How Much Does an Airbnb Need to Make to Qualify for a DSCR Loan?
It depends on the payment, not a flat number. A DSCR loan needs the property’s monthly revenue to cover its monthly payment (PITIA) at the lender’s floor — usually 1.0–1.25×. Reverse it: monthly PITIA × the DSCR floor = the gross revenue you must clear. On a typical leveraged STR that lands somewhere around $4,000–$6,000 a month.
NightYield Editorial
STR-DSCR research & underwriting desk
Published 2026-05-28 · Updated 2026-06-15
There’s no flat dollar figure — there’s a ratio
The honest answer to “how much does my Airbnb need to make” is another question: what’s the payment? A DSCR (Debt-Service-Coverage-Ratio) loan doesn’t care about your W-2 — it qualifies the property by comparing its income to its monthly PITIA (principal, interest, taxes, insurance, and any HOA). The number you have to hit is whatever clears the lender’s DSCR floor on that specific payment.
So the same $4,500/month in projected nightly revenue can be a strong deal on a $400K cabin and a non-starter on a $700K coastal home — because the payment, not the revenue, sets the bar. The good news: that makes the requirement something you can solve for directly, before you ever make an offer.
Reverse the math: solve for the revenue you need
Because DSCR is just revenue divided by payment, you can flip the formula and solve for the revenue floor. Three inputs get you there:
- Estimate monthly PITIA at the current STR-overlay rate — that’s the loan payment plus taxes, STR insurance, and HOA, divided by 12.
- Pick the lender’s DSCR floor you’re targeting (1.0× to qualify, 1.25× for the best pricing).
- Multiply: PITIA × DSCR floor = the minimum gross revenue you must clear, every month.
That last number — not the headline AirDNA figure — is the bar. If your defensible projection sits comfortably above it, the deal pencils. If it’s underneath, you either need more down, a cheaper property, or a market with better revenue-to-price math.
A worked example, start to finish
Take a $450,000 cabin, 25% down ($112,500), financing $337,500. These figures are illustrative, not a quote — but the structure is exactly how a lender runs it.
Build the monthly PITIA
- Principal + interest on $337,500 at an illustrative 7.75% (30-yr) ≈ $2,418/mo
- Property taxes ≈ $470/mo
- STR insurance ≈ $230/mo (materially higher than a landlord policy — see why STR insurance moves your DSCR)
- HOA ≈ $0
- Total PITIA ≈ $3,118/mo
Solve for required revenue
At a 1.0× floor, you’d need ~$3,118/mo gross just to break even on coverage. But most lenders price best at 1.25×, so the realistic target is $3,118 × 1.25 ≈ $3,900/month, or roughly $46,800/year in gross nightly revenue. If your trailing-12-month comp projection for that exact bed/bath/type clears ~$47K, the deal works — with margin.
Price → required revenue at a sample rate
Hold the assumptions steady (25% down, ~7.75% illustrative rate, taxes + STR insurance baked into PITIA, 1.25× target) and the required gross revenue scales almost linearly with price. Use this to sanity-check a market before you tour a single property:
| Purchase price | Loan (75% LTV) | Est. monthly PITIA | Revenue @ 1.0× | Revenue @ 1.25× | Required gross/yr (1.25×) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $350,000 | $262,500 | ~$2,500 | ~$2,500/mo | ~$3,125/mo | ~$37,500 |
| $450,000 | $337,500 | ~$3,120 | ~$3,120/mo | ~$3,900/mo | ~$46,800 |
| $550,000 | $412,500 | ~$3,750 | ~$3,750/mo | ~$4,690/mo | ~$56,300 |
| $700,000 | $525,000 | ~$4,700 | ~$4,700/mo | ~$5,875/mo | ~$70,500 |
Two levers move every row. More down payment shrinks the loan and the PITIA, dropping the revenue you need — that’s why a thin-DSCR deal often clears at 30% down when it failed at 20%. And the rate matters enormously: the STR overlay can add to a base DSCR rate, and every quarter-point lifts the revenue floor.
The catch: the city can cut the revenue before underwriting
Every number above assumes your projected revenue is the revenue a lender will actually use. It often isn’t. If the city imposes a night cap — say 120 nights a year — the revenue gets haircut to reflect the legal operating window before the DSCR is computed. A property projecting $60K unrestricted might underwrite at $40K once the cap is applied, and that lower number is what divides into PITIA.
Local rules also decide whether a deal is fundable at all. Some lenders won’t lend where the city restricts Airbnb, regardless of the ratio. So the real sequence is: project revenue, apply the legality haircut, then divide by PITIA — and only then compare to the floor.
If your market is regulated, see the best cities where STR investing is still legal in 2026 before you anchor on a revenue figure that the city won’t let you earn.
Run the exact address
A table gets you in the right zip code; it can’t price your deal. The required-revenue number turns on your actual rate, real property taxes, the true STR insurance quote, and — critically — whether the city haircuts your projection. Those are address-level facts, not averages.
Our feasibility check runs all of it at once: the trailing-12-month comp projection for the exact bed/bath/type, the current legality and any night cap, the cap-adjusted DSCR at today’s rate, and which lenders’ floors that ratio actually clears. That’s the difference between a guess and a fundable deal.
Key takeaways
- There’s no flat dollar requirement — you need revenue that clears the lender’s DSCR floor (usually 1.0–1.25×) on your specific PITIA.
- Reverse the math: monthly PITIA × DSCR floor = the minimum gross revenue you must clear.
- Rough guide at ~7.75% and 25% down: budget ~$100–$105 of required annual gross revenue per $1,000 of price to hit 1.25×.
- More down payment and a lower rate both shrink the revenue you need; the STR overlay raises it.
- A night cap haircuts revenue before the DSCR is calculated — always run the cap-adjusted ratio on the exact address, not the headline projection.