The Best Short-Term Rental Market in Every State Ranked by Gross Yield

Every “best cities for Airbnb” list has the same markets: Gatlinburg, Joshua Tree, Scottsdale, and the Smokies. We looked at things differently to show you what the data is actually saying. This data produced Sandusky, Ohio. BNBCalc pulled it themselves: 462 cities across all 50 states, every one backed by at least 50 real properties. I ranked the best city in each state by revenue per dollar of purchase price, then threw out the ones their own quality review flagged. What’s left is a list of places nobody is making content about, which is the entire reason to read it. The markets everybody talks about are priced like everybody’s talking about them. Then keep going past the list. Underneath it, I put a mortgage on the median winner, and about half of this stops working. Why Gross Yield Matters Every number below is modeled gross yield: annual revenue divided by home value. There’s no mortgage, down payment, property taxes, insurance, cleaning, utilities, or management fee factored in. Gross yield is what a property throws off before anybody touches it. That sounds weaker than the cash-on-cash returns I was working with a month ago, and in one way, it is. Cash-on-cash tells you what...