The Auburn Game Day Condo Guide: Good Investment?

Updated August 2026

Short answer: it can be, and the asset has been the stronger half of the deal. Auburn condo closings rose 23.0% over the first seven months of 2026 while Auburn single-family closings fell 12.1% (calculated from Lee County Association of REALTORS® closed-sale counts, Auburn city, January through July, condo and residential classes). The football-weekend income is the softer half. 2026 is a six-game home year.

The Bottom Line

• Condos and houses in Auburn moved in opposite directions through July 2026. Condo closings were up, residential closings were down (Lee County Association of REALTORS®, closed sales, Auburn city, January through July).
• The condo discount to the residential median narrowed from 36.9% in July 2025 to 27.7% in July 2026. The cheap way into this market got less cheap.
• Auburn plays six home games at Jordan-Hare in 2026, one fewer than 2025, and both Georgia and Alabama are away games (Auburn Athletics, schedule announced December 12, 2025).
• Your zoning district, not your listing photos, decides whether a condo can legally be a game day rental in the City of Auburn.
• A game day booking inside Auburn city limits carries at least 11% in lodgings tax, 4% state plus 7% city, before anything a county might add.

What the Auburn condo numbers actually show

Start with the boundary, because on this topic it matters more than usual. Every housing figure below is Auburn city, condo class, closed sales, from the Lee County Association of REALTORS®. Opelika is reported separately and none of it is in these counts. That exclusion is small: Opelika logged 8 condo closings from January through July 2025 and 6 in the same months of 2026. Leaving it out costs you almost nothing and buys you a clean read on the city you're actually shopping in.

What the Auburn condo column does include is every condo in the city. Units nowhere near campus, units in zoning districts where short-term rental isn't allowed, and units nobody would ever rent by the weekend. There's no stadium-adjacent submarket number here and no by-complex data. So read these as the direction of the Auburn condo market, not as the price of a specific unit you can see the stadium from.

With that said, the direction is interesting.

Condo closings went up in a year when houses went down

Auburn recorded 182 condo closings from January through July 2026, against 148 in the same seven months of 2025. That's 34 more units, a 23.0% increase (calculated from Lee County Association of REALTORS® closed-sale counts, Auburn city, condo class). July 2026 alone posted 32 condo closings, the highest single month in the 14 months on file.

Condo closings by month, Auburn, Alabama, January through July 2025 versus January through July 2026. Closed sales, condo class, Auburn city. Source: Lee County Association of REALTORS®. Zero baseline.

Now put the houses next to it. Residential closings in Auburn ran 630 for January through July 2026 against 717 for the same period in 2025, a 12.1% decline (calculated from Lee County Association of REALTORS® closed-sale counts, Auburn city, residential class). Condo volume up 23.0%, single-family volume down 12.1%, same city, same seven months, same source. Condos went from 17.1% of Auburn closings in that stretch of 2025 to 22.4% in 2026.

Year-over-year change in closed sales, Auburn, Alabama, January through July 2025 versus the same months of 2026. Condo and residential classes shown separately. Calculated from Lee County Association of REALTORS® closed-sale counts, Auburn city. Zero baseline.

One honest caveat on the monthly view. Auburn condo counts are small, between 11 and 32 closings in any single month across the 14 months on file. At that sample size one month's median can swing on a handful of unusual sales. Five of the seven months in 2026 posted a higher condo median than the same month in 2025, but March was down 15.6% and April was down 6.8%. Don't build a purchase around one good month.

The discount to houses is closing

Here's the number I'd want if I were buying. In July 2025 the Auburn condo median of $272,500 sat 36.9% below the Auburn residential median of $431,625. In July 2026 the condo median of $357,250 sat 27.7% below the residential median of $494,087 (calculated from Lee County Association of REALTORS® closed-sale medians, Auburn city, condo and residential classes). The dollar gap narrowed from $159,125 to $136,837.

Condo median sold price as a discount to the residential median, Auburn, Alabama, July 2025 versus July 2026. Calculated from Lee County Association of REALTORS® closed-sale medians, Auburn city. Zero baseline.

Translation: the condo is still the lower entry price, but you're paying a bigger share of house money for it than you were a year ago. If your whole thesis was "a condo is the cheap way to own something in Auburn," that thesis got about nine points weaker in twelve months. I walked through what those same 2026 condo numbers mean for people choosing between a lease and a mortgage in rent or own near Auburn, and the shrinking discount is the hinge there too.

For the wider view across both cities, month by month on the residential side, that's what my Auburn and Opelika housing market update tracks.

Six home games, not seven

The income side runs on a calendar you don't control. Auburn has six home games at Jordan-Hare in 2026 (Auburn Athletics, 2026 schedule announced December 12, 2025).

Auburn Tigers 2026 home football schedule, Jordan-Hare Stadium, Auburn, Alabama. Source: Auburn Athletics, schedule announced December 12, 2025.

That's one fewer home game than 2025. Auburn hosted both Georgia and Alabama last season. In 2026 the Tigers travel to Georgia on October 17 and to Tuscaloosa for the Iron Bowl on November 28. Two of the six home dates are non-conference games. A weekend against a marquee SEC opponent and a weekend against a non-conference opponent are not the same product, and the football calendar is not a fixed annuity. It rotates.

So if you're running a pro forma built on last year's seven weekends with Alabama in town, rebuild it. Then rebuild it again for 2027, because the schedule rotates and your mortgage does not.

The steadier half of the demand story is the university itself. Auburn University's Fall 2025 headcount hit a record 35,172, up 3.0% from 34,145 in Fall 2024, with undergraduate enrollment up 3.7% to 28,953 (Auburn University Office of Institutional Research). More people needing housing within reach of campus is a year-round tailwind, and it doesn't care who's on the schedule. Kickoff times and TV windows for 2026 had not been announced as of late August 2026, and that detail decides whether a given weekend is a one-night or a two-night rental.

Zoning decides this, not the listing photos

This is the section that changes offers. In the City of Auburn, a dwelling that is not your permanent residence and gets leased in its entirety for periods of less than 30 consecutive days is a short-term non-primary rental. Renting out the home you actually live in, or part of it, is a homestay. These are adopted rules, not a proposal: Ordinance 3288, adopted March 16, 2021, plus a supplement, Ordinance 3314, adopted July 6, 2021 (City of Auburn).

The permit path is two steps, and step one depends on which category you're in. A short-term non-primary rental needs a zoning certificate first. A homestay needs a home occupation permit instead. Either way, step two is a short-term rental business license through the city Revenue Office. Two documents, not one.

Here's the part that decides your purchase. The city does not publish the list of permitted zoning districts on its short-term rental page. It sends owners to an interactive map or to Planning Services at (334) 501-3040. So the honest instruction is simple: call and ask about the specific address before you write the offer, not after.

Enforcement is complaint-driven, and the penalty has teeth. Per the city's short-term rental FAQ, two substantiated complaints in a calendar year can cost you the zoning certificate for the rest of that year and the entire following year. Read that again with a football calendar in your hand. Two annoyed neighbors can cost you two seasons.

The same FAQ caps operation of a short-term non-primary rental at 240 days per calendar year. That cap is worth understanding for what it does and doesn't do. Six home weekends is nowhere near 240 days, so it doesn't touch a game-day-only strategy at all. What it constrains is the every-weekend-all-year spreadsheet that makes the returns look exciting.

Local rules change and the city's own pages are the controlling text, so confirm every requirement here with the City of Auburn before you write an offer: auburnal.gov/short-term-rentals and the program FAQ at auburnal.gov/short-term-rentals/faq.

One more gate sits above the city. The condo association's governing documents can prohibit short-term rental even where the zoning allows it, and many do, through minimum lease terms or outright rental caps. Ask for the declaration, the bylaws, the rules and regulations, the current budget, and the most recent reserve study during your due diligence period. If the seller can't produce them, that's your answer.

The costs that don't show up in the listing

Lodgings tax is real and it applies. Alabama's state lodgings tax is 4% in Lee County, and it attaches to accommodations furnished for less than 180 continuous days, which puts a football weekend squarely in scope (Alabama Department of Revenue, current as of August 26, 2026). The City of Auburn adds its own lodging tax at a general rate of 7% on the same kind of transient stay, filed monthly and due by the 20th of the following month (City of Auburn Revenue, current as of August 26, 2026).

Stack those two and a game day booking inside Auburn city limits carries at least 11% in lodgings tax. Treat 11% as a floor, not a total. I haven't confirmed whether Lee County levies its own lodgings tax on top, so call the City of Auburn revenue office and the Lee County Commission and get your actual all-in number before you underwrite.

Then there's everything the association charges. HOA dues, special assessments, and the health of the reserve fund vary complex by complex, and none of that is in the MLS data above. Insurance for a unit used as a short-term rental is priced differently than owner-occupied coverage. Financing is its own conversation: condo project review, warrantability, and investor down payment minimums are lender questions, and a licensed lender should answer them for your specific situation and property, not a blog post.

How I'd pencil one out

I'm not going to hand you a return figure, because no honest one exists in the data I have and no return is guaranteed anyway. What I can give you is the order of operations. Fill in your own numbers with your own lender and your own CPA.

1. Confirm eligibility first. Zoning district, then HOA documents. If either says no, nothing else matters and you've saved yourself a due diligence period.
2. Underwrite the low year, not the high year. Six home games with the two biggest rivalry weekends away is a real scenario, because it's the actual 2026 season.
3. Price the carry, not the weekend. Mortgage, taxes, insurance, HOA dues, a reserve line for assessments, cleaning, and management for every month of the year. Football pays for a handful of nights. The rest of the year still bills you.
4. Decide what the unit is when football is over. An annual lease, a mid-term lease, or your own use. A condo that only works six weekends a year is a hobby with a mortgage.
5. Add the tax layer. At least 11% in lodgings tax, 4% state plus 7% city, and ask your CPA how the property is classified for Alabama property tax purposes when it isn't owner-occupied.
6. Then look at appreciation. The Auburn condo direction has been good. That's a tailwind, not a business plan.

So, good investment?

If the unit is in a district and an association that both permit it, if you underwrite a six-game year, and if the property still works as a rental or as your own place when the season ends, then yes, this can be a sound buy. Auburn condo demand has been genuinely strong through July 2026 while the single-family side cooled.

If the plan only works with seven home games, a marquee opponent every October, and rates you haven't verified, it isn't an investment. It's a season ticket with closing costs.

The part I wouldn't skip is the eligibility check, and it's the part buyers most often do last. Zoning district and HOA documents, before the offer.

Let's look at a specific unit

I'm Amy Cotney, REALTOR®, with Roots Real Estate - Investment Development here in Auburn, and this is the kind of question I'd rather work through with you over a phone call than leave you guessing at. Send me the address or the complex you're looking at and I'll help you find the zoning district and the association documents before you're under contract. If you're thinking about buying or selling, reach out. I'd love to help. You can find me at amycotney.com.

Sources and disclosures

• Lee County Association of REALTORS®, closed sales and median sold price, Auburn, Alabama, January 2025 through July 2026, condo and residential classes. Date of information on the July 2026 report: August 10, 2026.
• Auburn University Office of Institutional Research, total enrollment quick facts, Fall 2025: ir.auburn.edu
• Auburn Athletics, "Auburn Football announces 2026 Schedule," December 12, 2025: auburntigers.com
• Alabama Department of Revenue, lodgings tax, current as of August 26, 2026: revenue.alabama.gov
• City of Auburn Revenue, lodging tax, current as of August 26, 2026: auburnal.gov/revenue
• City of Auburn, short-term rentals: auburnal.gov/short-term-rentals
• City of Auburn, short-term rentals FAQ (240-day operating cap, two-complaint revocation rule): auburnal.gov/short-term-rentals/faq

Figures are closed data for Auburn, Alabama as of July 2026, from Lee County Association of REALTORS®. The date of information on that July report is August 10, 2026. Market conditions change and past figures are not a prediction.

This is not investment or tax advice and no return is guaranteed. HOA, reserve, and owner-occupancy figures were current as of August 26, 2026 and should be verified against current documents.

Local rules change. Confirm current requirements with the City of Auburn before relying on anything here. This is not legal advice.

Amy Cotney, REALTOR®, is a licensed real estate salesperson (Alabama license #108235) with Roots Real Estate - Investment Development, 235 N Gay St, Auburn, AL 36830. Call or text (334) 332-4002 or email [email protected]. Equal Housing Opportunity.