All Forum Posts by: Ryan Moyer

I've compared some of my properties to the numbers that AirDNA, Rabbu, and STR Insights claim they're making. AirDNA is the closest, though still typically off by about 10%. Small sample, of course.

Property 1
Actual Rev: 155k
Airdna: 140.4k
Rabbu: 89.5k
STR Insights: 138k

Property 2
Actual Rev: 115k
Airdna: 105k
Rabbu: 78k
STR Insights: 91k

This is not the projections for each of these if I put in the address (those are even more inaccurate).  These are what each of those platforms believe the TRUE REVENUE of my homes is.  IE the amount they list them as making when using them as comps for nearby properties.

I don't own in Hawaii, but my perception from my research there is that it's not an ideal cash flow market right now but can be great for appreciation, which it sounds like would be a pretty good deal in your scenario.

If I had that much cash to deploy personally I would be putting it into properties that are most likely to hold value and most likely to gain value.  To me that means properties that there is a limited supply of.  Hawaii is a good start on that front.  Beachfront in a premium market like Destin is another spot I'd be looking.

I stayed in an Airbnb in New York almost 10 years ago and I remember the check-in message saying that if anyone asked in the hallway or elevator to tell them I was the owner's cousin.

I have 12 in the area.  The estimates you're getting from AirDNA are way high and out of date.  You're not going to rent that place for $300nt at 71% occupancy or anywhere near that with the extreme saturation in both number of properties and quality of property over the last 2 years.

Disney was slow in the offseason but traffic there has bounced back with avengeance.  It is ridiculously packed there right now.  The problem is the supply and quality of vacation rentals is through the roof.  A regular really nice 5 br townhouse with resort amenities might be a top end desirable unit in Cocoa Beach but it's probably going to be bottom 20th percentile in this market.

As an example, this place is available for $135/nt next week. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1002836101465378764

And there are thousands of others like it.  How does the place you're looking at compare to that?

Well it's cheaper than Airbnb's at least, but I've generally found vrbo WAY less willing to grant exceptions than Airbnb.

For instance if there's a double booking and I catch it relatively early, even if it was the fault of my PMS and not Airbnb's own fault, they're usually willing to waive all cancelation penalties (including any damage to the search algorithm) and cancel the booking on their end.

However on VRBO if there's a double booking, even if I catch it 5 minutes after it happened, and even if the fault was on VRBO's end (their website is glitchy as heck) they usually won't make any exception, and require me to cancel on my end and take the search penalty/premiere host penalty if the guest isn't willing to cancel on their end.

There are Facebook groups specific to established STR homes for sale with revenue history that have hundreds of thousands of members so there is clearly a market for this. There is an unlimited supply of people with lots of money that just want a plug and play rental property for tax purposes or appreciation or inflation protection, etc and don't have the time, care, or ability to source and underwrite properties on their own like most of us here do.

This is the same reason sites like roofstock and memphis invest, etc exist and do very well in the LTR space.

Or heck, people that pay wealth managers obscene amounts of money to buy a crappier version of an existing index with a higher expense ratio when they could just buy the index it tracks themselves.

Not only are those of us here that spend 10+ hours every week just underwriting properties not representative of all buyers in the STR space, we're likely the overwhelming minority.

 I'm assuming eventually once they have enough traffic to justify it they would start charging to list.

Reads like an advertisement, but it's a good looking website.  Of course the trick will be getting enough traffic on there in both directions to make it worthwhile for people to use.  Because programmatically it's something anyone can throw up with a wordpress template.

But if it had that traffic, I would use it.  Not sure if "startup" is a real term here or if this is just a couple bros throwing together a quick easy website.  But if "startup" is for real and there's a sales team out there traveling around to find inventory and convince people to put it on the site, could have a shot I suppose.

Unscrupulous management rife with mismanagement and fraud, complete with a totally bungled IPO leaving them stuck with going public via the super sleezy SPAC route.

Can't really draw conclusions on anything from this "company".  Just an executive cash grab with never a soul thought for the future or anything outside of short term executive payouts. 

I believe Pricelabs market dashboard will give you the rate of BOOKED dates as well, which can help with the issue of only seeing unbooked pricing when looking at Airbnb/VRBO directly.