How to build an Airbnb Business: Four and a Half Tools to Forecast Occupancy
It’s a bit scary pulling the trigger on a new property purchase in an area you don’t know too well. Luckily we have quite a few options these days to get a great overview as to what the occupancy could be; a crucial metric in determining the success of our short-term rental.
If no one stays there then obviously we’re not going to do well. So we have to get it right.
We’ll talk this week about multiple tools that can all help us accomplish the same thing and by using them all we can make a confident prediction about a new market we may want to invest in.
Stay tuned as we dive in to:
- 4.5 websites to find your occupancy data
- What metrics to look for
- The problem with “Top Airbnb City” reports
- Feeling comfortable with your occupancy forecast
Here are the links: All The Rooms, Mashvisor, PriceLabs
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Click Here to view TranscriptIn the short-term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate with a specific focus on short term rentals quick actionable items to wire. Scale your portfolio I’m your host Tim Hubbard.
Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast this is in my opinion one of the fastest ways to leave the rat race through real estate a super important metric with our short term rentals though however is occupancy and if we get a property that doesn’t stay occupied it’s not gonna work out well so this week we’re talking about where you can go to find that data I’m just gonna talk about 4 of them and then I’m gonna give you the house so the first one even doubt only heard about if you listen this podcast for awhile if you’ve been in the short term in a world for awhile and that is air DNA.CO my main go to or the one I might say I trust the most but the other ones also have really good data to another all pulling from the same sources right sensually these companies like air DNA are scraping the web so they’re pulling data from all the Airbnb listings VR BO and homeaway near DNA’s case some of them have data from some listing sites that others may not have to want to check your specific area to see what data they have so that’s probably the grand Daddy I mean they give data to C. B. R. eat for example which is the world’s biggest real estate company so I would check them out of course these websites to have a cost but if you’re investing your hard earned money thousands of dollars tensely hundreds of thousands or millions it is worth buying a report to save you all the time and to compile the data a lot easier to make sure you have the best most clear picture of what your potential occupancy should be so the next one is mash visor also been around for quite awhile cool thing with mash visor is that they will give you the long term rental analytics to which you know I always suggest running. These properties as long term rentals too and I think if you find a short term rental that fits that model can be a great short terminal and a great long terminal then that is a green light and that’s very likely going to be a great safe investment so mash visor is another good one of course they have their costs to a third one you can check I haven’t used this one personally yet but I have heard a lot about it and I know it’s been around for a while and that is all the rooms.com so another one same sort of set up right there scraping data from the web from available this teens and now what you want to do with all these sites is compiled the data if you’re looking at a 4 bedroom in a certain city then you don’t want to be looking up occupancy rates first studio or at a single bedroom those are gonna be or could be quite different rights you wanna make sure comparing apples to apples and I delete you compare them across all these sites to make sure you’re not overlooking anything so in the fourth place and this is one that people maybe aren’t as familiar with but our pricing tools are dynamic pricing tools like price labs.CEO or we’ll house damp market reports as well to provide you information in a certain zip code check those out too hopefully if you have a short term rental already are re ready using a pricing software it saves so much time and I guarantee it’s doing it better than you could unless you’re spending a ton a ton of time on it they’ve got great algorithms in there and they compare their data again just like the other websites from data that they’ve scraped from Airbnb and homeaway in these other listing sites they need that data in order to be able to price your property affected Lee that’s what they’re doing right there changing your price every day without compare. Third of market data they would be able to do that so they have this data available check with your pricing tool minds price labs.CO and I know the 0 percent certainty they have market reports that has good data in there as well so that’s for places you can go check for paid research now paid I think it’s definitely worth it you can do it by zip code so if you’re looking in a neighborhood in the city you don’t have to do it for each individual property and you may find that this it goes just not working for you maybe the occupancies are just not high enough or maybe there’s too much seasonality and there’s like 6 months during the year where no one ‘s running these things that’s all information you can check on these market reports now what is this half 4.5 places to go to the half I would say is Airbnb itself or VR BO or homeaway or wherever you have your listing site is comparing actual properties off the listing sites so you can check calendars in the area and see how well booked they are you can also see how many reviews of properties had and both of those things have high numbers of tons of reviews and a big blocks calendar well then you could probably assume that this property is staying pretty well booked now one thing you’re not gonna be able to determine on there is how many days the owner is actually blocking that property if the vacation rental maybe they’re staying there themselves in mass reason for the counter being blocked so the data that you might be able to find your self from Airbnb and that actualization sites is going to be good it’s going to be helpful and I highly suggest checking it out it’s one more source but it’s not gonna be as cut and dry and clear as using some of these software tools were designed just for that so ideally you can get reports from. All of these different sources and compare them take an average now again you want to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples so if you’re looking at a 2 bedroom pull up 2 bedrooms you may find No when you’re looking up a 2 bedroom that let’s just say the occupancy around 70 percent but you notice there’s a lack of 3 bedrooms in this zip code that you’re searching and the occupancies for the last 2 years have been 90 percent well the maybe want to change your search around so the more you check out these reports the more in tune with the zip code you’re going to be and the more opportunity you’ll be able to uncover so we want to check out some other metrics we talked in last week’s episode actually about break even points so we want to be able to calculate that as well and we can forecast the occupancy we’re going to multiply that by the average daily rate to see what the annual revenue is now that annual revenue you want to subtract all of your potential expenses from their divide that by the number weeks occupancy and that’s going to give you your break even point in terms of weeks that’s probably a little confusing for some meal hopefully it made sense but basically by multiplying our occupancy the potential occupancy and average daily rate we get a potential total for the year want to subtract your expenses from that to see what’s left over the more net income we have left over the better so we want to compare different types of properties we want to definitely check seasonality you might find that a CD you thought was a good investment is actually way more seasonal than you thought and also just one more note there’s a lot a list being published on best places to buy a short term rentals if they’re just using the occupancy that’s not. Not enough after we know the occupancy we have to compare the purchase prices because if the occupancy super high but the purchase price is also super high that it might not be a good investment so I recommend you choose 3 zip codes maybe in 3 cities you keep your eye on him and you compare apples to apples so 3 Bannerman one place compared to a 3 bedroom in another that’s going to help you tune in and decide which one has a little better value of self we can go on and on about metrics it is really the most important piece before we buy a property the numbers tell us what to do but occupancy is one of the most important ones and those are 4.5 places where you can check for occupancy online in just a few minutes so check them out if you haven’t already I hope you’re doing well out there and you’ve got your eyes on some properties you’re growing your portfolio I am excited about the short term rental world I’m super bullish these things are not going away right I mean people were just living differently but not all properties going to make sense so check out this metric if you guys haven’t yet we’d really appreciate if you’d leave us a review it helps other people find us and until next time have a lovely day. There’s so much money to be made the short term rentals but it all starts by having the right property if you guys haven’t yet seen my free ebook on our website rest methods.com head over there and get a copy it’s going to break down what I look for in a property in some great short cuts so that you don’t have to spend hours and hours researching at over rest methods.com and you can grab your free copy there if you want a crash course in everything I’ve really learned to short term rentals in over 5 years managing over 15000 Gasol recorded on our last live event I am happy to say we broke it down really nicely into a bunch of different modules that you can watch at your own pace it takes you from start to finish from finding a property we talk about analyzing the property but then also some of the more important pieces how to find your team and how to set up everything so that you can run your operation is passively as possible and free up your time you can find that it rests methods.com forward slash virtual.
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