STR Investment Calculations

[Raymond Garcia]

I'm new to this forum. Reading "The Book on Rental Property Investing" brought me here with hopes of learning from others' experience.

I'm very far from from making an investment. I am currently trying to evaluate areas and properties to learn what a good option looks like. One of the most basic, albeit powerful, calculations I see is occupancy rate... but I don't understand how to calculate it. Is the best method seriously to look at AirBnB calendars? It seems wildly unreliable since I don't see a way to account for people blacking out dates for reasons other than someone paying to use their property. I've researched AirDNA and Mashvisor, but I have also been reading a lot of users here mention that those tools are unreliable enough that they shouldn't be your main method. What methods do y'all use?

Are there other foundational and powerful calculations you would recommend learning?