Wimberley TX STR Report 2026: 638 Listings, One CUP Requirement

Thomas Garner
Aug 16
15 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Blue Hole swim entrance on Cypress Creek, Wimberley, Texas

Wimberley, Texas is a Hays County city on the Blanco River and Cypress Creek, close enough to Austin and San Antonio for a weekend trip from either metro, but not a suburb of either one. It's a distinct market from nearby Fredericksburg and Dripping Springs, with its own listing pool, its own regulatory story, and its own seasonal pattern, and this report treats it that way rather than folding it into a generic Hill Country summary.

This is a tracked short-term rental market with one open AirROI city file, and a regulation story the vendor data gets meaningfully wrong. AirROI's Wimberley page, updated August 8, 2026 and covering the trailing period from August 2025 through July 2026, shows 638 active listings, 33.8 percent occupancy, a $335 average daily rate, and $117 RevPAR. Supply is up 10.8 percent year over year, and revenue is up 4.4 percent over the same period.

The city's own Short Term Rental page tells a different regulatory story than AirROI's vendor label. Every short-term rental in Wimberley city limits needs a Conditional Use Permit, the city distinguishes between STR 1 and owner-not-on-property STR 2 classifications, and stacks a 6 percent state hotel occupancy tax on top of a 7 percent city hotel occupancy tax. As of this draft, the city page was actively discussing proposed amendments to that permitting system, with hearings scheduled in August 2026. This report keeps both threads, the AirROI performance data and the city's own regulatory page, on their own separate lines rather than letting one stand in for the other. This is not legal advice.

638 Listings and No Confirmed Typical-Revenue Figure

AirROI's file, updated August 8, 2026, shows 638 active listings in Wimberley. Occupancy sits at 33.8 percent, the average daily rate is $335, and RevPAR comes in at $117. Supply grew 10.8 percent year over year, and revenue grew 4.4 percent over the same period, a market that's both adding listings and seeing overall revenue rise, though not necessarily evenly across every property in the file.

A specific typical-annual-revenue dollar figure for the average Wimberley listing doesn't appear cleanly in the current data behind this report, and rather than compute or estimate one, this report states that gap honestly. What is confirmed: median occupancy runs meaningfully below the average, at about 32 percent, and median nightly rate sits at $240, well under the $335 average. That gap between average and median tells its own story, a relatively small number of high-performing, high-rate properties, likely the larger river and ranch houses discussed later in this report, are pulling the average up above what a typical listing actually earns.

Cleaning Fees and What They Mean for a 2.8-Night Stay

Cleaning fees on the current file average $150, with a $100 median, and 87 percent of listings charge one. Against Wimberley's average stay length of 2.8 nights, a $150 cleaning fee is a genuinely significant share of a guest's total bill, meaningfully different from the same fee's impact on a week-long stay in a different kind of market. Hosts pricing a Wimberley listing should factor the cleaning fee into the guest's total-price perception, not just into their own revenue line.

This also affects how a listing should present its total price in search results and marketing. A guest comparing a handful of Wimberley properties for a weekend trip is likely comparing all-in costs, nightly rate plus cleaning fee, whether or not the platform surfaces that total prominently. A host who prices the nightly rate low but the cleaning fee high, hoping to look more competitive in a base-rate search sort, risks a guest experience mismatch once the full total appears at checkout.

AirROI's 'Low Regulation' Label Is Wrong for This City

AirROI's platform prints a regulation summary of 'Low' for Wimberley and shows no licensed listings among those it analyzed. That reading is incorrect for the actual City of Wimberley. The city's own Short Term Rental page, at cityofwimberley.com/324, states plainly that every short-term rental in the city needs a Conditional Use Permit, distinguishes between an owner-on-property STR 1 and an owner-not-on-property STR 2, and applies both a 6 percent state hotel occupancy tax and a 7 percent city hotel occupancy tax on top of nightly rent.

The gap between AirROI's regulation label and the city's actual requirement is worth flagging directly, since a host relying on the vendor's summary alone could reasonably, and incorrectly, conclude that Wimberley is an easy, unregulated market to enter. A third-party data platform captures listing and revenue information from public search results; it does not reliably capture municipal permitting records, and this Wimberley file is a clear example of where that gap matters.

Hill Country Premier Lodging Is a Quarter of the Market

Hill Country Premier Lodging shows 167 listings and about $5.73 million in gross revenue on AirROI's manager table, roughly 26 percent of the entire 638-listing file if treated as a straightforward share of the total. 7A Ranch & Wimberley Inn shows 25 listings of its own, and several other named booking operations appear on the same manager table. This is not a thin, independent-dominated village; it's a market with at least one large, established local operator carrying real scale.

A 40.8 percent professionally managed share, alongside a 52.7 percent Superhost share, describes a genuinely mature field. Instant Book sits at 25.2 percent of listings, and simplified pricing appears on 85.4 percent. Those last two figures are AirROI host-profile statistics describing common platform settings across the market, not regulatory requirements, but together with the professional-management share, they paint a picture of a market where an independent host is competing directly against operators who already have established local scale, review history, and booking infrastructure.

Dripping Springs Is a Neighbor File, Not a Wimberley Comparable

Dripping Springs appears on AirROI's nearby-market table at 405 listings, a $414 ADR, and 30 percent occupancy, figures that run notably higher on rate than Wimberley's own $335 ADR. Treating Dripping Springs's numbers as a stand-in for Wimberley's own performance, or averaging the two together, risks overstating what a Wimberley property can realistically earn, since the two towns are genuinely separate markets with separate guest bases and separate regulatory environments.

The same caution applies to Fredericksburg, which sometimes gets folded into a generic Texas Hill Country narrative alongside Wimberley and Dripping Springs. Each of these towns deserves its own cited figures rather than a blended regional average; a buyer or host evaluating Wimberley specifically should cite Wimberley's own $335 ADR and 33.8 percent occupancy, with Dripping Springs and Fredericksburg noted only as separate, clearly labeled comparables.

March, June, and May Lead; February Is the Floor

AirROI's seasonality data puts March, June, and May in the peak revenue cluster, with occupancy in that band running around 39.1 percent. January, February, and September sit in the soft shoulder band, with February specifically standing out as the lowest-revenue month on the file. July shows a notably high average daily rate without necessarily matching that rate with high occupancy, meaning a host shouldn't assume July automatically delivers the busiest month by nights booked, even though the rate that month can look strong on a surface read.

Guests book about 54 days out on average, meaning a March weekend is often sold by January and a June weekend by April. A host who waits until the first empty Saturday appears on the calendar before starting to market that weekend is already roughly two months behind where serious bookers are looking. Wedding-block reservations, discussed further below, tend to book even earlier than a typical creek-weekend stay, adding another layer to how far ahead a Wimberley host needs to think about their calendar.

A 2.8-Night Average Stay Is a Weekend Product, With a Wedding-Block Exception

Average stay length in Wimberley is 2.8 nights, a Friday-to-Sunday product with the cleaning fee, discussed earlier, sitting as a real share of the total bill. Forty-nine point seven percent of listings run two-night minimums, matching that weekend pattern directly. A separate 29.5 percent of listings run thirty-night minimums, a meaningfully different product sitting inside the same city file, more likely serving a desk-and-calendar or snowbird guest than a creek weekend, and a host shouldn't market a thirty-night listing the same way as a two-night creek-weekend property, since the two are built for entirely different guests.

Wedding blocks are the clear exception to the 2.8-night pattern: multi-night groups tied to a specific venue's calendar, which tend to book earlier and stay longer than the typical creek-weekend guest. A property near a wedding venue benefits from keeping that venue's own event calendar in view, since the block, the quiet hours around it, and the group size all shift what that listing needs to offer compared with a standard weekend rental. AirROI's top-earning table on this file is populated substantially by five-to-eight-bedroom river and ranch houses, properties clearly built to host exactly this kind of group, not the typical one- or two-bedroom listing that makes up most of the 638-listing pool.

Austin and San Antonio Are the Metros; Do Not Promise a Fly-In Resort

Wimberley sits within a reasonable day-trip and weekend-trip range of both Austin and San Antonio, and that proximity, not a fly-in resort draw, is the actual demand engine behind this market. Marketing copy that promises a Friday same-day arrival from a distant flight, or that positions Wimberley as a destination resort market on par with a fly-in vacation spot, misrepresents what's actually driving bookings here: a weekend drive from one of two nearby Texas metros.

That distinction matters for pricing and marketing tone. A host writing toward a drive-market weekend guest should lead with the creek, the swimming, the Hill Country scenery, and the ease of a short trip, rather than resort-style language borrowed from a market with genuinely different guest logistics. Getting this framing right also sets more accurate guest expectations before arrival, since a guest expecting resort-level amenities on a creekside weekend rental is more likely to leave a disappointed review than one who booked knowing exactly what a Hill Country weekend house offers. The pricing implication follows directly: a two-day drive-market trip supports a different rate structure than a week-long fly-in vacation, and copying pricing strategy from a resort market tends to misprice both ends of the calendar.

Blue Hole, Jacob's Well, and a Flood That Shapes the Corridor

Blue Hole Regional Park is the city's swimming and trail park on Cypress Creek, and Jacob's Well is a separate karst spring near town, both real, specific attractions worth naming individually in listing copy rather than folding into generic 'swimming hole' language. Recheck current hours, swim rules, and parking on each site's own live page before promising either in marketing, since access conditions and hours can change and neither attraction guarantees year-round swimming.

The Blanco River flood of May 24-25, 2015 killed 12 people, and it continues to shape how insurance and river-adjacent short-term rental operations are handled in this corridor. That history is relevant context for why lodging near the river and creek is run carefully, not a reason to guess a flood-insurance premium figure or to import hurricane-market framing from a Gulf Coast property; the two kinds of water risk are different, and this report doesn't blend them.

Wimberley Square and the recurring Market Days event function as the village center and a genuine draw worth featuring in visitor-facing copy. Confirm current Market Days dates directly on Visit Wimberley's own page rather than assuming a prior year's schedule repeats exactly, and treat Cypress Creek tubing and the area's wine-trail day trips as demand layers that support a booking decision, not as promises of a specific occupancy outcome for any given week.

What the City Page Said About Permits as of This Draft

The City of Wimberley's Short Term Rental page, at cityofwimberley.com/324, states that every STR in the city needs a Conditional Use Permit. STR 1 covers owner-on-property operations; STR 2 covers owner-not-on-property. The CUP process runs through City Council, and neighbors within 200 feet of a proposed STR receive notification letters. Twenty percent opposition by land area triggers a requirement for a four-of-five supermajority council vote to approve a new permit rather than a simple majority.

As of this draft, the same city page led with proposed amendments under discussion: no new STR 2 CUPs in R-2 and R-3 residential zoning, lodging allowed up to 30 units by-right in C1, C2, and C3 commercial zoning, and changes to how STR 1 permits apply to accessory dwelling units. A Planning and Zoning hearing was scheduled for August 13, 2026, and a City Council hearing for August 20, 2026. Hays Free Press reported on March 11, 2026 that Council had extended a temporary moratorium on new STR permits through July 4, 2026; confirm the current status of both the moratorium and the proposed amendments directly with the city rather than relying on either this report or an older news date, since this is an actively moving regulatory process.

For an existing CUP holder, if the live city page still reflects this structure after the August 20 hearing, that permit is a genuinely scarce asset: current CUPs remain attached to the property indefinitely without a renewal requirement. That's a real investment consideration for a buyer evaluating an already-permitted Wimberley property, and it's also a reason marketing quality matters more, not less, for an existing permit holder if new STR 2 permits become harder to obtain going forward.

Tourism Days Are Not the Same Measurement as ADR

Hays Free Press, reporting February 11, 2026 and quoting Tourism Director Michele Woods, cited about 1.3 million visitor days in the city during 2025, up 28 percent from 2024, and 125 lodging establishments inside the city. That's a newspaper's paraphrase of a city official's figures, not a short-term-rental-specific dataset, and it shouldn't be divided against AirROI's 638 listings as though the two numbers describe the same population.

Statewide, Texas's Governor's office and Travel Texas reported $97.5 billion in visitor spending and 62 million travelers for 2024, a state-level figure that belongs in its own separate category from any Wimberley-specific number. Woods's figure of 125 lodging establishments inside the city is a city-official count that likely spans hotels, inns, and CUP-holding rentals together; it is not the same count as AirROI's 638 entire-home-and-unit listings, and a host or writer shouldn't treat the two figures as interchangeable or divide one by the other to manufacture a per-listing visitor-spending estimate that the underlying data doesn't support.

What This Report Deliberately Does Not Do

This report does not guess a Dripping Springs-style cluster narrative for Wimberley, and it does not import Fredericksburg's ADR as a Wimberley figure. It does not treat the 40.8 percent professionally managed share as evidence of a small, cottage-industry market, since that share reflects genuine competitive scale. It does not cite AirROI's regulation label as an authority on the CUP requirement, and it does not treat the August 20, 2026 City Council hearing's outcome as decided before that hearing actually happens.

It also does not compute or cite a specific typical-annual-revenue dollar figure for the average Wimberley listing, since that number doesn't appear cleanly in the current data behind this report; the median occupancy and median rate figures cited earlier stand in its place as the more honest available benchmark. A market report that blends 638 listings with 125 lodging establishments, or that treats a March moratorium news date as settled against an August statute, isn't a report, it's a summary that skipped its own fact-check, and this one is written to avoid that specific failure.

Anyone building further content on top of this report, additional posts on financing, permitting, or visitor guides for this market, should hold the same standard: cite Wimberley's own confirmed figures, keep the city's regulatory page separate from AirROI's vendor read, and flag any genuine data gap honestly rather than filling it with an guessed number that reads smoothly but doesn't hold up under a second look.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do Airbnb hosts make in Wimberley, TX?

AirROI's Wimberley file, updated August 8, 2026 and covering the trailing August 2025-July 2026 period, shows 638 active listings, 33.8 percent occupancy, a $335 average daily rate, and $117 RevPAR. Those are vendor figures across the whole 638-listing file, not a guarantee for any one property, and median performance runs meaningfully lower than the average, roughly 32 percent occupancy and a $240 nightly rate for a typical listing. Supply is up 10.8 percent year over year and revenue is up 4.4 percent.

Is Wimberley an open short-term rental market, or does it require a permit?

It requires a permit, despite what some third-party data vendors show. The city's own Short Term Rental page at cityofwimberley.com/324 states that every STR in the city needs a Conditional Use Permit, distinguishes between STR 1 and STR 2 classifications, and layers a 6 percent state hotel occupancy tax on top of a 7 percent city hotel occupancy tax. As of this writing, proposed limits on new STR 2 CUPs in R-2 and R-3 zoning were on the city council's agenda; hosts evaluating Wimberley should verify the current status directly with the city rather than relying on a.

How big is professional management in Wimberley?

Substantial. AirROI shows 40.8 percent of the market as professionally managed, and Hill Country Premier Lodging alone accounts for 167 listings, roughly a quarter of the entire 638-listing file, with about $5.73 million in gross revenue on AirROI's manager table. This isn't a thin, independent-dominated village; an independent host is competing directly against an established local operator with real scale, review history, and booking infrastructure already in place.

When is peak season in Wimberley?

AirROI's data shows March, June, and May as the peak revenue months, with roughly 39.1 percent occupancy in that band, and February as the lowest-revenue month within a broader January-February-September soft shoulder. It's worth noting that July shows a high average daily rate without necessarily matching occupancy, so a strong summer rate doesn't automatically mean summer is the busiest month by nights booked.

Are Blue Hole and Jacob's Well the same place?

No, they're two separate attractions. Blue Hole Regional Park is a city-run swimming and trail park on Cypress Creek, while Jacob's Well is a distinct karst spring near town. Both draw visitors and are worth naming specifically in listing copy, but hosts should confirm current swim and access rules on each site's own live page before promising either in marketing, since access conditions can change and neither guarantees swimming access year-round.

Should a host use Dripping Springs numbers for a Wimberley property?

No. Dripping Springs is a separate market on AirROI's table, showing 405 listings, a $414 ADR, and 30 percent occupancy, figures that run notably higher on rate than Wimberley's own $335 ADR. Treating a neighboring town's data as a stand-in for Wimberley's own numbers risks overstating what a Wimberley property can realistically earn. Cite Wimberley's own figures for a Wimberley property, and note Dripping Springs only as a separately labeled comparable market.

How much do visitors spend in and around Wimberley?

There's no dedicated Wimberley visitor-spending dollar study behind this report, so no local total should be cited as if one existed. What is confirmed: the Hays Free Press reported the local tourism director citing about 1.3 million visitor days in 2025, up 28 percent from 2024, and 125 lodging establishments in the city, and Texas's statewide 2024 tourism spend was $97.5 billion. Those are useful as context, not as a substitute for a Wimberley-specific short-term-rental dollar figure that doesn't currently exist.

Is the 2015 Blanco River flood relevant to this market today?

Yes, though indirectly. The Blanco River flood of May 24-25, 2015 killed 12 people, and it continues to shape how insurance and river-adjacent operations are handled in the area. It's not comparable to a Gulf hurricane event and shouldn't be used to justify an guessed flood-insurance premium in a pro forma; it's relevant mainly as context for why lodging near the river and creek in this corridor is run and insured carefully.

What does Wimberley's average 2.8-night stay length actually mean for pricing?

It signals a Friday-to-Sunday product where the cleaning fee is a meaningful share of the total bill: the file's average cleaning fee is $150, with a $100 median, and 87 percent of listings charge one. Wedding-venue-adjacent properties are the exception, since multi-night blocks tied to a venue's own calendar book differently and typically earlier than a standard creek-weekend stay, so a host near a wedding venue should ask that venue directly when parties tend to reserve houses.

How far out do guests typically book a Wimberley stay?

About 54 days on average, per AirROI's data, meaning a March weekend is often sold by January and a June weekend by April. A host who waits until the first empty Saturday shows up on the calendar to start marketing it is already roughly two months behind where serious bookers are looking. Wedding-block reservations in particular tend to book even earlier than a typical creek-weekend stay, adding another layer to how far ahead a Wimberley host needs to plan.

Is the 40.8 percent professionally managed share a sign this is a small, cottage market?

No, it's the opposite signal. A 40.8 percent professionally managed share alongside a 52.7 percent Superhost share describes a mature, competitive field, not a thin, independent-dominated village. Hill Country Premier Lodging alone holds about a quarter of the entire listing pool. An independent host entering Wimberley should expect to compete against established local operators with real scale and review history, not against a market of first-time hosts.

What are STR 1 and STR 2 permits in Wimberley?

STR 1 covers a short-term rental where the owner lives on the property; STR 2 covers one where the owner does not. Both require a Conditional Use Permit from the city, and both go through a City Council approval process where nearby neighbors are notified and significant opposition can require a supermajority vote. As of this report's drafting, proposed amendments discussed limiting new STR 2 permits in certain residential zones; confirm the current status directly with the city before relying on either classification's rules.

Work with Crest & Cove Creative

Wimberley's ~54-day average booking lead time and 87% cleaning-fee attach rate mean a listing priced or copied like a same-day-book market is leaving both occupancy and revenue on the table. Name the failure mode the guest can check on the.

We help independent hosts build pricing and listing copy around Wimberley's own lead-time and occupancy data, not a generic Hill Country template. Send us your listing at crestcove.co/audit or call (256) 998-7502. Send the live listing draft and the facts you can actually cite.

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