how to analyze vacancy rates of an area while doing calculations?

[Jasraj Singh]

how to analyze vacancy rates of an area while doing calculations? I'm a little confused about how to find out vacancy rates of a specific neighbourhood while doing calculations for a property? I really need to know

[Jasraj Singh]

Originally posted by @Glen Mitchell:

@Jasraj Singh I think like Alex mentioned real estate agents and property managers.  They may have different motives.  For example I would get calls from people in my area all excited about vacation rentals because their real estate agent said they could get x dollars per night.   Well it's not that easy, for example in my area people would stay on average shorter times than they would in other vacation spots, more turnover makes it that much harder to fill every night back to back.  So now maybe its 22 nights a month versus the 30 the agent told them they would get.  Then they didn't want to do the work but they wanted to hire me.  Then when they found out my rates(to do all the work for them) all of a sudden the number the agent was telling them weren't so good anymore.  I would even get some agents complaining to me why did I tell the clients that.  I no longer do vacation rentals but I did it because I wanted them to know the truth and set realistic expectations.  I wasn't trying to make the sale for the sake of making a sale.   Outside of asking agents there may be some consumer sites like mashvisor, rentrange, corelogic that you could get info from.  Maybe even zillow.  Not sure.  The one thing with any of these sites to consider is that they don't usually have 100% of the data so it doesn't give a true picture.  This would lead back to my original advice of inflating a little to factor in worst-case scenarios and smooth out the long term averages.  For our properties and ones we manage for others our vacancy rates have been below average for area and industry as a whole, so I also believe that when run properly you should be able to keep vacancy rates low.  (this probably applies more to a pool of properties versus a single property where you might experience some bad luck such as a random off month where renters aren't looking but you have a vacancy to fill.  One last thought might be to check in with an appraiser and see what info they have.  However, I know appraisers call me sometimes for there info which leads back to they are getting it from real estate salespeople and property managers.  Good luck with your investments and hope any you have stay 100% full :)

Yes!! thanks a lot for responding brother! I'll definitely look into that!

I really appreciate it!