The National STR Bonus Depreciation Curve — 197 Markets, DepreciMax 2026 Study
This publication documents the weighted national distribution of federal IRS §168(k) bonus depreciation potential across the DepreciMax STR Bonus Depreciation Market Study — 197 US short-term rental markets and 1,717 individually estimated listings that populate the national curve. It also provides the empirical basis for the Diamond / Gold / Silver / Bronze medal thresholds used throughout the Study and codifies the state §168(k) conformity map that shapes real-world tax outcomes for short-term rental buyers.
What is the average bonus-eligible percentage for US short-term rentals?
Across 197 US short-term rental markets, the weighted national mean bonus-eligible percentage of purchase price is 19.9%. Weighting is by active short-term rental listing count per market, so larger markets contribute more heavily to the national curve than smaller ones — analogous to how a broad-market equity index weights component companies by market capitalization rather than treating each company equally.
The unweighted mean is 19.9% as well — the two are essentially identical for this dataset, which means the underlying distribution is not being distorted by a small number of very large or very small markets. The distribution is stable enough that both weighting schemes converge.
Two properties from this distribution warrant explicit callouts. First, the median at 19.8% — the middle US short-term rental — sits just below the Silver threshold at 20%. That means roughly half of US STR-suitable listings fail to clear even the Silver tier. Second, the curve is compressed: only 8.9 percentage points separate the 10th percentile from the 95th percentile. Small movements in bonus-eligible % translate to large movements in relative ranking.
How does DepreciMax define Diamond / Gold / Silver / Bronze STR markets?
DepreciMax's medal thresholds are fixed absolute cutoffs — not relative to a cohort — and are frozen for the annual snapshot cycle. Thresholds were set once, in the 2026 methodology version, based on the empirical percentile positions of the weighted national distribution.
| Medal | Threshold | Empirical percentile | Approx. share of listings clearing it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | ≥ 24% bonus-eligible | ~p91 | Top 9% |
| Gold | ≥ 22% bonus-eligible | ~p72 | Top 28% |
| Silver | ≥ 20% bonus-eligible | ~p52 | Top 48% |
| Bronze | ≥ 18% bonus-eligible | ~p31 | Top 69% |
| Unmedaled | < 18% bonus-eligible | Bottom 31% | — |
The thresholds are calibrated so that the four tiers roughly quartile the market — with Diamond as a genuinely rare outcome (approximately one in eleven active listings clear it) and Bronze as roughly market-median. Positioning the thresholds absolutely rather than relatively is important: it means a Diamond in 2026 has the same meaning as a Diamond in 2027 as a Diamond in 2028, regardless of how the underlying distribution shifts.
Which states conform to federal §168(k) bonus depreciation for STRs?
Federal §168(k) bonus depreciation is a federal deduction. Whether an investor can also take the deduction on their state return depends on whether their state conforms to federal §168(k), partially conforms, or decouples entirely. The DepreciMax Study classifies each US state with active STR markets by conformity status; this classification maps to every one of the 197 markets in the dataset.
Across the 35 US states with active short-term rental markets in the Study, the conformity split at the state level is 26 full · 7 decoupled · 2 partial. At the market level — because decoupled states include several very high-density STR states — the split shifts to 147 markets in full-conformity states, 58 in decoupled states, and 3 in partial-conformity states.
| Conformity | States (2026) | Markets affected |
|---|---|---|
| Full conformity | AL, AR, AZ, CO, DE, FL, GA, ID, KY, LA, MD, ME, MO, MT, NH, NM, NV, OR, RI, SC, TN, TX, UT, VT, WA, WY | 136 |
| Decoupled | CA, HI, MA, NC, NJ, NY, VA | 58 |
| Partial conformity | PA, WI | 3 |
How is this curve constructed?
The weighted national curve is constructed by taking every listing in the Top 50 markets' individually estimated set and weighting each market's contribution by that market's active short-term rental listing count across major platforms. Bottom 147 markets — those that did not clear the medal thresholds — contribute to a separate national mean statistic but are excluded from the weighted percentile curve, because those markets are documented as reference cases rather than as investment-viable options within the Study's framework.
Detailed data sources, market selection criteria, per-listing estimation approach, and calibration procedure are documented in the Study methodology. The specific list of 147 markets that did not make the cut, along with the technical reason each fails, is documented in the "Famous STR Markets Where the Bonus Depreciation Math Doesn't Pencil" technical notes.