What a holiday apartment in Valencia really earns

The first question almost every owner in Valencia asks is the same: will my flat earn more as a holiday let than let out all year round? And right behind it comes the second: how much of that do I keep? They are the right questions. The thing is, the answer is not a brochure number. The return on a holiday apartment is not the nightly rate but what is left after subtracting the nights the flat is empty, the platforms' commissions, cleaning between guests and management. In Valencia there is also a variable that moves the result as much as price does: the city's regulations changed in 2026 and even decide whether you can register the home at all.

To get your bearings with data rather than promises, let us start with demand. According to the INE's Holiday Apartment Occupancy Survey, in August 2025 holiday apartments in Spain filled 57.2% of their places, with an average stay of 5.7 nights. In April, in mid-season, that occupancy dropped to 34.9%. And that August the Comunitat Valenciana was the country's leading holiday-apartment destination, with more than 2.5 million overnight stays. That tells you two things before doing any sums: there is plenty of demand and it is very unevenly spread across the year. Your return lives right there, in how many of those nights you manage to sell your flat and at what price.

The return is not the nightly rate

When someone tells you a holiday flat in Valencia lets for so many euros a night, they are giving you the least useful figure of all. The nightly rate (ADR, the average daily rate) only counts if the flat is occupied. What really decides your income is occupancy: the percentage of nights in the year that the flat is let. An apartment at €120 a night occupied half the year earns less than one at €90 occupied three nights out of four.

On length of stay, we can give you a figure of our own. In our portfolio, across 2,191 bookings over the last year, the average stay is around five nights, in line with the national average for apartments published by the INE, which ranges between 4.5 and 5.7 nights depending on the month. It is a figure that matters more than it seems: the more nights each booking lasts, the fewer times you have to clean, the fewer gaps are left between guests and the less sales effort it takes to fill the calendar.

On the actual nightly rate in Valencia we would rather not give you a fixed figure, and it is worth explaining why. The numbers going round the internet for this come from platform scrapers that do not publish their method, and they contradict each other: for the same city you will see occupancy of 61% and of 77%. A figure like that cannot support a decision about your property. The honest thing is to tell you that the price depends on the area, the type of property and the season, and that the number is worked out with your flat in front of you, not with a city average.

How full does a holiday flat in Valencia really get?

Occupancy in the Comunitat is strongly seasonal, but not uniformly so, and here geography rules. In August 2025, the Costa Blanca was the tourist area with the highest apartment occupancy in the whole of Spain, 81.5% of places. The city of Valencia works differently: its demand is spread more evenly through the year thanks to conferences, city tourism and mid-length stays. The consultancy Savills points out that the capital is no longer a seasonal market for accommodation, with hotel occupancy at around 76% on an annual average. The figure is for hotels, not apartments, but it describes the city's type of demand well: there is some in winter, even if it is weaker.

Our own operation confirms that seasonal pattern. More than nine out of ten bookings in our portfolio are concentrated between March and October; November, December and January are genuinely slow months. For you, as an owner, that means the calendar does not fill itself in the good months either: that is where a price tuned to each date makes the difference between a full July and a half-empty one. If your flat is in the city, you are working with flatter demand; if it is on the coast, you make your year in summer and have to squeeze those months. In our home management in Valencia that is the first conversation: which season your flat lives on.

Holiday let or let all year round? The sum without the frills

The comparison that really matters to you is against traditional letting, because that is the alternative you already have. According to the idealista index, residential rents in the city of Valencia closed 2025 at around €17.8/m² a month. For a 70 m² flat, that is about €1,250 a month of steady rent, with no gaps in the calendar and no cleaning costs between tenants. It is a comfortable, predictable floor, and for many owners it is the right option.

Holiday letting plays in a different league: it brings in more for each occupied night, but with gaps and with costs a year-round let does not have. The question is not how much it brings in gross, but how much is left net once everything has been deducted. That is the sum nobody serious should give you over the phone without seeing your home. We are not going to promise you a number we cannot justify; what we can do is sit down with your flat and your area and tell you what to expect, with the assumptions in front of you. If you want that specific estimate, you can ask for it with no obligation through contact.

The costs that eat into the difference

This is where the real return is decided, and where there is most room to fool yourself. A holiday flat has costs worth keeping in mind before signing anything:

• Platform commissions. Airbnb and Booking take their share of each booking, and it is neither the same on both nor calculated in the same way. We break it down here: how much Airbnb and Booking charge the owner.
• Cleaning between stays. With an average stay of five nights, a well-occupied flat gets cleaned many times a month. Every turnover is a cost.
• Utilities and consumption. In a holiday let the owner pays them, not the guest, and in summer, with the air conditioning on, you notice.
• Maintenance and wear. More turnover means more use, and more use means more replacement of linen, small repairs and check-ups.
• Management. If you do not do it, someone does, and they charge for it.

We are not going to publish our rates or anyone else's here, because that does not help you decide. What is a good rule of thumb: an honest management quote is one that lets you see every item separately, with no hidden extras that appear on the statement. When someone gives you a round commission and does not show you what is underneath it, that is the warning sign, not the percentage itself.

Valencia's regulations changed in 2026, and that is return too

In Valencia, the question of how much your flat earns comes after a more basic one: can you register it as a holiday let? The city has had restrictions on new licences since 28 May 2024, first with a moratorium and then with permanent regulation. That rule, known as "the five locks" («los cinco cerrojos»), was approved at the full council meeting of 31 March 2026 and has been in force since 25 May 2026. It refuses a new holiday-let licence when the neighbourhood exceeds 2% holiday homes, the cadastral block reaches 5%, or holiday places exceed 8% of registered residents, as well as requiring independent access to the home. In several central neighbourhoods those limits have already been exceeded, so a new licence there is difficult or impossible as of today, October 2026.

This has an upside for those already in. The supply of holiday homes in the city of Valencia has fallen by around 32% from its peak in August 2024, from almost 8,000 to just over 5,000. Less competition for the same demand pushes up occupancy and prices for the flats that are legally registered. That is why the licence has stopped being a formality and become part of the value of the asset.

At regional level, the framework is set by Decree 10/2021 and Decree-Law 9/2024 of 2 August, which regulate the tourism register of the Comunitat Valenciana and require a municipal report on planning compatibility before the home can be entered in it. And a clarification about the national register, in case you have read about it: the single national register was struck down by the Tribunal Supremo (Spain's Supreme Court) in 2026, so in Valencia it is the regional register that applies. None of this is legal advice, and your particular case needs looking at: we operate in Valencia and in eight other locations across six autonomous regions, and what we can tell you is what applies to you before you buy or start letting the flat.

What makes your flat sell more nights

Within the range your area sets, there are levers that move your number, and the first is reviews. On the platforms, a listing's average rating decides where it appears, and its position decides how many people see it and book it. And this is not about brand image: a better rating translates directly into more nights sold at the price you want. In our operation, the homes have an average of 8.77 out of 10 on Airbnb, across 2,327 reviews, and 7.81 out of 10 on Booking, across 1,519 reviews. That rating does not fall from the sky: it comes from a check-in that works, a flat that looks like the photos and a quick response when something goes wrong at eleven at night.

The other levers are the type of property and pricing. A well-presented flat, with good photos and ready for the stay, sells sooner and for more than the same flat neglected. And the nightly rate should not be fixed: a dynamic pricing system (what the sector calls revenue management) raises the rate when there is a conference or a bank holiday and lowers it when a Tuesday in February needs filling. That is where much of the occupancy that would otherwise be lost is recovered. The return on your flat in Valencia comes from the sum of these decisions, and it is exactly what we can work out with you in a no-obligation valuation.