San Francisco edges ahead of Salem Or on higher occupancy (55% vs 36%), stronger RevPAR (£47 vs £31).
Head-to-head metrics
| Salem Or | San Francisco | |
|---|---|---|
| Median occupancy | 36% | 55% |
| Median daily rate | £94 | £121 |
| Median RevPAR | £31 | £47 |
| Active listings | 247 | 4,491 |
| YoY occupancy | +3.1 pts | — |
| YoY daily rate | +8.7% | — |
| Regulation risk | — | high |
| Annual night cap | None | 90 |
| License required | No | Yes |
Full analysis: Salem Or vs San Francisco
On the money side of this comparison — what a listing actually earns against the nights it has available — San Francisco finishes decisively ahead of Salem Or. Revenue per available night — rate and occupancy combined, the figure that actually reaches an owner — is 52.3% higher in San Francisco: £47 against £31. San Francisco sells 19 more points of its calendar — 55% median occupancy against 36% in Salem Or. That is not a rounding difference, and it compounds over a hold period.
San Francisco takes both halves of the yield equation, which is less common than it sounds. It charges more per night — £121 against £94 — and still fills more of the year, 55% against 36%. A market that leads on price and utilisation at once is normally one where demand has outrun supply, rather than one where hosts are discounting to keep the calendar busy. RevPAR reflects the double advantage at £47 against £31.
That verdict needs a caveat, because Salem Or is not simply the weaker market of the two. Salem Or's calendar is the flatter of the two — 20.1 points between its best and worst month against 26.7 in San Francisco — which makes debt service easier to underwrite. Salem Or is the less crowded of the two — 247 active listings to 4,491 — so a well-run property has fewer near-identical rivals to out-rank. If your model leans on that dimension, the ordering above can reasonably flip.
We hold a verified regulation record for only one side of this pairing. San Francisco caps entire-home letting at 90 nights a year and requires a licence, on a high risk rating. Salem Or should be read as unverified rather than unregulated: check the local authority's own register before you underwrite anything there.
The two calendars also behave differently. Salem Or peaks in November at 54.8% and bottoms in February at 34.7%; San Francisco runs from 65.3% in November down to 38.6% in April. Salem Or is the steadier of the two at 20.1 points peak-to-trough against 26.7 — easier to underwrite against a mortgage — while San Francisco concentrates its return into a shorter window and rewards operators who price the peak aggressively instead of holding a flat rate all year.
Who each suits, then. Salem Or suits buyers who want a conventional, lightly regulated entry. San Francisco suits an owner who expects to use the property personally for part of the year, or to run a hybrid calendar around the 90-night ceiling. Every figure above comes from the same Inside Airbnb snapshot pipeline on both sides, dated 2025-11, filtered to listings with at least one booking in the last twelve months. Occupancy medians are drawn from 95 active Salem Or listings and 1,763 in San Francisco.
Frequently asked questions
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