Experience with airdna has anyone used this service ?

Question

Air DNA provides estimated AirBNB income assessments for a property including approximate daily rental rates and annual estimated occupancy.  I am considering a SFH that is on a river as vacation rental.   Air BNB is a consideration.  Has anyone compared their experience with thus site’s information?   Is it reasonable/reliable?

Jon Crosby · Answer

Hi @Reese Newell and @Julian Sage,  just getting around to responding here, for some reason I'm not getting BP email alerts anymore for some reason.  : ).

Thanks for the kind words Reese, glad I'm able to provide some help to others where and when I can, certainly not an expert but happy to share what I know from my STR and technology backgrounds.   Regarding your question, I will assume you are referring to the Investment Explorer in AirDNA and to be totally transparent, I really don't use that.  I'm much more of a Market Minder user as I'm really not comfortable with 'predictive analytics' in my investments.  And I'm also not really looking for markets across the country, I have a few that I like to look at and then focus on specific smaller areas within those.

I like to use historical metrics to garner what others have done in the past, to come up with conservative estimates of ADR and Occupancy and then generate my own Revenue estimates from that in my modeling.  I use their API to pull down my data, strip out the cleaning fees and then recreate my ADR's as well, because like you mentioned that is a pass thru to the guest and muddies the waters a bit when modeling deals (although for those not able to do that, I usually just say to back out 15 - 20% of the ADR to get sans Housekeeping).  Obviously if you clean your own STRs then you would want to leave it in there though.

Thanks for the insight @Julian Sage as I'm always interested in learning more about that platform overall. I will have to check out your podcasts soon!

Cheers to you both!

Mike Shemp · Answer

Hi @Michael McFadden,

I used it to purchase data earlier in the year and so far it seems to be accurate.  When we purchase our next STR, I will purchase data from them again to factor into my calculations.

Mike

Robert Gunn · Answer

Would anyone be interested in splitting the cost of the national AirDNA Investment Explorer?  I'm looking to understand market costs across the country and STR strength to identify potential markets to invest in.

Reese Newell · Answer

Thanks @Jon Crosby, that is highly useful.  I was not sure if it would be easiest to just take out a percentage or a set figure.  I know that the percentage will very by size and bedrooms, but it is definitely easier to work with numbers if you simplify it like that instead of trying to figure out how many average cleanings per month multiplied by the cost per a specific unit type.

Reese Newell · Answer

@Julian Sage I have been listening to the VRM youtube channel.  I decided this past week to pivot from learning on LTR to STR as I know I will be more passionate about it as an avid traveler and user of the service.  It is highly appealing to me with my background and so I am consuming as much knowledge as I can this week to build out my blueprint.  I've seen all of Scott's videos on airdna.  It gets a bad rap alot here, but it is certainly extremely helpful if used for what it is good at and then backed up by data elsewhere.

Julian Sage · Answer

You're welcome! Which show are you listening to at the moment? VRM or STRSS? And yes. Scott's episode is worth a listen as he breaks exactly down how AirDNA works.

Reese Newell · Answer

Thanks @Julian Sage, that's pretty wild that you responded to the post I had up.  I am in the middle of listening to about 30 of your short term rental podcasts now.  Thanks for all the information you put out there and thanks for clarifying that...airdna has quite a bit of data that does not explain how they arrive at it.

Julian Sage · Answer

I spoke with the founder of AirDNA and he said Revenue potential uses a complicated algorithm that says "what days were available, how many days was it booked, how many days was it unavailable, how much does it make compared to comps, and what would it bring it if it was available for the days the property was blocked."

Reese Newell · Answer

@Jon Crosby, you've been a great help on these forums so thank you for that.

I was trying to find information on how they drive their "revenue potential" vs "revenue".  The revenue is in line w/ their actual performance, are they trying to state if it was run more optimal they think it could hit the revenue potential?  I'm a little lost w/ where they come up with this figure from.

Also, revenue is derived by also adding in the cleaning costs so when analyzing we need to take this out.  Since it does not include occupancy or city taxes can we simply ignore them in our calculations.  Airbnb passes those on to the guests now, so I assume those are a wash when we do our expenses to try and run our own numbers?

Cheers!

Benjamin Vail · Answer

I use AirDNA for market data as a whole, and rough estimates using Rentalizer. Their specific data on specific properties is often unreliable, but I have no plans of canceling my subscription to AirDNA anytime soon. (It’s worth it).

Experience with airdna has anyone used this service ?

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