How appraisers value short-term rentalsNo appraisal standard tells appraisers how to value an Airbnb. Fannie Mae’s first short-term rental rule, issued September 2, mostly keeps appraisers out of the math.

Form 1007 estimates monthly market rent under a long-term lease. Fannie Mae said so directly in June 2024: “It would be incorrect for the appraiser to use STR comparables and then multiply the nightly STR fee by 30 to estimate a monthly rent.” Such an approach, the update says, fails to account for FF&E, other services, vacancy and business expenses.

Hagar describes clients being told to take a year of STR income, “simply divide by 12” and use the result in a gross rent multiplier. Asked whether it is that simple, he answers no. Total STR income can help a lender qualify the borrower; only the rent attributable to the real estate belongs in the income approach. Class Valuation reports that senior policy leaders at Fannie Mae have said an appraiser asked to “corrupt or contort” Form 1007 to show STR income must decline the assignment.

The redesigned report keeps the rule. Under UAD 3.6, when the URAR’s Rental Information section supports STR income on a purchase, Fannie’s policy supplement says it “must be completed based on standard long-term rentals.”

Beyond the form, there are no agreed numbers. We found no appraiser-authored or standards-body source for an STR expense ratio, management fee, vacancy allowance or reserve for replacing furnishings. One Oregon appraiser shared an operating statement in a 2021 forum thread showing 40% occupancy and 50% expenses, and told readers not to use it in their appraisals. Hagar writes that the income and cost approaches for an STR “require extensive explanations,” and that the work is closer to commercial appraisal than to a standard residential report.

On February 10, 2025, a certified general appraiser wrote to Maine’s Board of Real Estate Appraisers about two buildings in Kittery rebuilt as apartments and operated as short-term rentals. A reviewer had concluded the highest and best use was apartment rental. The appraiser disagreed: “While I agree with the reviewer that the H&BU is as apartment rentals if the current permit holder, for whatever reason, loses that status, however, until then the H&BU is as short-term rentals.” Whether a lender relies on either position, the appraiser added, “is just that, an underwriting decision, and not an appraisal determination.” The inquiry was on the board’s March 4, 2025 agenda. We found no resolution.

Opteon launched its Short-Term Rental Analysis on January 8, 2024, built on AirDNA’s Rentalizer and marketed as an analysis that “replaces the existing 1007 form” for STR investment properties. Atlas VMS launched Atlas STR Insight for non-QM lenders on December 16, 2025, also on AirDNA data, reporting seasonal rate and occupancy curves, event-driven revenue, weekday and weekend pricing, RevPAR and length of stay. Class Valuation recommends a narrative addendum it calls the Short-Term Rental Projected Income Analysis, with market-supported occupancy, seasonal pricing, STR comparables, stated revenue assumptions, expense and volatility disclosure, and confirmation that STR use is legal.

All three pair an appraiser’s analysis with third-party market data and explicit occupancy and seasonality. That is the most consistent STR appraisal method we found in the US market, and none of it is GSE-approved or required by a standards body. Michael Tedesco, who leads Class Valuation’s private lending division and discloses that he invests in STRs, argued in HousingWire in February 2026 that “STRs aren’t rentals; they’re operating businesses.”

Both packaged products run on AirDNA, so AirDNA’s methods now flow into appraisal work at scale. We found no independent audit of AirDNA’s or any competitor’s accuracy. A comparison by Awning, a competing vendor, says “Rentalizer projections can be optimistic, particularly in newer or thinner markets.” We found no STR-specific automated valuation model.

DSCR lenders, who lend on the property’s income, set STR numbers too, and they differ from each other and sometimes from their own pages.

Lender pages change without version dates, so any table like this is a snapshot. Our Baltimore DSCR postmortem shows what happens when projected rents go unchecked.

Property tax offices have had to decide what an STR is, and their disputes have been over classification. On June 29, 2026, Missouri’s State Tax Commission upheld commercial classification, assessed at 32% of value, over residential at 19%, for a St. Charles County house listed and rented on Airbnb through the assessment period. The owner’s plan to rent it long-term later did not outweigh the record of STR use.

British Columbia’s Property Assessment Appeal Board reached the same kind of result on Nov. 29, 2024. A Nanaimo condo was listed for 327 days and rented for 276 in the year to June 30, 2023, and the board upheld classifying part of it as business. The owner had argued he rented it as an investment. The panel chair wrote that this view was “wholly irrelevant” to the classification.

Tennessee writes the use test into statute. A short-term rental that is the owner’s principal residence, with one rental unit, is assessed as residential at 25%. An owner can claim the same treatment for one more STR parcel by living there at least 14 days a year or 10% of the days it is rented, whichever is greater. Other STR parcels are assessed as commercial at 40%.

Maui County taxes non-owner-occupied STRs in their own class. For FY2027, the short-term rental home rate runs $13.00 to $17.00 per $1,000 of value, tiered by value, against $11.80 for hotels and resorts. Colorado’s HB24-1299 would have created a statewide lodging subclass, with projected new local revenue of $82.2 million to $197.2 million a year; the House Finance Committee postponed it indefinitely on Apr. 22, 2024. We found no jurisdiction that assesses STRs mainly by capitalizing STR income.

Courts have said less. We found no US appraiser malpractice case, no appraiser board disciplinary order and no eminent domain case turning on STR value.