45% of your year comes from 3 months

Key finding: The median US 2-bedroom listing earns 44% of its annual revenue in just three calendar months, and 16.6% of it in a single best month.

The short version

Short-term rental revenue is not spread evenly across the year. It clusters. For the median listing, nearly half the year’s money arrives in a three-month window. That means your pricing decisions are not all equal. The rates you set for your peak months carry far more weight than the rates you set for slow ones, so that is where your attention belongs.

The data

The finding comes from IntelliHost and Key Data across 76,160 US 2-bedroom listings. The numbers:

• The median listing earns 44% of its annual revenue in its three best calendar months.

• The median listing earns 16.6% of its annual revenue in its single best month.

• STR revenue is 1.8 times more concentrated than an even, flat spread across the year would be.

Why it works

Demand for short-term rentals is seasonal and event-driven. Guests want your market when the weather, holidays, or local events pull them in, and they mostly stay away the rest of the year. When demand piles up into a few months, so does your revenue. A flat calendar would put about 25% of the year’s money into any three months. Real listings put 44% there instead. That gap is where the leverage lives. A small rate improvement during a peak month moves more dollars than a large one during a quiet month, simply because more nights actually book at peak.

What to actually do

1. Identify your three highest-revenue months from last year, then treat their pricing as your top priority for the year ahead.

2. Set and review your peak-season rates early and often, well before those months arrive, because that is where the biggest revenue swings happen.

3. Spend less time fine-tuning shoulder and off-season rates. Get them reasonable, then move on. They matter, but they move fewer dollars.

The honest caveats

This is a correlational finding, not a controlled experiment. It shows that revenue concentrates in a few months for the typical listing. It does not prove that shifting your attention will produce a specific dollar gain, and it does not prescribe exact rates. The 44% figure is the median, so individual listings vary. Some are more concentrated, some less. The study covers US 2-bedroom listings, so markets with different seasonality, unit sizes, or geographies may behave differently. Your own three best months are the ones that matter for your calendar, and they may not match anyone else’s.

Methodology

The analysis draws on 76,160 US 2-bedroom listings, sourced from IntelliHost and Key Data for 2026. For each listing, annual revenue was allocated across calendar months, and we measured the share captured by the three highest-earning months and by the single highest-earning month. The reported figures are medians across the full sample. Concentration was compared against an even spread, where three months would hold roughly a quarter of the year, to produce the 1.8x figure. Holding to 2-bedroom listings keeps unit size consistent across the sample.

Frequently asked questions

How much of an STR’s annual revenue comes from its best months?

For the median US 2-bedroom listing, 44% of annual revenue comes from the three best calendar months, and 16.6% from the single best month.

Should I focus my pricing on peak season or shoulder season?

Focus on peak season. Since the median listing earns 44% of its year in just three months, small rate improvements there move far more money than the same effort spent on slower months.

Is short-term rental revenue really that concentrated?

Yes. Across 76,160 US 2-bedroom listings, STR revenue was 1.8 times more concentrated than an even spread across the year would be, with nearly half the annual total landing in three months.