US rental RevPAR is pacing 8 to 11% ahead to year end, and December is finally selling on volume

KeyData's Q4 2026 US index, based on bookings on the books as of 4 October, has short-term rental RevPAR running ahead of last year for all three remaining months of the year. The more interesting part is where the growth is coming from.

For two years US rental revenue growth has been a rate story. Occupancy was flat or falling, operators pushed ADR, and RevPAR held up. December breaks that pattern.

The forward numbers

December is the one to read twice. ADR is actually down 2% year on year, from $481 to $473, and RevPAR is still up 10%, because occupancy is pacing 12% ahead. That is demand doing the work rather than pricing.

One important caveat on these figures. The occupancy numbers in a forward-looking index are the share of nights already sold as of early October, not the occupancy the month will finish with. December shows a low single-digit occupancy figure because most December bookings have not happened yet. The useful number is the year-on-year change, not the level. Every quarter somebody reads the level and panics.

KeyData's own note to property managers makes the same point in different words: "Operators should avoid interpreting slower early pickup as lost demand."

What actually happened in Q3

The finalised numbers, year on year:

• July: occupancy 52% against 49%, ADR $427 against $404, RevPAR up 11%
• August: occupancy 39% against 40%, ADR $346 against $334, RevPAR up 2%
• September: occupancy 33% against 29%, ADR $276 against $251, RevPAR up 24%

August was the soft month and September was unusually strong on both occupancy and rate at once.

Regional spread

Q3 RevPAR growth by region ranged from 6% in the Hawaiian Islands to 16% in the Mid-Atlantic. The Midwest rose 15%, the Western region and New England 12%, the Southwest 11%, Rocky Mountain 9% and the Southeast 8%.

New England is the odd one out: occupancy fell 2% while ADR rose 14%, which is the old rate-led pattern still holding in one region while the rest move to volume.

Rentals beat hotels in every region where KeyData publishes both. The widest gap was the Mid-Atlantic, 16% against 5%. In the Hawaiian Islands rental RevPAR rose 6% while hotel RevPAR fell 2%.

Reading it carefully

Two things to keep in mind. The index is built on reservation data from properties using KeyData, which skews toward professionally managed inventory on a revenue management tool. That is a reasonable proxy for the readers of this site and a poor proxy for the whole US rental market. The report also does not state its sample size, so the property counts quoted elsewhere in trade coverage are not from the document itself.

The report's distribution section notes that direct bookings account for substantially more revenue than their share of reservations, which is the recurring finding in this data and the one most worth acting on.

For operators

If your December is pacing behind on rate but ahead on nights, that is now the market pattern rather than a problem with your pricing. Benchmark locally before changing anything: a 10-point spread between the Mid-Atlantic and Hawaii means a national figure tells you very little about your own market. KeyData says as much: "Regional variation remains significant and reinforces the need to benchmark locally."

The figures were surfaced by Short Term Rentalz on 22 October.