Evaluating a property for Airbnb/short term rental

[Tawa W.]

Hi all, 

I am evaluating a property as an Airbnb/short term rental in Port Orchard Washington. 

I have looked at several other properties on Airbnb in the area. My concern is that none of them are booked more than one or two days. 

Is anyone familiar with this area or other options for determining if there is a market in a specific area like this?

Thanks in advance.

[Kevin Lefeuvre]

A few important things to note:

It depends on the type of the property,  location, local market,  demography of your market  (your tenants ) etc. Which will make VRBO a better platform than airbnb. As a general rule, urban condos in large cities get more income through airbnb. Large luxury properties on the beach are for VRBO. Anything in between needs probably both platforms.  Most investors like me are on both platforms. One property in Newport Beach works better with VRBO. Another in LA city rocks through airbnb.

As a consequence of the above,  none of these airbnb-api based websites  (mashvisor, airdna, etc.) Are accurate because the airbnb api data is , by definition, incomplete.  They don't have my vrbo info. Also when I find someone over 30 days, my data is on neither sites. So you have to get your data by doing the analysis manually yourself. I was advised here while ago to use mashvisor. It turned out to be a waste of time when I noticed that the information was not matching the reality that I was seeing  myself and talking to friend investors in my area. When data is presented nicely it can be attractive but when the initial data is wrong or incomplete,  it becomes misleading.