Evaluating Vacation Rental Areas

[Jeff Deville]

I'm looking at vacation rentals in areas I've never personally visited, and was wondering what everyone did to evaluate the level of demand in a particular area.  If you can add think of anything I'm missing from this list, please weigh in.

• Find nearby comps, and search on VRBO, homeaway, and AirBNB to get a sense of the rates, occupancy rate, and degree of seasonality
• Look for local property managers and ask them about the area, and their rates
• Search TripAdvisor to get a sense of the clientele as well as the popular restaurants. Then call the restaurants to see if they're open year round.

Are there other data sources available?