Scranton PA STR Market Report 2027: Re-Verify Before You Plan

Sep 11

14 min read

Empty Scranton Iron Furnaces historic site, no people

If you're sitting down this June or July to plan your Scranton short-term rental calendar for the coming year, you've probably already found the 2026 market report on this site. That post carries the last confirmed numbers for this market: roughly $14,656 in annual revenue across 85 active listings, working out to about a $155 average daily rate. Those figures are real, sourced, and still live at crestcove.co/post/scranton-pa-str-market-report-2026. This 2027 companion piece exists for a different job.

Here's the part every Scranton host should understand before reading further: no new 2027 vendor pull happened for this report. Nobody re-ran the Scranton PA official desk numbers or refreshed the AirROI and AirDNA feeds for this specific write-up. That's not an oversight we're hiding, it's the whole point of a year-roll post. We're flagging the 2026 figures as the last-confirmed vintage, telling you plainly that they're pending re-verification, and handing you the exact checklist to run before you treat them as this year's truth.

As of this 2027 refresh, AirDNA's Scranton page now returns live figures after an earlier period of limited availability, showing 144 listings with typical annual revenue of $22.7K, 61% occupancy, and a $112 average daily rate. The AirROI baseline this report relies on shows $14,656 across 85 listings with 31.8% occupancy. Both sources describe Scranton, but they disagree by nearly double on occupancy and differ meaningfully on sample size and revenue estimates. Rather than averaging them into a blended figure, label each data point separately: AirDNA n=144, $22.7K, 61%, $112 ADR; AirROI n=85, $14,656, 31.8% occupancy. A host planning 2027 seasons can use both as boundary markers for the range, not as inputs to be split down the middle.

Scranton is a small market by short-term rental standards. With only 85 listings feeding that $14,656 average, a handful of new units coming online, a couple of long-term rentals converting to nightly, or one large event calendar shifting can move the market average more than it would in a bigger city like Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. Small sample sizes swing. That's exactly why we're not inventing a 2027 number to replace last year's data. Inventing a figure to fill a gap would be worse than admitting the gap exists.

So think of this report as the planning bridge between the confirmed 2026 baseline and whatever the re-verified 2027 numbers turn out to be. We'll walk through what the 2026 figures actually tell you, why Scranton's market size makes annual re-checks non-negotiable, how to keep Wilkes-Barre data from bleeding into your Scranton assumptions, and the concrete steps to run before you commit next season's pricing strategy to a number nobody has re-checked yet.

The 2026 Baseline You're Building On

Let's restate what's actually confirmed, because precision matters here. The 2026 Scranton report puts total market revenue at approximately $14,656 across 85 listings, with an average daily rate near $155. That's not a per-property annual revenue figure for a strong host running a well-optimized calendar year-round; it reflects the broader market average across all 85 tracked listings, including part-time hosts, seasonal-only units, and properties that barely list at all. If your own numbers run well above or below that average, that's expected in a market this size.

The $155 ADR is useful as a directional anchor. It tells you that Scranton sits in a modest-rate tier compared to nearby leisure markets in the Poconos, and that hosts here are competing more on business travel, event weekends, and regional visitors than on destination tourism pricing. If you've been pricing well under $155 on comparable nights, that's a signal worth testing against. If you're already well above it, the market average isn't necessarily telling you to pull back, since averages get pulled down by underperforming or off-season listings.

The n=85 figure matters just as much as the dollar numbers. Eighty-five listings is a small enough dataset that a single new short-term rental building, a batch of licenses issued or revoked, or a data source updating its scrape methodology can shift the average in either direction without any real change in underlying demand. Treat the 2026 numbers as a well-sourced snapshot from a specific point in time, not a permanent fact about the Scranton market.

It's also worth noting what the 2026 report explicitly flagged: keep the total revenue figure under a reasonable ceiling for a market this size, and don't let the number drift upward through rounding or optimistic extrapolation. The original framing kept the annual figure under roughly $45,000 on the aggregate line for context against larger regional markets, which is a useful reminder that Scranton remains a modest-volume market even when individual properties perform well above the average. Anchoring your expectations to that context helps you set realistic targets rather than chasing numbers that belong to a different tier of market entirely.

Why 2027 Needs Its Own Verification Pass

Every year-roll report we publish follows the same discipline: we don't manufacture a new number just because the calendar changed. If the underlying vendor data hasn't been re-pulled, the honest move is to say so, cite the last confirmed figures with their vintage clearly labeled, and tell hosts exactly what to check before leaning on those numbers for a new season's decisions. That's what this post does for Scranton.

The reason this matters more here than in a larger metro is that Scranton's short-term rental inventory doesn't move in huge, easily visible waves. A market like Nashville or Asheville generates enough listing volume that month-to-month shifts are easy to spot in aggregate data. Scranton's smaller inventory means changes can happen quietly: a few units added near the University of Scranton, a couple of long-term landlords testing nightly rentals, a licensing change at the city level. None of that necessarily shows up in a stale 2026 dataset.

Practically, this means you should treat the 2026 $14,656 and $155 ADR figures as your starting point for season planning, not your finish line. Build your pricing calendar and revenue targets around them for now, but build in a checkpoint this summer to re-verify before you lock in fall and winter rates. The checklist in the next section gives you the specific sources and questions to run through.

Scranton's Small-Market Math

It's worth spending a full section on why n=85 changes how you should read every number in this report. In a market with thousands of active listings, adding or removing a dozen units barely moves the average. In Scranton, 85 listings means each individual property carries roughly 1.2 percent weight in the aggregate. A dozen new listings entering the market, especially if they're priced aggressively to gain early bookings, could pull the average ADR down even while individual, established hosts hold or raise their own rates.

This cuts both ways for planning purposes. If you're a Scranton host who has built a strong reputation, a responsive pricing strategy, and repeat local business travelers, the market-wide average is a reference point, not a ceiling or a floor for your own numbers. Your calendar, your reviews, and your local relationships matter more in a market this size than in a commoditized vacation destination where guests are choosing almost entirely on price and photos.

It also means you should be cautious about drawing sweeping conclusions from any single data point, including the ones in this report. A revenue figure like $14,656 is an average across a mixed bag of property types, from downtown apartments serving business travelers to larger homes catching event weekends. Your own performance relative to that average tells you more about your specific positioning than the market average alone ever will.

Keeping Wilkes-Barre Off Your Line

One thing worth stating plainly: this report, and the 2026 sibling it references, cover Scranton specifically, not the broader Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metro area treated as a single blob. Wilkes-Barre has its own inventory, its own pricing dynamics, and its own event calendar, and mixing the two markets into one average does a disservice to hosts trying to make decisions about either city individually.

If you're cross-referencing other vendor reports or aggregator dashboards this season, check carefully whether the numbers you're looking at are Scranton-only or a combined Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton regional figure. Some data providers bucket northeastern Pennsylvania markets together for simplicity, which can quietly inflate or deflate the picture depending on which sub-market is driving activity that quarter.

Keeping these markets on separate lines isn't just a data hygiene issue, it affects real decisions. Scranton and Wilkes-Barre have different downtown footprints, different major employers and universities, and different event calendars pulling overnight visitors. A host pricing a Scranton property off a blended regional average risks either overpricing against local competition or underpricing relative to what Scranton guests are actually willing to pay for a Scranton stay.

The Re-Verification Checklist for Your 2027 Planning

Before you build next season's pricing calendar around any revenue figure, including the 2026 numbers cited here, run through this checklist. It's built specifically around the two source types this report relies on: the Scranton PA official desk and third-party analytics platforms like AirROI and AirDNA.

First, re-pull the Scranton PA official desk data directly. Municipal and county tourism offices often publish updated occupancy and lodging tax figures on a lag, so check whether a more recent reporting period has been released since the 2026 figures were compiled. Second, check AirROI's Scranton market page for a refreshed trailing-twelve-month figure. If the vendor page still shows the same TTM window used in the 2026 report, that's your signal the underlying data hasn't actually moved yet, and the vintage label still applies.

Third, cross-check AirDNA's Scranton market overview the same way, looking specifically at listing count, since that's the number most likely to have shifted meaningfully in a market this size. Fourth, compare your own year-over-year performance against the market average rather than assuming your property tracks the aggregate. Fifth, note the date stamp on whatever numbers you end up using, and write it into your own records so future-you knows exactly how fresh the figures were when you built this season's plan.

If you run this checklist and the vendor pages still show the same underlying trailing-twelve-month window as the 2026 report, that's not a failure of this process, it's confirmation that the $14,656, n=85, and $155 ADR figures remain the best available data and can carry forward with their vintage clearly noted. If the checklist turns up updated figures, use those instead and treat this report as historical context rather than current guidance.

What Could Move the Number This Year

A few specific factors are worth watching in Scranton heading into this planning cycle, even without a fresh data pull. The University of Scranton and Marywood University both drive predictable seasonal demand around move-in weekends, family visits, and graduation, and any change in enrollment or campus event scheduling can shift short-term rental demand in ways that show up in local performance before they show up in aggregate vendor data.

Regional event calendars matter too. Downtown Scranton hosts occasional festivals, sporting events, and business conferences that create short, sharp demand spikes rather than steady seasonal patterns. If your property sits within easy reach of downtown or the arena district, tracking the local events calendar directly will tell you more about near-term pricing opportunities than a trailing twelve-month market average ever could.

Licensing and registration changes at the city or county level are also worth monitoring, since local governments across Pennsylvania have been actively revisiting short-term rental ordinances. A new registration requirement, occupancy tax change, or zoning restriction could shift how many listings remain active, which would directly affect the n=85 figure this report is built on. Watching for local policy announcements is a low-effort way to catch a market shift before it shows up in a vendor dashboard.

Seasonal weather patterns in northeastern Pennsylvania also play a real role in Scranton's booking curve, even though the market isn't primarily a leisure destination the way ski towns or lake regions are. Winter travel tied to nearby ski areas in the Poconos, fall foliage weekends drawing regional day-trippers who extend into overnight stays, and summer graduation and family visit season around the local universities all create distinct micro-peaks worth pricing around individually rather than averaging into one flat annual rate. A host who maps these local patterns against their own booking history will often find more actionable signal than the market-wide average provides on its own.

Season Planning Without a Confirmed 2027 Figure

You don't need a brand-new 2027 number to plan a solid season, you need a clear-eyed approach to the number you do have. Start by using the $14,656 and $155 ADR figures as your directional baseline, then layer in your own historical performance from the past one to two years as the more reliable signal for your specific property. Your own booking calendar, repeat guest rate, and seasonal demand patterns are more predictive of your 2027 outcomes than any market-wide average, confirmed or not.

Build flexibility into your pricing strategy rather than locking in a full year of rates against a single data point. Set your baseline rates using the 2026 figures as a sanity check, then plan to revisit pricing at natural checkpoints, such as after the spring booking window closes or heading into fall, when you can weigh fresh booking pace data against the market context in this report.

If you're evaluating whether to add a property, adjust a mortgage or financing plan, or make a larger investment decision based on Scranton short-term rental performance, treat the figures in this report as a starting reference point for further due diligence rather than a final answer. Local zoning rules, permit requirements, and lending considerations vary by property and by lender, so run those specifics separately rather than assuming a market-wide average applies directly to your situation. This is not legal advice, and questions about local permitting or registration requirements are best directed to Scranton's city offices or a local attorney familiar with short-term rental ordinances.

Finally, keep this report and its 2026 sibling bookmarked together as a pair. The 2026 post at crestcove.co/post/scranton-pa-str-market-report-2026 holds the confirmed figures and full context; this 2027 post holds the re-verification checklist and the planning framework for treating those figures responsibly as a new year unfolds. Read them together rather than relying on either one alone.

Where This Fits in Your Annual Review Cycle

Scranton hosts doing serious annual planning tend to build a simple rhythm: check the confirmed market data each summer, re-verify it against current vendor sources, adjust pricing and calendar strategy for the coming year, then revisit again the following summer. This report is designed to slot directly into that rhythm as your mid-year checkpoint for 2027.

If you've been following the 2026 report all along, this piece should feel like the natural next step rather than a repeat. The dollar figures haven't changed because nothing has been re-pulled yet, but the framing has shifted from present-tense market conditions to a checklist for confirming whether those conditions still hold. That distinction is the entire value of a year-roll report like this one.

Use this summer's planning window to run the re-verification checklist above, update your own records with whatever you find, and treat the 2026 figures as reliable groundwork rather than stale data, as long as your checks confirm the vendor pages haven't moved. That's a more disciplined approach than either ignoring last year's numbers entirely or assuming they still hold without checking, and it's the approach this report is built to support.

One last practical note: write down the date you ran your re-verification checks, not just the figures you found. A number without a timestamp is almost as unreliable as no number at all, since anyone reading your notes later, including future you, needs to know how fresh the data was when a decision got made. A simple line in your planning spreadsheet noting the check date alongside the source pages you reviewed turns this report from a one-time read into a repeatable process you can run every summer going forward.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the $14,656 revenue and $155 ADR figures still accurate for 2027?

They're the last confirmed figures from the 2026 Scranton report, but no new 2027 vendor pull has been run for this piece. Treat them as your starting baseline, then work through the re-verification checklist in this report before using them for firm pricing decisions. If the Scranton PA official desk and AirROI or AirDNA pages still show the same trailing-twelve-month window, the figures remain current. If they show updated data, use that instead.

Why didn't this report just publish new 2027 numbers?

Because no new 2027 data was actually pulled for Scranton, and inventing a figure to fill that gap would be worse than being upfront about it. This report is built to flag the last-confirmed vintage clearly, explain why it might still hold, and give you the specific steps to check for yourself. That's more useful for real planning than a guessed number dressed up as current data.

What does n=85 mean, and why does it matter so much here?

It means the 2026 figures were built from 85 tracked Scranton listings, which is a small sample by short-term rental market standards. In a market this size, a dozen new or delisted properties can shift the average revenue and ADR noticeably, even without any real change in underlying guest demand. That's why small-market figures like Scranton's deserve more frequent re-checking than a large metro's data would.

Should I use the Scranton figures for a property near Wilkes-Barre instead?

No. This report and its 2026 sibling cover Scranton specifically, and mixing Scranton data with Wilkes-Barre performance produces a misleading blended picture for both markets. Wilkes-Barre has its own inventory, its own pricing dynamics, and its own event calendar, so treating the two cities as one regional average hides real differences. If your property sits closer to Wilkes-Barre, look for market data specific to that city rather than assuming regional northeastern Pennsylvania figures apply evenly across both, and keep the two on separate lines in your own planning notes.

Where can I find the original 2026 Scranton market report?

It's live at crestcove.co/post/scranton-pa-str-market-report-2026, and it holds the full sourcing and context behind the $14,656 revenue, 85-listing count, and $155 ADR figures referenced throughout this piece. Read that report alongside this one, since this 2027 companion focuses on the re-verification checklist and planning framework rather than restating the original data in full. Bookmarking both together gives you the confirmed baseline and the process for checking whether it still holds, which is the most useful combination for actual season planning.

How often should Scranton hosts re-check market data like this?

At least once a year, ideally at a consistent point in your planning calendar such as early summer, and again before locking in rates for a new peak season. Given Scranton's small listing count, a mid-year check-in like this one helps catch shifts before they show up clearly in year-end vendor reports. Hosts managing multiple properties or watching for investment opportunities may benefit from checking quarterly instead.

What specific sources should I re-pull before trusting the 2026 numbers for 2027 planning?

Start with the Scranton PA official desk for municipal lodging and occupancy data, then cross-check AirROI's Scranton market page and AirDNA's Scranton overview for updated trailing-twelve-month figures and current listing counts. If all three still reflect the same reporting window used in the 2026 report, the figures haven't moved and remain usable. If any show a refreshed period, weight the newer data more heavily.

Is $14,656 a typical annual revenue for a single Scranton property?

It's better understood as a market-wide average across all 85 tracked listings, not a per-property benchmark for a well-run rental. Some Scranton hosts earn well above that figure through strong pricing, repeat business travelers, and event-weekend demand, while others sit below it due to part-time listing or seasonal-only availability. Compare it to your own historical performance rather than treating it as a target.

What local factors could shift Scranton's short-term rental numbers this year?

University of Scranton and Marywood University event and enrollment patterns, downtown festival and conference scheduling, and any city or county changes to short-term rental licensing or occupancy tax rules are all worth watching. Because Scranton's inventory is small, any one of these can move the aggregate numbers more visibly than in a larger market. Tracking local announcements directly is often faster than waiting for a vendor dashboard update.

Should I make investment or financing decisions based on this report alone?

Use this report as a starting reference point, not a final answer, especially for larger decisions like adding a property or adjusting financing. Local permitting, zoning, and lending requirements vary and should be confirmed separately with the relevant Scranton offices or professionals. Pair the market context here with your own updated due diligence before committing to anything significant.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Scranton's 2026 numbers are solid groundwork, but smart hosts double-check before building next season on them. Here's exactly what to re-verify before you plan.

Bookmark this alongside the 2026 Scranton report and run the checklist before locking in your 2027 rates. A quick re-verification now saves a season of guessing later.

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