We’re sitting at the midpoint of 2026 and the Dallas short-term rental market has done something it hasn’t done in the last three years: it stopped surprising us. After a few choppy quarters from 2023 through 2025 where supply, demand, and pricing all moved in unpredictable directions, the first five months of 2026 have settled into a recognizable rhythm. This is the kind of market hosts can actually plan around.

This is our mid-year read on Dallas as of May 31, 2026. It’s based on data from the properties we manage across Dallas-Fort Worth, cross-checked with public data from AirDNA, the city of Dallas STR registry, and the relevant submarket data sources we subscribe to. Anything property-specific is anonymized.

The headline numbers

For Dallas proper (city of Dallas, ZIP codes 75201 through 75252), January–May 2026 performance vs. the same period in 2025:

  • Average occupancy: 64.2% (vs. 60.8% in same period 2025) — up 5.6%
  • Average daily rate (ADR): $194.30 (vs. $187.50 in 2025) — up 3.6%
  • Revenue per available night (RevPAN): $124.74 (vs. $113.96 in 2025) — up 9.5%
  • Listing supply: down 4.1% year over year

The combination of those four numbers tells the story for the year so far. Supply has thinned slightly (small operators have been exiting, in part because of SB 346 enforcement and the new platform fee structures), demand has held steady or grown modestly, and the result is meaningfully better unit economics for hosts who stayed in the market. RevPAN — which is the closest single number to “how good is your year going to be” — is up nearly 10% year over year.

That is not a 2021-pandemic-boom number. It is a healthy, normalized recovery number. It means the market is rewarding operators who are actually running properties well, and stopping rewarding operators who were riding the wave.

Which neighborhoods are outperforming

Aggregate numbers hide a lot. Within Dallas, the spread between the best-performing and worst-performing submarkets in 2026 is wider than it’s been in any of the last three years. Here’s where the action actually is, sorted by year-over-year RevPAN growth:

1. Bishop Arts / Oak Cliff

  • 2026 YTD occupancy: 71.4%
  • YTD ADR: $182
  • YoY RevPAN growth: +14.8%
  • What’s driving it: Continued retail and restaurant build-out along Bishop Avenue, the Trinity River development drawing weekend visitors, and a 12% supply contraction in the immediate ZIP. This is the single best-performing Dallas submarket in our portfolio for the first half of 2026.

2. Deep Ellum

  • 2026 YTD occupancy: 68.7%
  • YTD ADR: $211
  • YoY RevPAN growth: +12.1%
  • What’s driving it: Concert venues at near-capacity through Q2, three new bars opening on Elm Street, and short walking distance from downtown for business travelers. ADR is high here, but cleaning costs and turnover damage costs are also higher than average — net margins are strong but not as strong as the headline ADR suggests.

3. Uptown / McKinney Avenue

  • 2026 YTD occupancy: 66.2%
  • YTD ADR: $235
  • YoY RevPAN growth: +9.8%
  • What’s driving it: Steady business travel from the office towers along McKinney, weekend leisure traffic from Klyde Warren Park visitors, and ongoing demand from medical district consultants. The most reliable submarket for predictable cash flow.

4. Knox-Henderson / M-Streets

  • 2026 YTD occupancy: 63.1%
  • YTD ADR: $198
  • YoY RevPAN growth: +6.4%
  • What’s driving it: Restaurant scene, walkability, and proximity to SMU events. Slower-growing than Uptown but with smaller properties and lower entry prices, so capital-on-cash returns are often better.

5. Lower Greenville

  • 2026 YTD occupancy: 65.8%
  • YTD ADR: $186
  • YoY RevPAN growth: +5.1%
  • What’s driving it: A solid all-around submarket. Not the fastest-growing, but very low variance — properties here book consistently across the year without big seasonal dips.

What’s underperforming

Three submarkets where our 2026 data shows softer-than-average performance:

  • Far North Dallas / Plano border (75251, 75252): Occupancy 56.4%, RevPAN down 2.1% YoY. The strip-mall corridor properties that did well during 2022–2023 medical-traveler demand are now competing against new apartment-style short-term rentals at lower price points.
  • Southwest Dallas / I-35E corridor: Occupancy 51.2%, RevPAN down 4.8% YoY. The weakest submarket in our coverage. Demand has not kept up with the supply that came online in 2024.
  • East Dallas beyond White Rock Lake: Occupancy 58.9%, RevPAN flat YoY. A holding pattern, neither growing nor declining.

If you own in one of the underperforming submarkets, this isn’t necessarily a sell signal. Some of these areas have specific micromarket dynamics (a single nearby corporate campus driving most demand, for example) that mean property-level performance varies enormously. But it does mean the local tide isn’t lifting your boat, and your operational excellence has to do the work.

What’s driving the strength in 2026

Three structural reasons we think Dallas is outperforming the national STR market in 2026:

Corporate travel is genuinely back

The post-pandemic question — would business travel return to short-term rentals, or would it remain hotel-only — has been quietly answered in Dallas’s favor. The corporate booking share in our portfolio is back to roughly 38% of total nights, very close to the 2019 peak of 41%. Companies have gotten more comfortable with apartment-style short-term rentals for medium-stay engagements (consulting projects, training programs, executive temporary housing), and Dallas has the corporate density to capture this consistently.

Convention and event calendar is full

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center had its strongest first-half-of-year event calendar in five years. Major events through May included the AAFA Apparel Summit, the State Bar of Texas Annual Meeting, and three major medical conferences. Each event drives demand for STR product in the central Dallas submarkets at premium rates. Hosts who watch the convention calendar and adjust their dynamic pricing 60 days out have been outperforming those who don’t.

Supply attrition is real

The single most important number in the Dallas market this year is the 4.1% supply contraction. New listings have not kept up with delisting. Some of that is SB 346 enforcement removing unpermitted operators; some is hosts who were marginal in 2024 deciding the math doesn’t work and exiting; some is the Airbnb 15.5% single-fee model pushing operators with thin margins out of the market.

The hosts who stayed are competing with fewer competitors than at any point since 2021. That’s the structural reason RevPAN is up 9.5% year over year, and it’s the structural reason we think the second half of 2026 will continue to be strong.

What to do as an owner in the second half

If you operate one or more short-term rentals in Dallas, three things are worth doing this quarter:

1. Raise your weekday rates

If you haven’t adjusted your weekday pricing in the last six months, you’re under-priced relative to where the market is. The ADR growth across the city has been concentrated on weeknights more than weekends so far in 2026. Test a 4–6% rate increase on Sunday-through-Thursday and watch the conversion data.

2. Aggressively price into the convention calendar

The June–November Dallas event calendar has at least two major demand spikes per month. If your dynamic pricing tool isn’t picking these up automatically, manually adjust. The premium guests pay during a major convention is enough to make a single high-rate night worth two normal-rate nights.

3. Get on top of compliance

SB 346 enforcement is still ramping up. The city of Dallas registry team has been working through their backlog of unpermitted listings since January. If your property is permitted and your tax remittance is current, you’re competing against fewer informal-market operators every month. If your property is not currently compliant, that’s the most urgent action item this quarter — see our post from May 29 for the breakdown of what needs to be in place.

A note on what’s coming in the second half

A few forward-looking things we’re watching:

  • Election-year travel patterns. Historically presidential-election-year travel has slightly lower business volume in October and November. We’re not changing our pricing strategy preemptively, but we’re watching weekly conversion rates more closely than usual for those months.
  • Continued supply contraction. We expect another 2–3% reduction in listing supply by end of year, which would further support pricing. The rate of new-listing additions is the lowest it’s been since 2019.
  • AirDNA data revisions. AirDNA’s mid-year revisions to their market reports typically come out in July. If your dynamic pricing tool ingests AirDNA data, expect some adjustments to recommended rates in the August timeframe.

How HostStarter’s owners are doing

Across the 60+ Dallas-Fort Worth properties we manage, our portfolio is up 11.2% in RevPAN year over year (vs. the 9.5% market average). The gap is mostly from active dynamic pricing optimization (about 1.5% of the lift) and slightly faster bookings turn (about 0.2%). Nothing magic — just doing the basics consistently.

If you’d like a second opinion on how your specific Dallas property is performing relative to the submarket, schedule a free 30-minute consultation. We’ll compare your numbers to our portfolio benchmark and tell you specifically what’s working and what isn’t.

HostStarter is a 12.5% flat-fee Airbnb management company headquartered in Dallas. We manage properties across Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and selected national markets.