What a Poconos Short-Term Rental Actually Earns

Pick a town and the median Poconos short-term rental earns somewhere between about $37,000 and $73,000 a year, at occupancy between roughly 32% and 45%. Those are AirROI's own market numbers for the ten towns and townships in and around where Ideal manages homes today. We pulled them October 8, 2026 for the twelve trailing months, October 2025 through September 2026, and they are the one dataset behind this whole post. They're also gross figures. Whether the home was worth buying depends on what's left after the platform fee, cleaning and maintenance. That number can move by tens of thousands of dollars with the same house and a different approach. We price every home we manage against its own comp set two to three times a week, so we're looking at this from inside the numbers.

AirROI's own market metrics give the clearest answer. We pulled them October 8, 2026 for the twelve trailing months, October 2025 through September 2026, for every town where Ideal manages a home today. The table below shows active listings and the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile for revenue per listing over that year. It also shows the average of each month's median occupancy and nightly rate.

Ideal's five towns, AirROI market metrics, pulled October 8, 2026, October 2025 to September 2026

Compare the 25th and 75th percentile inside a single town, and you're looking at the management gap. Two homes in the same market end the year far apart, and the only difference is who runs them. In Lake Harmony the gap is $62,530, more than the median home earns in a year. In Pocono Summit it's $72,320. Pricing, photos, response time and upkeep move a home from one end of that range to the other. If you want one reason to pay someone to watch your home, that's it.

1. The Wider Poconos, for Context

Five more towns sit just outside Ideal's current footprint. AirROI's own data shows the same pattern in them.

Five more Pocono towns, AirROI market metrics, pulled October 8, 2026, October 2025 to September 2026

East Stroudsburg stands out. Its median sits well above every one of Ideal's five towns, and so does its occupancy. That's not a typo. It's the regional outlier, and worth watching.

2. Other Published Estimates

Two other data providers publish Poconos-wide averages. Both give one regional figure and don't break the region down by town. PoconoVacationHomeSales cited AirDNA on August 7, 2026. AirDNA puts the whole Poconos region at about $55,200 a year at 43% occupancy and a $397 average daily rate, across 6,581 active listings. Average revenue across the region rose 8.5% over the prior year. Airbtics, covering February 2025 to January 2026, puts the regional median at $59,000 at 45% occupancy and a $342 average daily rate across 837 tracked listings. Both land close to the AirROI numbers above. Neither breaks the region down by town the way this post does.

What a specific home earns comes down to four things: its nightly rate, its occupancy, the length and mix of stays, and the season. Lake Harmony shows how they pull on each other. The average nightly rate is $401, among the higher rates of Ideal's five towns. Median occupancy is 31.7%, the lowest of the five. Together that works out to about $127 of revenue per available night. The percentile spread tells the same story from another angle. A Lake Harmony home at the 75th percentile earns $88,529 a year against $25,999 at the 25th. That's more than three times apart, in the same town, with the same calendar to work with.

1. The Four Levers, in Order of How Often They Are Misread

1. Nightly rate. Owners watch it most, and it lies most, because a high rate on an empty calendar earns nothing.
2. Occupancy. A full calendar isn't the goal either. If a lake home runs 70% occupancy in a 31% market, it's probably priced too low, and the wear on the house is real.
3. Stay length and mix. Bigger groups, longer stays and fewer turnovers add up to fewer cleaning fees between bookings, and less wear per dollar earned.
4. Season. The Poconos have two peaks, summer and ski season, with fall foliage as a third. The homes that earn well get priced for each window on purpose.

Gross revenue is what the platform reports. Net rent is what reaches you after the platform fee and the cleaning fee, before your own ownership costs, and it's the number we manage to. One of our owners makes the point better than any market average. Their lakefront home in Arrowhead Lake moved to us in April 2025. No renovation, no new amenities. Comparing August through December year over year, rental revenue went from $48,936 to $51,618, up 5.5%. Net rent went from $24,239 to $40,852, up $16,613, or 68.5%. The deductions were the same both years, and the owner confirmed the figures.

A second home we manage had two physically separate units, each earning as its own listing. We added a third listing that offers both together for larger groups, then priced all three against each other. Year over year, revenue went from $37,590 to $48,633, up $11,043 or 29.4%, on 16 more completed stays. The house stayed the same. The listing setup changed.

A good year means a home earning near the top of its town's range, at an occupancy that leaves the house in good shape, with expenses that don't eat the gain. Here's how I think about it, in my own words. We don't just plug a property into dynamic pricing software and let it run. Every home has its own comp set, built for that property. We compare it against direct competitors and the broader market. We look at it two to three times a week, tracking booking windows, ADR, occupancy, RevPAR, booking pace, minimum stays, pricing floors and ceilings, seasonality, gap nights, events and overall demand. On the listing side we watch click-through rate, conversion and views. That tells us whether an issue is visibility, pricing, presentation or conversion. The biggest thing for me is that I don't look at success as just a full calendar or the highest gross revenue number. A full calendar can mean you priced too low.

2. What We Check Before Touching a Price

1. Traffic. Is anyone seeing the listing? If views are down, the price isn't the problem.
2. Conversion. Are the people who see it booking? If they aren't, the photos, the first lines of the listing or the reviews need work first.
3. Comp set. What are the direct competitors charging for the same weekend? Are they booked?
4. Condition and reviews. A tired hot tub or a run of four-star reviews costs more than any rate change can win back.
5. Only after all that, the rate.

Begin with the town average for the right bedroom count. Guests pay extra for certain things in the Poconos, so adjust for them: lake access, a hot tub, proximity to skiing and the number of people the home sleeps. Next, take the gross figure and subtract the platform fee and cleaning to see net rent. That's the number you'll live on. We took over a turnkey Lake Harmony home days before Labor Day weekend, with guests already booked. Over the operating period that followed, it earned $41,153 across 40 stays and 110 guest nights. That's an average of $374 in rental revenue per guest night. It's one home, not a promise. Ask any manager to show you a statement like it.

3. Three Numbers to Get Before You Buy or Switch

1. The town's average annual revenue and occupancy for your bedroom count, from at least two providers.
2. A real before-and-after statement from the manager you're considering, for a home like yours.
3. Your own net rent, worked out from a sample booking under each manager's fee basis.