Is Airbnb still profitable in Bucharest?

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Are Bucharest Airbnbs still making good money?

Bucharest Airbnbs can still make good money today, with the better market datasets putting a typical full-time listing around €15,000 a year before expenses.

Airbtics estimates roughly €15,000 in annual revenue for a typical Bucharest short-term rental, with 67% occupancy and a median nightly rate around €58. Its broader Romania study reached almost the same conclusion, putting Bucharest annual revenue at €14,717.

AirDNA lands remarkably close on revenue. Its current Bucharest dashboard estimates about $14,900 per active listing, with 61% occupancy and a $71 average daily rate. We should not obsess over whether the right number is €14,700, €15,000 or the dollar equivalent. Two independent datasets put a normally performing listing in roughly the same revenue range.

AirROI is much more pessimistic. It estimates around $8,420 annual revenue, $85 ADR and only 37.5% occupancy. The gap is too large to ignore. Bucharest city averages are shaky enough that we should never underwrite a purchase from one market dashboard alone.

There is clearly enough money in Bucharest short-term rentals to make Airbnb work. The real uncertainty is how much of that revenue a specific apartment can capture.

Are tourists still coming to Bucharest in big enough numbers?

Bucharest still has plenty of visitor demand for Airbnb, and recent tourism numbers give us little reason to think guests are disappearing.

Romania's National Institute of Statistics recorded around 2.05 million tourist arrivals in registered Bucharest accommodation during 2025, together with roughly 4.15 million overnight stays. The capital represented close to 15% of all tourist arrivals recorded nationally.

That works out at about two nights per registered arrival, which suits the Bucharest Airbnb market unusually well. City breaks, work trips, events, medical travel and weekend visits create exactly the kind of short stays that apartments compete for.

Hotels have also been busy. Colliers reported roughly 72% occupancy at Bucharest's five-star hotels during the first eleven months of 2025, about ten percentage points higher than a year earlier, while average daily rates stayed near €140.

Airbnb hosts are filling apartments while higher-end hotels are also filling rooms. Current short-term-rental demand does not appear to depend on weakness elsewhere in the accommodation market.

Is Bucharest Airbnb getting too crowded?

Bucharest Airbnb is much more competitive than it used to be, although the extra supply has not yet crushed occupancy or typical revenue.

Airbtics counted 5,196 active listings and estimated that roughly 1,236 were added during 2025, an increase of 27.9%. Its active-listing count has more than doubled over three years.

New hosts now compete against thousands of properties with professional photos, automated check-in, revenue-management software and experienced operators. An average apartment can no longer rely on simply being central and available.

Yet Airbtics still measured annual revenue up about 5.2% and ADR up around 6.8%, while occupancy only edged lower. AirDNA's latest data tells a different story on listing counts but a similarly healthy one on actual bookings, with occupancy and RevPAR both stronger.

The exact inventory numbers depend heavily on how each provider defines an active listing. More important is that Bucharest has absorbed a lot more short-term-rental supply without a broad collapse in revenue.

Competition is clearly harder these days. The market itself still works.

Does Bucharest Airbnb have a bad off-season?

Bucharest Airbnb is relatively resistant to seasonality, which makes its revenue much easier to rely on than in a typical beach or resort market.

AirDNA currently gives Bucharest a seasonality score of 95 out of 100. In practical terms, the gap between strong and weak periods is comparatively small.

The reason is fairly intuitive. Bucharest receives leisure visitors, but it also gets business travellers, conference guests, domestic visitors, medical travellers, concert audiences and people passing through Romania's main international transport hub.

Big events can still produce unusually strong weekends. The first Kapital music festival reported more than 152,000 attendances across three days in 2025, while major stadium concerts have sold out the National Arena. Those spikes are useful for dynamic pricing, but a Bucharest Airbnb does not need them to survive the rest of the year.

For an investor, that stability is one of the city's better features. A property that books consistently through normal months is much easier to run profitably than one that depends on six or eight peak weeks.

Are rising Bucharest apartment prices hurting Airbnb returns?

Rising Bucharest apartment prices are now one of the clearest threats to Airbnb profitability because buyers are paying more for properties without getting the same increase in nightly revenue.

Imobiliare.ro's Bucharest index recently reached around €2,304 per square metre, up 9.4% year over year. Existing apartments averaged about €2,265 per square metre and new apartments around €2,549.

Airbnb pricing has moved more slowly. Airbtics measured ADR growth of roughly 6.8% in its latest full-year comparison, while AirDNA's more recent reading showed an increase closer to 1.8%.

The periods and methodologies are different, so those percentages should not be compared too mechanically. Still, the broader trend is hard to miss: the apartment itself has lately become more expensive faster than a typical occupied night has become more lucrative.

That difference hits a new buyer much harder than someone who bought years ago. An owner who entered at €1,500 per square metre can be earning an excellent return today. Someone buying the same type of property above €2,500 starts with much tighter economics.

Existing Bucharest Airbnb hosts can therefore be very happy with their returns while a new investor looking at today's prices should be much more selective.

Which Bucharest areas make the most sense for Airbnb?

The best Bucharest Airbnb areas today are usually central, walkable neighbourhoods where guest demand stays strong without pushing the purchase price into luxury territory.

Current asking-price data shows why location needs to be judged as an investment rather than as a prestige choice. Two-room apartments are around €3,183 per square metre in Unirii and about €3,135 around Universitate-Kogălniceanu. Victoriei-Romana is closer to €2,517, while Aviatiei approaches €3,735.

Premium northern areas can cost much more. Floreasca is around €4,700 per square metre in broader neighbourhood medians, Herăstrău roughly €4,900 and Primăverii above €5,500.

Those can be excellent places to live, but tourists do not automatically pay twice the nightly rate because the apartment costs twice as much to buy.

For Airbnb, Old Town, Universitate, Piața Romană, Unirii, Cișmigiu and the central parts of Victoriei have an obvious advantage: visitors can walk to restaurants, landmarks, nightlife and metro stations. A compact apartment in one of those areas can generate much more revenue for each euro invested than a larger luxury unit farther north.

We would care more about tourist convenience and acquisition price than about buying in Bucharest's most prestigious residential neighbourhood.

Can a Bucharest Airbnb still make a 10% gross yield?

A 10% gross Airbnb yield is still realistic in Bucharest, but it now depends heavily on buying at the right price.

Airbtics estimates a city-level short-term-rental yield around 12.3%. If we pair roughly €14,700 of annual gross revenue with that yield, the implied property value is only about €120,000.

That price still exists for studios and some smaller apartments. It becomes much harder once we move into prime central stock.

At €15,000 of annual Airbnb revenue, a €120,000 apartment produces a 12.5% gross yield. The same revenue on a €150,000 purchase gives 10%. At €180,000, we fall to 8.3%. A €220,000 property produces only 6.8%.

The Airbnb business has not changed between those examples. The buyer simply committed much more capital to get the same €15,000 revenue stream.

For new investors, purchase discipline now matters more than chasing an extra €5 or €10 on the nightly rate.

How much of Bucharest Airbnb revenue does the owner actually keep?

A Bucharest Airbnb earning €15,000 in bookings can still leave a healthy profit, but professional management and operating costs can eat through several thousand euros very quickly.

Airbnb says most hosts using its traditional split-fee structure pay around 3% on the host side, although professionally managed properties can sit under different fee structures.

Management is the much bigger expense. Bucharest operator Alera publicly charges 20% of short-term-rental revenue for complete management, while broader local market estimates generally put full-service management somewhere around 20% to 30%.

At €15,000 annual revenue, 20% management alone costs €3,000. A 25% fee costs €3,750.

Cleaning, linen, electricity, heating, internet, toiletries, repairs, broken items and periodic refurbishment then come on top. One Bucharest cleaning provider, for example, currently advertises Airbnb turnover cleans around 180 to 450 lei depending on the size and service.

Romania's current tax treatment for individuals renting up to seven rooms is relatively straightforward. Taxable net income is calculated after a 30% flat expense deduction, with income tax charged at 10% of the resulting amount. In a simplified €15,000 example, that leaves a €10,500 tax base and about €1,050 of income tax before any health-contribution liability that may apply to the owner.

Two identical Bucharest apartments can therefore produce very different returns. Someone who manages the property personally can preserve much more of the gross income. A foreign investor who wants a completely passive property may hand away a quarter of the revenue before several other expenses even arrive.

Is Airbnb still better than a normal long-term rental in Bucharest?

Bucharest Airbnb can still beat a long-term tenant on income, but the advantage is no longer automatically large once we include the extra costs and work.

Global Property Guide currently estimates average Bucharest long-term gross rental yields around 6.9%, although the spread between neighbourhoods is wide.

Its recent examples include a €110,000 one-bedroom apartment in Titan renting for roughly €540 a month, which gives about 5.9% gross. A €76,500 one-bedroom in Militari at €410 a month gives around 6.4%. A €215,000 one-bedroom in Unirii rented at €700 comes out near 3.9%.

Now take a €150,000 apartment earning €15,000 through Airbnb. The gross short-term yield is 10%. If the same apartment rents long term for €700 a month, the annual rent is €8,400, or 5.6%.

The €6,600 gross revenue gap initially looks huge. But a 20% Airbnb manager removes €3,000, and platform fees, utilities, extra maintenance and tax narrow the advantage further.

For a self-managing owner, Airbnb can still win comfortably. For someone outsourcing everything, a normal tenant can get surprisingly close while creating far less work and much less revenue volatility.

Can you legally run an Airbnb in Bucharest today?

Running an Airbnb legally in Bucharest is still possible, but the classification process has become important enough that we would check it before buying any apartment.

Romania requires short-term accommodation properties to obtain a tourism classification certificate, and the rules were updated under Order 948/2026.

For an individual owner, the application requires documents covering ownership and the property itself. In apartment buildings, the owner can also need written approval from the building association's executive committee together with written consent from directly affected neighbours sharing horizontal or vertical boundaries with the unit.

That can make or break the investment. A perfect-looking apartment on Airbnb spreadsheets is useless as a short-term-rental purchase if the owner cannot secure the approvals needed to operate compliantly.

Individuals can classify a maximum of seven rooms and fourteen accommodation places across personally owned properties before the activity moves into a different business framework.

Bucharest also applies a local tourism-promotion charge of 10 lei per tourist per night, including short-term-rental apartments. Current municipal rules allow online platforms collecting the accommodation payment to collect that charge.

The regulatory environment remains much more open than cities with hard annual rental caps or broad Airbnb bans. Still, buying first and asking about classification later is an unnecessary gamble.

Does financing a Bucharest Airbnb still make sense?

Financing an average Bucharest Airbnb is difficult to justify today because Romanian mortgage costs can sit uncomfortably close to the property's realistic net yield.

European Central Bank data puts the annual percentage rate of charge on new Romanian housing loans around 7.6% in one of the latest available readings.

That is already above many conventional Bucharest rental yields, which generally sit in the mid-single digits before expenses. Airbnb can generate 10% gross or more on a well-bought apartment, but the owner does not keep the gross yield.

Once platform fees, tax, utilities, maintenance and perhaps 20% management are deducted, an average Airbnb can end up producing an operating return in roughly the same neighbourhood as the borrowing cost.

A highly productive apartment bought with a large down payment can still work. A heavily financed average property leaves very little room for a bad quarter, repairs or lower occupancy.

Cash buyers currently have a much cleaner Bucharest Airbnb proposition.

What kind of Bucharest apartment works best on Airbnb?

Small, central Bucharest apartments usually have the best Airbnb economics because guests happily pay for location while investors pay dearly for every extra square metre.

A couple spending three nights in Bucharest may be perfectly comfortable in a 35–50 square metre studio or one-bedroom near Universitate, Old Town or Piața Romană. They rarely pay proportionally more because the apartment has 90 square metres.

The buyer does.

A €110,000 apartment making €13,000 annually can therefore be a better investment than a €230,000 apartment making €20,000. The larger property brings in more cash, but much less revenue relative to the capital tied up in it.

Larger apartments can still work when they efficiently sleep four to six guests, especially families and groups. The weaker format is an expensive residential apartment whose extra space and prestige do not translate into enough additional nightly revenue.

For Bucharest Airbnb today, we would favour compact floor plans, strong walkability, air conditioning, easy self-check-in, good sound insulation and enough sleeping capacity for the size of the unit.

What can ruin a profitable Bucharest Airbnb investment?

The easiest way to ruin a Bucharest Airbnb investment is to overpay for the apartment and assume average market revenue will automatically follow.

Take a €170,000 property underwritten at €17,000 annual bookings. That looks like a clean 10% gross yield.

If revenue comes in at €13,000 instead, gross yield falls to 7.6%. A 20% manager then takes €2,600, after which the owner still faces platform charges, tax, utilities, maintenance and any financing cost.

Competition makes that downside more realistic. Airbtics counted more than 1,200 additional active Bucharest listings during 2025. A generic apartment with average photos and weak pricing can lose bookings even if citywide tourism stays strong.

There is also a legal downside. An apartment can look financially attractive and still be a poor Airbnb purchase if the owner cannot secure the classification and building approvals needed to operate it.

The biggest risk currently is fairly mundane: paying a premium price for an average property and underwriting it like a top-performing one.

Is Airbnb still profitable in Bucharest if we buy today?

Yes, Airbnb is still profitable in Bucharest today, but we would only buy when the specific apartment works under conservative assumptions.

The demand side remains strong. Bucharest recorded more than 2 million registered tourist arrivals during 2025, hotel occupancy has been healthy, and two major STR datasets still place typical annual Airbnb revenue around €15,000 or the dollar equivalent. Occupancy also remains solid, with AirDNA currently around 61% and Airbtics higher.

The problem is what investors now have to pay for access to that revenue. Bucharest asking apartment prices are around €2,300 per square metre citywide and roughly 9% higher year over year, while many central neighbourhoods already exceed €3,000 per square metre.

An apartment bought around €100,000–€130,000 that can reliably earn €14,000–€16,000 a year still looks compelling, especially when the owner manages it personally. Put the same revenue against a €180,000–€220,000 purchase and the return changes completely.

Professional management makes the gap even wider. Giving away 20% to 30% of revenue can turn what looks like a double-digit Airbnb yield into something much closer to an ordinary rental return. Expensive financing compresses it again.

We would still consider Bucharest Airbnb a good opportunity, but only for investors who buy well, confirm the classification path before purchase and use realistic property-level comparables rather than city averages.

The Bucharest Airbnb market is still profitable. These days, the hard part is buying a property cheap enough for that profitability to be worth the extra work.

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INVESTROPA

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