indianapolis exists as a much larger neighboring market with its own separate economics, and stop there. The two towns share a region on a map. They do not share a revenue line.

A host who happens to be evaluating both markets at once should build two separate pro formas rather than one blended spreadsheet. Nashville's smaller supply and higher typical revenue per listing suggest a market where individual property positioning and calendar management carry more weight against a limited comparable pool. Indianapolis's much larger supply and lower typical revenue per listing suggest a market shaped more by volume and urban demand patterns than by any single fall-season driver. Neither structure is automatically better; they are simply different enough that the same underwriting assumptions should not be copied from one file to the other.

Building a Nashville Pro Forma From These Numbers

A host using this report to underwrite a specific Nashville property should start with the three core performance figures rather than the single revenue headline. Average daily rate of about $303 and occupancy of about 36.9 percent are the inputs that actually drive revenue; the $36,557 typical annual figure is the output. Building a pro forma from the inputs, adjusted for the specific property's bedroom count, condition, and proximity to Brown County State Park and the town center, produces a more defensible number than simply anchoring to the reported average and assuming it applies unchanged.

Seasonality belongs in the same model as a line item, not a footnote. A calendar that assumes flat monthly revenue across twelve months will overstate February and understate the October through November stretch, both of which distort cash flow planning and the timing of any renovation or furnishing spend a host is considering. Splitting the year into a fall peak, a winter hole anchored on February, and a set of shoulder months in between gives a far more usable monthly cash flow picture than a single averaged annual figure.

Finally, revenue projections and registration status are two separate workstreams that should be resolved in parallel, not in sequence. A host should not wait until a purchase agreement is signed to confirm whether a specific parcel clears Town of Nashville zoning or unincorporated Brown County's Special Exception and spacing requirements. Pull the revenue numbers from this report, and pull the registration answer from the Brown County Planning Department directly, before either one becomes a closing-week surprise.

What This Report Does Not Tell You

This report is built entirely from a single AirROI extract covering the August 2025 through July 2026 window, and it should be read with that scope in mind. It does not carry a Nashville short-term rental permit fee, a specific lodging tax rate, or a confirmed renewal schedule, because those figures are not present in the underlying data this page draws from. Any dollar amount for registration, licensing, or lodging tax that a host encounters elsewhere should be verified directly against the Brown County Planning Department and the relevant tax authority rather than assumed to match anything on this page.

It also does not resolve the single supply-count inconsistency noted earlier in this report, where one line in the source file references 33 active rentals instead of the 280 figure used everywhere else in the same file. This report treats 280 as the operative figure because it is the number used consistently across the extract, but a host who needs a precise, current active-listing count for Nashville should confirm it against a live platform search rather than either number printed here.

Used within those boundaries, this report gives a Nashville host a defensible starting point: a typical annual revenue figure, the average daily rate and occupancy that produced it, a supply count to compare against, a seasonality shape to plan cash flow around, and a clear pointer to where the registration questions actually get answered. That is a meaningfully different, and more useful, document than a marketing page built around round numbers and no source.

Reading This Report Before a Purchase Decision

A buyer evaluating a specific Brown County parcel for short-term rental use should treat every figure on this page as a starting range, then narrow it against the actual property. The $36,557 typical revenue figure describes the center of an active supply of 280 listings; a two-bedroom cabin with limited walkability to the town center will not automatically land on that figure, and neither will a larger, professionally furnished property closer to Brown County State Park. Use the reported ADR and occupancy as the baseline assumptions in a spreadsheet, then adjust each one individually based on comparable listings for the exact property type under consideration, rather than moving the blended annual figure up or down as a single lever.

The seasonality shape described in this report, an October through November peak riding on a September lead-in and a February hole, should influence financing conversations as much as marketing ones. A lender or a partner reviewing a Nashville acquisition will want to see monthly cash flow that reflects that shape rather than a flat monthly average, since a flat model overstates how much cushion exists in the slow months and understates how much of the year's revenue has to be captured during the fall stretch to hit the $36,557 typical figure at all.

None of that underwriting work substitutes for confirming registration status first. A property that pencils out at $36,557 a year on paper is worth exactly nothing as a short-term rental if it cannot clear Town of Nashville zoning or unincorporated Brown County's Special Exception and spacing requirements. Sequence the two checks so that registration eligibility is confirmed early in due diligence, well before the revenue model becomes the deciding factor in an offer.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did the typical Nashville, Indiana short-term rental earn last year?

On the AirROI extract behind this report, a typical Nashville listing earned about $36,557 across the August 2025 through July 2026 window, measured against 280 active rentals in the market. That figure sits in the middle of the distribution, not at the top, so a new listing with comparable size, condition, and pricing discipline should expect to land near it once a full booking year is behind it, adjusted for the specific property's strengths and weaknesses.

What was Nashville's average daily rate and occupancy in this sample?

The extract puts Nashville's average daily rate at about $303 and occupancy at about 36.9 percent across the August 2025 through July 2026 window. Multiplying those two figures against a full calendar year lands close to the reported RevPAR of about $116 per available night, which is the figure a host should use when comparing Nashville against another market's per-night earning power rather than comparing raw annual revenue totals alone.

How many active short-term rentals does Nashville have?

The AirROI extract counts 280 active Nashville rentals across the reporting window, and that is the supply figure this report's typical-revenue number is measured against. One line elsewhere in the underlying research file references 33 rentals instead, which this report flags as a likely data inconsistency rather than a confirmed second supply figure, since every other reference in the same file uses 280 consistently.

Do I need a Nashville registration before I advertise a listing in 2026?

This report does not carry a confirmed Nashville short-term rental permit dollar amount, because the extract behind it does not include one. In the Town of Nashville, eligibility is determined by zoning; in unincorporated Brown County, a Special Exception filing applies. Confirm remaining Special Exception, remaining tourist-home spacing, and remaining Board of Zoning Appeals requirements directly at the Brown County Planning Department through browncounty-in.gov before advertising any 2026 listing.

What are Nashville's short-term rental spacing requirements?

In unincorporated Brown County, remaining tourist-home spacing rules require 250 feet from the nearest residence and 1,320 feet from the nearest existing short-term rental, according to the county file this report draws from. Those spacing figures apply outside the Town of Nashville itself, where eligibility runs through zoning instead. A host should confirm which jurisdiction a specific parcel falls under before assuming either rule set applies to it.

Which months earn the most revenue for Nashville hosts?

in this sample, Nashville's strongest months run October, November, and September, in that order, reflecting a fall-color and walkable-town-center calendar typical of Brown County. A host pricing a Nashville listing should expect the bulk of annual revenue to concentrate in that autumn stretch rather than spreading evenly across twelve months, and should protect pricing and minimum stays during those specific weeks.

Which month is the weakest for Nashville short-term rental revenue?

February is named directly in the extract as Nashville's revenue hole, the softest point on the annual calendar behind this report. That does not mean a listing should go dark during that stretch, but a host should plan for materially lower occupancy and softer rate strength in February and budget cash flow, maintenance timing, and marketing spend around that reality rather than assuming it performs like a smaller version of October.

Where do most Nashville, Indiana guests come from, and how long do they stay?

On the same extract, most Nashville guests arrive from Indianapolis, followed by Cincinnati, and the typical stay length is about 2.6 nights. That points to a short-drive guest base making short trips rather than a long-haul destination audience, which should shape cleaning-fee structure, minimum-stay policy, and turnover planning for any Nashville listing built around this guest profile.

Is Nashville's typical revenue directly comparable to Indianapolis's in this sample?

Both figures come from the same AirROI extract and the same August 2025 through July 2026 window, but they describe two very different markets. Nashville's typical listing earned about $36,557 across 280 active rentals, while Indianapolis's typical listing earned about $22,782 across 3,057 active rentals. The two numbers should be read side by side to understand scale, not blended into a single regional average for underwriting either property.

Is a 30-night minimum stay the same thing as occupancy in Nashville?

No. A minimum-stay policy is a listing setting a host chooses; occupancy is a measured outcome of actual bookings against available nights. This report's occupancy figure of about 36.9 percent reflects real booked nights across the extract window for Nashville's active supply, and it should not be confused with, or substituted by, any individual listing's minimum-stay configuration, which affects booking behavior but is not itself a performance metric.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Nashville, Indiana hosts earned a typical $36,557 last year on 280 active listings, not a national average dressed up in local language. See the real ADR, occupancy, and calendar shape behind that number before underwriting the next Brown County property.

Crest & Cove Creative builds Nashville, Indiana listing strategy and marketing around this town's own extract, not a borrowed Indianapolis figure or a generic Indiana average, so pricing, seasonality, and positioning decisions rest on numbers that actually describe this market. Talk with us about turning the $36,557 typical figure into a specific plan for your Brown County property.

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