We scraped 517 Hoboken and Jersey City Airbnb listings on April 25, 2026. 89 pass the 75/55 test. The other 428 are charging $700 a night, stocking cribs and high chairs, marketing "rooftop NYC views," and waiting for a customer who books somewhere else.
The verdict, up top
Strong. 20.7% of the 517 listings land in the Top Performer tiers, Exceptional, Performer, or Potential, and that clears the 15% bar STRecon uses for a Strong Market Signal. But read what Strong does and doesn't say. It's a signal about the top of the market: there are enough listings here actually booking at the level an investor needs to build a thesis on. It is not a signal about the middle. 70.4% of Hoboken and Jersey City listings sit in the Avoid tier, and the gap between the winners and everyone else is the whole story of this report. AirDNA grades Hoboken alone 90 out of 100, "Great," but AirDNA is describing the entire market as hot. STRecon's Strong is describing a narrow, specific slice of it. Buy into that slice and the data is on your side. Buy the average and it isn't.
The failing Hoboken listings ask $698 a night. The succeeding ones ask $291. The market is voting with bookings.
Why Hoboken & JC isn't the NYC overflow play it looks like
Hoboken and Jersey City sit one PATH stop from Manhattan. Skyline view from half the apartments. NYC business hotels run $400 to $700 a night and the math of "buy a Hoboken condo, rent it on Airbnb at $500, win on the spread" writes itself.
The actual demand mix is narrower than the pitch suggests, and the regulation has already shaped what's legal.
Hoboken's Chapter 255 ordinance requires every short-term rental host to register with the Division of Housing Preservation. $250 initial permit, $200 annual renewal. Short-term rentals are prohibited in rent-controlled units and in properties where the owner isn't present. Maximum occupancy: 6 guests per unit. Maximum bedrooms: 3. Fines for non-compliance reportedly exceed $30,000.
Jersey City's regulation is similar in spirit and tighter in scope. The November 2019 ballot referendum (Municipal Question 1, passed 87% to 13%) codified Chapter 255 / Ordinance 19-077. Tenants can't operate short-term rentals. Multi-dwelling units and rent-controlled units are out. Owner-occupancy is required, with a 60-night cap on stays when the owner isn't on site. Permits cost money, inspections take time, and the city has been enforcing.
AirDNA scores Hoboken's regulation at 70 out of 100. The score understates how much of the visible supply is operating outside the legal envelope, which we'll come back to in Pattern #2.
What the calendars actually show
Where every Hoboken & Jersey City listing sits on the 75/55 grid
Each dot is one of 517 listings. The 89 that pass both 75/55 thresholds (17.2%) are green; 289 fail both (55.9%). A few green dots sit just inside the gridlines because the rule counts booked nights, 22+ and 16+, not a strict 75% and 55%.
The tier distribution backs that up:
| Tier | Listings | % of market |
|---|---|---|
| EXCEPTIONAL | 11 | 2.1% |
| PERFORMER | 15 | 2.9% |
| POTENTIAL | 81 | 15.7% |
| WATCH | 46 | 8.9% |
| AVOID | 364 | 70.4% |
The three Top Performer tiers, Exceptional, Performer, and Potential, hold 107 listings between them, 20.7% of the market. That share is what earns the Strong signal. But it leans on Potential: only 26 listings, 5%, reach Exceptional or Performer. For a market 23% larger than Alexandria and one PATH stop from one of the world's strongest business-travel hubs, the depth at the very top is thin. The Strong signal here is real, but it's a signal about breadth at the Potential level, not depth at the top.
Median booked nights for the next 30 days: 17. That's 57% forward-window occupancy. The 30 to 60 day window drops to 37%. The 60 to 90 day window drops to 13%. The curve is unusual: the typical listing IS booking short term, but the bookings don't sustain into the 30-to-60 window. That's the signature of last-minute NYC-spillover demand, not steady tourist base.
The Potential tier (81 listings, 15.7%) is the watch list. Mostly 2BR and 3BR-for-6, on the Hoboken side, walkable to PATH. The same property profile keeps repeating.
What AirDNA shows vs. what we scraped
AirDNA's Hoboken overview reports 742 active listings, 67% occupancy, $282 ADR, $181 RevPAR, and a 90/100 market score graded "Great." Rental Demand: 95. Revenue Growth: 90.
STRecon's scrape of 517 Hoboken-and-Jersey-City listings (which uses a different geographic boundary and counts only active full-home listings on Airbnb) shows median 30-day forward occupancy of 57%. Looks close to AirDNA's 67%, but the gap matters and it widens fast.
42.7% of AirDNA's Hoboken sample carries a 30+ night minimum stay. That's not an Airbnb business in the sense an investor underwrites. That's corporate housing and mid-term rental, pulled into the AirDNA average and lifting the occupancy line. Their bedroom mix tells the same story: 40% 1BR. STRecon's active full-home scrape across Hoboken/JC is 3% 1BR. AirDNA and STRecon are looking at meaningfully different populations.
The gap in occupancy compounds the gap in tier shape. AirDNA's "Great" score and "Rental Demand: 95" rating imply almost every listing is booking. STRecon's tier table shows 70.4% in Avoid. That gap doesn't reconcile by averaging. It reconciles by understanding what each tool is measuring.
If you underwrote a Hoboken or JC purchase on AirDNA's 90 score, 67% occupancy, and $282 ADR assumption: the model and the calendars disagree by enough to wipe out year-one cash flow. More on the methodology difference here.
Seasonality
October peaks at 2.96×, with a strong May-through-September shoulder
Monthly revenue index, normalized to January = 1.00. October peaks at 2.96× the winter low; September is the secondary peak at 2.67×. May through August sit between 2.30× and 2.47×, a long warm-weather plateau driven by NYC tourism and corporate travel.
The April scrape date sits at the start of the climb, around 2.05×. The market is heading into its strongest six months. That timing actually flatters the 75/55 numbers in this report. The same scrape in February (1.03× the January low) would show even worse forward occupancy.
Hoboken's seasonality is steep enough that operators can carry a slow winter against a strong fall, but it's the October peak doing most of the lifting. Underwrite the year on the average, not on October.
Pattern #1. The golden zone: PATH-walkable, waterfront-side
121 listings sit in the golden zone. They book at 24%. The other 396 book at 15%.
Every Hoboken and Jersey City listing, plotted by coordinate. Passing listings in green, failing in red. The shaded zone is within half a mile of a PATH station and east of the Palisades cliff at longitude −74.045.
Two location variables sort the Hoboken/JC market. Distance to the nearest PATH station. East-west position relative to the Palisades cliff at longitude −74.045.
Inside half a mile of any of the five PATH stations (Hoboken Terminal, 9th Street, Newport, Grove Street, Exchange Place), listings pass at 24.0%. Past half a mile, 15.2%. PATH-walkable is a 58% relative lift in pass rate.
The east-west axis matters independently. The deep Jersey City Heights (longitude west of −74.055) pass at 5.7%. The waterfront-near strip (longitude east of −74.035) pass at 23.7%. A 4.2× gradient driven by elevation, view, and walkability to the Hudson. The waterfront advantage holds even at more than 1 mile from PATH (lowland listings at 19.5% vs Heights at 13.2% in that range).
Stack both filters and you get the golden zone: PATH-walkable AND east of the Palisades cliff. 121 listings, 23% of supply, passing at 24.0%. They produce 33% of all winners in the market. The other 77% of supply pass at 15.2%.
Buy in the golden zone or buy somewhere else.
Pattern #2. The over-stuffed 3BR trap (and the regulation that already bans it)
The cliff is at 3 guests per bedroom. Honest-density listings pass at 18-20%.
Below 3 guests per bedroom, listings pass at 18 to 20% across three bins. The over-stuffed 3.0 to 4.0 band drops to 10.1%. The legit large-group niche above 4.0 recovers to 17.6%. Hoboken ordinance caps occupancy at 6 guests and 3 bedrooms per unit, so the over-stuffed configurations are operating outside the legal envelope.
Half of all 3-bedroom listings in Hoboken/JC are configured to sleep 7 or more guests. The other half sleep 6 or fewer.
The half that respects normal density (3BR-for-6) passes at 17.4%. The half that crams in sofa beds and bunks (3BR-for-7-plus) passes at 9.4%. Same bedroom count, same neighborhood pool, opposite outcomes. The same pattern shows on 2-bedroom listings. 2BR-for-6 passes at 22.9%. 2BR-for-7-or-8 passes at 9.4%. 2BR-for-10 passes at 0%.
The mechanism is operator choice. Operators stuff in extra sleeping surfaces, list the property at the high guest-count ADR, and try to capture group-trip demand. The 3BR median ADR is $787 in our partial-coverage sample. The 4BR median is $1,122. The demand to support those rates doesn't exist at scale: NYC business travelers come in 1s and 2s; family weekend visitors to NYC stay in NYC; the 8-person group going to Hoboken instead of Manhattan is a thin slice of the market. The legit large-group niche (longer than 4 guests per bedroom, n=34) is small but real at 17.6% pass rate. The mid-density over-stuff (3 to 4 g/BR) is the trap.
Here's where the regulation makes Pattern #2 actionable, not just analytical: Hoboken caps occupancy at 6 guests per unit and bedrooms at 3 per unit, by ordinance. Every Hoboken listing advertising 7+ guests is operating outside the legal envelope. Every Hoboken listing advertising 4+ bedrooms is operating outside the legal envelope. The "sleeps 10" 3BR brownstone two blocks off Washington Street isn't just mistargeting demand. It's earning fines that, per the bnbcalc guide, reportedly run $30,000 and up.
The lawful, normal-density 3BR-for-6 in Hoboken is one of the better-performing configurations in the city. The over-stuffed 3BR is one of the worst. Operators chose the worse one.
Hoboken caps short-term rentals at 6 guests and 3 bedrooms by ordinance. Half the city’s 3BR Airbnbs advertise 7 or more guests.
Pattern #3. The Airbnb-gaming penalty
Non-Superhost listings outperform Superhost. Listings without 'NYC' outperform listings with it.
Two signals the conventional Airbnb optimization playbook gets backwards in this market. The Superhost badge and the "NYC" keyword both correlate negatively with calendar performance.
Two signals that the conventional Airbnb optimization playbook gets backwards in this market.
The Superhost flip. Non-Superhost listings in Hoboken/JC pass 75/55 at 21.4%. Superhost listings pass at 13.6%. The badge correlates negatively with calendar performance. Superhost designation rewards instant-book, flexible cancellation, 90%+ response rates. The scaled operators run that playbook efficiently. They also run the over-stuffed condo playbook from Pattern #2. The badge is showing up because the operators who chase it are the same ones mis-targeting the market.
The NYC-in-title penalty. 351 of 517 listings (68% of supply) lead with "NYC" somewhere in the title: "Spacious 3BR Near NYC," "Minutes to NYC," "NYC Skyline Views." Those listings pass at 13.4%. The 166 listings that don't mention NYC in the title pass at 25.3%. Almost double.
The listings that need to advertise NYC in the title don't have much else to sell. The winners have a real neighborhood, a real building, a real design. They don't have to lead with "Near NYC" because the photo and the address already make the case. Stuffing "NYC" into the title is a search-keyword tic that signals weaker positioning beneath it.
Both findings flag the same thing. The operators optimizing for Airbnb's algorithmic surface (badges, keyword-heavy titles) lose to the operators optimizing for the actual customer. The market is sorting on substance, not signaling.
Pattern #4. Priced and stocked for a guest who isn't coming
Lean-stocking operators pass at roughly 3× the rate of heavy-stocking operators
Every host with 5 or more listings, plotted by median amenity count per unit against 75/55 pass rate. Bubble size is portfolio size. The lean-playbook cluster sits top-left; the heavy-playbook cluster sits bottom-right. Individual operators are not named.
This is the pattern that ties everything together. The Hoboken/JC market is full of operators running a vacation-rental playbook on a market that delivers NYC business overflow. The mismatch shows up in the amenity stack, the pricing, and the calendar.
The amenity differential. Top-quartile listings (the 89 that pass 75/55) and bottom-quartile listings (the 428 that don't) diverge cleanly on what they stock. The losing listings concentrate in a "stocked condo" cluster: bathtub (−18 percentage points), noise decibel monitors (−17 pp), crib (−13 pp), pack 'n play (−13 pp), cleaning products (−13 pp), shampoo and conditioner (−12 to −14 pp), smart lock (−10 pp), elevator (−9 pp), dishwasher (−8 pp), children's dinnerware (−9 pp), ethernet (−10 pp), air conditioning (−9 pp). That's the spec sheet of a newer mid-rise condo run by a property management stack, stocking everything a family weekend visitor might want.
The winning listings concentrate in a "lean walkup" cluster: lockbox (+22.9 percentage points), window AC unit (+8.5 pp), laundromat nearby (+7.0 pp), self check-in (+6.2 pp). Pre-war Hoboken brownstone walk-up. No central HVAC. No in-unit laundry. No smart hardware. Just a key in a lockbox and a 6-minute walk to the PATH.
In the partial-coverage ADR data (n=87, listings showing forward availability), the median ADR of the 75/55-passing group is $291. The median ADR of the failing group is $698. The failing listings are positioned as luxury vacation rentals at NYC business-hotel prices. The succeeding listings price as urban-apartment rentals at a working level. The market votes with bookings.
23 listings have the word "rooftop" in the title. Pass rate: 0.0%. Zero of 23. The "rooftop" keyword clusters on new-build luxury developments. Those are the same units priced at the high end of the failing group. Rooftop is a tell, not a feature.
The operator-level data follows the same shape. Median amenity count by listing: passing group 44, failing group 49. Listings with 60 or more amenities (over-stocked) pass at 8.9%. Listings with fewer than 30 amenities pass at 28.1%. A 3.2× performance gradient driven by stocking discipline.
One 20-listing professional operator in the market runs a median of 38 amenities per unit and passes 75/55 at 50%. The cluster of operators carrying "Luxury" in their brand names runs medians of 55 to 63 amenities per unit and passes at 6 to 13%. Same scale. Opposite playbooks. The lean operator beats the luxury brands by 4 to 8×.
The signal is consistent across every cut. Operators who treat Hoboken/JC as a generic vacation market (heavy stocking, family targeting, luxury positioning, high ADR) lose to operators who treat it as a specific NYC-overflow business market (lean stocking, normal density, urban-apartment positioning, working-level ADR).
23 Hoboken/JC listings have 'rooftop' in the title. Zero pass 75/55.
Who should still operate in Hoboken & Jersey City
The Hoboken/JC buy box is narrow, but real.
The operator who wins here runs a 2BR-or-3BR-for-6 in the golden zone (waterfront-side, within half a mile of a PATH station), prices it in the $250 to $350 ADR range, stocks it lean (under 45 amenities, focused on the urban-apartment essentials), keeps the title clean of "NYC" keyword stuffing, and respects Hoboken's 6-guest occupancy cap. The host either owns the unit and lives there at least part of the time (Hoboken and JC both require owner presence for legal short-term operation), or runs a Hoboken-permit-compliant portfolio of single units they actually visit. Pass rate at this profile is 24% to 30%. About 50 listings in the city already match it.
The operator who shouldn't buy here wants a 3BR-or-bigger property to convert into a "sleeps 10" weekend rental at $700+ ADR, in a new building west of the waterfront, with full hospitality stack and rooftop access. That property is in violation of Hoboken's occupancy cap, mistargeting Hoboken's demand mix, and priced for a customer who books a Manhattan hotel instead. The data on this configuration is unambiguous.
The third profile is the corporate housing operator running 30+ night minimums. That's not the market this report covers, and STRecon scrapes it out by design. AirDNA's Hoboken numbers include it. If your business model is mid-term rental and you're underwriting in the Hudson County waterfront, your math may work. Just don't compare your projection to an Airbnb-pass-rate scrape.
- Buy a 2BR or 3BR-for-6 in the golden zone: waterfront-side, within half a mile of a PATH station.
- Price it $250 to $350 ADR. Underwrite to 55 to 65% forward occupancy, not AirDNA’s 67% at $282.
- Stock it lean: under 45 amenities, urban-apartment essentials. Skip the family-vacation hospitality stack.
- Keep "NYC" out of the title, respect the 6-guest cap, and clear the Hoboken or JC permit as an owner-occupant.
- The over-stuffed 3-to-4 guests-per-bedroom configuration passes at 10.1%, an 8-point cliff.
- Hoboken ordinance caps occupancy at 6 guests and 3 bedrooms per unit. A "sleeps 10" 3BR is operating outside the legal envelope.
- Failing listings ask a median $698 ADR. The NYC-overflow demand books a Manhattan hotel instead.
- Skip. The data and the regulation both say no.
- STRecon scrapes mid-term and corporate housing out by design. This report does not cover that model.
- AirDNA’s Hoboken numbers include it: 42.7% of their sample carries a 30-plus night minimum.
- If your business model is mid-term rental on the Hudson County waterfront, your math may work.
- Just don’t compare your projection to an Airbnb-pass-rate scrape. The two tools measure different populations.
What to do next
If you were planning to buy a 4-bedroom-plus Hoboken brownstone to run at $800-plus a night with sleep-10 capacity: don't. The data is unambiguous and the regulation is against you.
If you were planning to acquire 5-plus Hoboken/JC units through a "luxury" brand: don't. The pass rate for that operator profile is 6 to 13%.
If you're a solo operator looking for one or two well-located 2BR-or-3BR units in the Hoboken/JC golden zone (waterfront-side, half-mile of PATH), that you'll set up lean, price for the actual demand, and operate within the legal occupancy envelope: this is the profile the Strong signal is built on. Hoboken/JC is a Strong market with a narrow door, and this is the door. Watch the permit rules. Expect 55 to 65% forward occupancy at $280 ADR. Underwrite against that, not AirDNA's 67% at $282 ADR composite.
Run the Hoboken & Jersey City market overview for the live map, the named top performers, and the latest 75/55 numbers before you commit.
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Methodology note: Analysis based on 517 active full-home Airbnb listings across the Hoboken–Jersey City waterfront (Hudson County, NJ), scraped April 23–25, 2026. 75/55 quadrant counts: 89 pass both (17.2%), 63 pass 75 only, 76 pass 55 only, 289 fail both (55.9%). Amenity-differential comparison cohorts: top group = passes_75_55 true (n=89), bottom group = passes_75_55 false (n=428). Filter thresholds: combined n ≥ 30 listings per amenity, |Δ| ≥ 6.0 percentage points. Regulation context for Hoboken sourced from Chapter 255 / bnbcalc guide. Jersey City regulation context sourced from Chapter 255 / Ordinance 19-077 (November 2019 Municipal Question 1). AirDNA comparison sourced from airdna.co/vacation-rental-data/app/us/new-jersey/hoboken/overview (Hoboken city-limits, not the combined Hoboken/JC boundary STRecon used). Seasonality data sourced from data.rabbu.com (Hudson County, normalized to January = 1.00). ADR coverage is partial: 87 of 517 listings show forward-window pricing data; ADR comparisons should be read as directional given sample size. Full Hoboken & Jersey City market report: /market/hoboken-jersey-city-nj.