Market research
Short-term rental market research
The short-term rental industry runs on claims nobody can check: a private benchmark here, a percentage with no dataset there. We take the opposite approach. Every number we publish comes with its source, its dates and how many homes it rests on, so anyone can judge how much weight it deserves. Clients get the full method and data behind every number in their report. That's the only kind of research worth building a decision on.
Short-term rental market research means predicting what one specific property will earn, from data you can trust, before anyone commits money. We do it in a fixed order: regulations, market, neighborhood, buy box, property and underwriting.
What we publish with every number
- The source and the date range
- Which homes we counted and how many there were
- How we worked it out, in plain words
- What we don't know, and where the data is thin
Client reports add the full neighborhood breakdown, the method and the data behind every number.
The block our case studies carry, here with the Las Vegas study's figures:
Our research rules
Regulations before data.
We confirm a home can operate legally before we look at a single revenue figure. Listings in a market that bans new rentals show revenue you can't earn.
Never trust one listing.
A forecast rests on 5 to 12 vetted comparable listings that follow a pattern we can explain.
A full year or nothing.
We only use listings tracked for about nine months or more, so every season is in the number.
Full-time hosts only.
Entire homes, booked all year, with a steady stream of recent reviews.
Bones before decor.
We compare what you can't change, like size, layout, views, water and lot, before what you can add.
Underwrite the worst case.
If a deal only works when everything goes right, we say so.
Conservative on purpose.
We'd rather your home beat our forecast than miss it.
Six steps
How we research a market
Step two, drawn
Fit and rules.
Your goals, your budget and whether short-term rentals are legal there, how they're licensed and how they're taxed. We read the ordinance itself, not a summary of it.
Quick veto tests.
For a purchase, expected annual revenue should be at least 20% of the purchase price. For a rental or a co-hosting deal, we work out the most rent the home can carry and still pay you. Markets that fail are cut in minutes.
Supply and demand.
We check whether listings are growing faster than revenue, and which bedroom counts earn the most.
Neighborhoods.
We map revenue by neighborhood and unit size to find the few pockets that work.
Deep dive and buy box.
We vet every listing in the chosen slice, note what the top performers have and the bottom performers lack, then write down exactly what to buy, where and for how much.
Forecast and underwriting.
We forecast one property's revenue from vetted comps, price every expense and find the revenue below which you should walk away.
Is AirDNA accurate?
Tools like AirDNA estimate revenue by checking listing calendars every day. When an open night closes, they count it as booked at the last price they saw. The weakness is that they can't tell a booked night from a night the owner blocked, so owner stays, bookings taken on other sites and hosts who only open big weekends all look like revenue. That makes any single listing unreliable. A group of vetted listings that follows a logical pattern is reliable enough to forecast from, which is why we check every listing by hand before it goes into a forecast. We also compare on actual revenue, not AirDNA's "revenue potential", which assumes blocked dates were open.
How we check a listing before we use it
- The listing link is still live.
- Reviews arrive every month, and they're from the last 12 months.
- Occupancy matches the pattern of reviews.
- The calendar looks like guest bookings, not long owner blocks.
- It isn't a parent listing that blocks itself whenever a linked unit books.
Who our market research is for
- Investors deciding where and what to buy
- Operators working out the most rent they can pay on a rental arbitrage lease
- Co-hosts and property managers showing an owner what their home would earn as a short-term rental compared with long-term rent
- Owners deciding whether to keep a home on Airbnb
Research we've done
- Arizona. We ranked 20 Arizona cities for 5+ bedroom short-term rentals on earnings, home prices, rules and demand. Phoenix, Mesa and Tucson came out on top. Read the research
- Las Vegas. Ahead of Clark County's September 2026 platform ordinance, we mapped all 34 addresses in a client's portfolio against the unincorporated county line and wrote a diversification brief covering Arizona, Tennessee and Missouri. Read the case study
- AirDNA market research for a seven-listing portfolio, reviewed on Upwork in March 2026. Read the review
- Market guides for Las Vegas, Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear, with every rule and number linked to its source. Las Vegas · Lake Arrowhead · Big Bear
Work with us
Need a market or a property researched? We scope each project on a call and quote it up front, and every report comes with its method, sources and data.
Common questions
Market research, answered.
In a fixed order: confirm the rules, run quick veto tests, check supply against demand, map neighborhoods, vet every comparable listing in the chosen slice, then forecast one property and underwrite it to the worst case.
For a single listing, not reliably, because it can't tell a booked night from a blocked one. For a group of hand-checked listings that follow a logical pattern, it's accurate enough to forecast from.
We aim for 5 to 12 vetted comparable listings. Fewer than three means there isn't enough data to forecast that slice.
A purchase is worth a closer look when expected annual revenue is at least 20% of the purchase price. A home expected to earn $100,000 a year should cost no more than about $500,000. Cheaper homes need a higher ratio, because fixed costs don't shrink with the price.
About nine months or more, so the figure covers every season. A short window in peak season overstates the year, and one in the off season understates it.
Because revenue you can't legally earn isn't revenue. If a city bans new short-term rentals, the listings you see are grandfathered or illegal.
Every number we publish comes with its source, dates and sample size. Clients get the full data and method behind their report.
Yes. We scope each project on a call and quote it up front.