Rent Buy Quick Review
AirDNA has gained popularity in recent years as a tool for real estate investors and Airbnb hosts in the short-term rental industry. But is it worth all the hype? This review takes a detailed look at what the company is, the tools and solutions it offers, the source of its data, the reliability of its data, its costs, its main alternatives, and what existing customers think of the product. We'll investigate whether subscribing to AirDNA is worth it for beginner and experienced investors, or whether they should consider another alternative to optimize their short-term rental performance.
rent buy quick review
Looking to invest in a vacation rental or Airbnb property? The Awning Airbnb Estimator is here to help! With our free tool, you can easily analyze any U.S. address to get an estimated income from Airbnb. Simply enter the address, number of bedrooms, number of guests, and whether the property has a pool or hot tub.
AirDNA is headquartered in Denver, CO, but it covers the entire US market as well as 120,000 global markets. In March 2022, the company was acquired by Alpine Investors but continues to provide the same services to vacation rental property owners.
Since their establishment, AirDNA has developed a number of different tools which aim to help investors find the most profitable Airbnb markets and properties to buy as well as to optimize the returns of existing listings. Other than investors, AirDNA data also serves the needs of property managers, channel managers, tourism boards, and academics.
The first tool available on the AirDNA vacation rental investment platform is MarketMinder. This feature has been designed to help investors with the first step of vacation rental property search: namely, finding a good location.
When using the AirDNA MarketMinder, you enter a city, zip code, or street address to access vacation rental market data on it. There you get a lot of historical Airbnb data which allows you to evaluate the potential of the local market in terms of short term rental investments.
A free version of the AirDNA MarkerMinder is available to let you get started with your short term rental market analysis. However, you need to pay a monthly fee for full access to all available vacation rental data. You pay per market, and the pricing gets quite steep if you want to analyze a large market or a few different cities. We will look at the exact pricing breakdown in a bit.
This Airbnb calculator allows you to access data on the expected performance of any property - inside or outside the US market - as a short term rental. You need to input the following basic information:
The AirDNA calculator also features an integrated financial calculator which estimates the basic return on investment for a residential real estate property when rented out on a short term basis. To use this tool, you need to enter the property purchase price.
Property appreciation estimates and seasonal Airbnb revenue data is available with the AirDNA Airbnb calculator too. The latter is particularly useful, especially for out-of-state investors out with limited knowledge of the local market. This data allows them to adjust the nightly rates according to seasonality to boost their Airbnb occupancy rate and rental income.
In addition to the short term rental property analysis, the AirDNA Rentalizer also provides rental comps, under the Top Comparison Properties tab. These are properties that are similar to the one that you are analyzing in terms of number of bedrooms and bathrooms and are located in the vicinity. Considering Airbnb rental comps and including them in your investment analysis is crucial. You can compare and contrast the property you own or you think of buying and adjust your estimates based on how similar or different your Airbnb rental is from the comps.
Yet another AirDNA feature worth having a look at is the Smart Rates. This tool is specifically designed for Airbnb hosts who already own a property or two. This means that an investor can continue seeing value in this short term rental platform even after buying a property.
At the market level, you can see the average Airbnb daily rate per day for the next year. At the property level, you can connect your Airbnb listings to access data on the recommended nightly rates for the following weeks. This helps you optimize your daily rates on the Airbnb or Vrbo channel based on seasonality and local vacation rental demand.
Adjusting your nightly rate is crucial. Lowering your rate during low season helps you attract bookings which you would have missed if you kept your standard rate. In this way you can continue generating Airbnb revenue even when the local rental market is relatively cold. Meanwhile, you can increase your rate during peak season without sacrificing occupancy so that you maximize your Airbnb income.
To access all available vacation rental data points at the market and property level, you need to get a paid plan. There is no free trial of the full access. Monthly subscriptions to the AirDNA product are available per market, and the pricing depends on the size of the market:
Before you pay money for AirDNA or any other paid platform, you should check out Awning. It allows you to choose top markets and select top-performing Airbnb properties for absolutely free. While Awning does not cover the global vacation rental market, it offers the most profitable US markets including:
Upon buying a short term rental property, Awning continues to support your investing journey. We can help you furnish your vacation rental home based on market demand and also manage your rental for a fee of 15% of your rental revenue. Our all-in-one short term rental management services guarantee to boost your income and profit.
AirDNA provides very detailed information on its data sources, coverage, and accuracy. The company claims to provide the most comprehensive and accurate vacation rental data and analysis around the globe. However, as we will see later in this article, customers point out major data issues.
The scraped data covers more than 10 million listings in 120,000 international markets. The AirDNA Matching Algorithm accounts for dual listings (on both the Airbnb and Vrbo platform). This ensures that the AirDNA data is not exaggerated and reflects the actual performance of rentals instead.
Afterwards, the Booked vs. Blocked Methodology detects reservations. This assures that the days for which a host has blocked a vacation rental for personal use or repairs are taken out of the investment analysis for maximum accuracy.
AirDNA explains in detail all the steps and measures it takes to make sure that their vacation rental data and analytics are fully accurate. As highlighted on the AirDNA website, CBRE estimates the AirDNA data to be 97.5% accurate for the supply of active vacation rentals and 96.2% accurate for the earned revenue. This is a rather high accuracy, but you should keep in mind that many actual hosts report issues with the AirDNA data accuracy. We will discuss AirDNA reviews shortly.
Since the data comes directly from Airbnb, Vrbo, channel managers, property managers, and hosts, the market-level data is naturally better in markets with more active listings and less good in markets with fewer short term rentals.
However, there is a good number of worrisome AirDNA negative reviews. They highlight the inaccuracy of the data in markets that they are familiar with. Some also report lack of rental comps in certain markets.
Reviews on the BiggerPockets website show problems with the accuracy of the AirDNA Rentalizer as well, and investors recommend using other alternatives or doing manual research and analysis. However, the latter is impractical for beginner and part-time vacation rental hosts.
After the establishment of Airbnb.com, the vacation rental industry grew quickly, opening room for a lot of various products and services. As a result, there are a number of AirDNA alternatives which offer similar market and property analysis, but there are some important differences between them.
The main advantages of Mashvisor over AirDNA is the fact that the former provides investment property analysis of both long term and short term rentals and that it has a search engine as well as a Property Finder which allows investors to look for profitable properties for sale. In addition, Mashvisor provides data on property prices and all expenses which are considered into the market and property analysis. It also calculates cash on cash return which - unlike the cap rate - reflects the impact of the financing method on the rate of return.
In terms of disadvantages, Mashvisor covers only the US market and does not have easily accessible city-level and zip code-level data as its market analysis focuses on neighborhoods. Moreover, many customers report issues with the Mashvisor rental data and product usability.
Another notable AirDNA competitor is PriceLabs. A major difference between the two products is that PriceLabs targets existing Airbnb hosts and property managers and does not really offer help to investors looking to buy short term rentals.
Yet another of the top AirDNA alternatives is Rabbu. Overall, Rabbu data review reveals that it can help a wider range of users than AirDNA as it helps with buying, managing, and selling short term rental properties.
Similar to AirDNA, AllTheRooms covers the global vacation rental market and helps investors both buy and manage short term rentals. Airbnb data analytics are available at the market and property level. Historical data goes back 4 years, while future data covers the next 6 months.
The last AirDNA competitor worth paying attention to is Beyond Pricing. In general, this tool focuses on helping Airbnb hosts and property managers rather than investors buying a short term rental property. The aim is to maximize Airbnb rental income.
Looking to invest in a vacation rental or Airbnb property? The Awning Airbnb Estimator is here to help! With our free tool, you can easily analyze any U.S. address to get an estimated income from Airbnb. Simply enter the address, number of bedrooms, number of guests, and whether the property has a pool or hot tub. Our machine learning algorithm will use historical data from all U.S. Airbnb listings to provide you with the best possible estimate. Plus, you can browse nearby active Airbnb listings to see how your property stacks up against the competition. With the Awning Airbnb Estimator, you can answer questions like: how much can I Airbnb my house for, what are my estimated earnings from converting my rental into an Airbnb, how much money can I make on Airbnb as a host, and more. Try it out today and make informed investment decisions with the Awning Airbnb Estimator. 041b061a72