AirDNA’s updated MarketMinder™ Revenue research tool helps you dig into specific revenue insights with detailed filtering options to see exactly what specific types of listings perform well in your market. With data updated weekly, you’ll always have a clear picture of market trends and potential.

Where to Invest: How to Find the Most Profitable Airbnbs

Understanding the short-term rental (STR) revenue potential of an area is one of the most important—possibly the most important—factors when deciding where to invest. What annual revenue can you expect? Is yearly revenue trending upward? How does seasonality come into play?

But those aren’t the only questions you should ask. What types of listings perform best in a specific area? How many bedrooms is the sweet spot to earn the most revenue? How do factors like the number of bathrooms or a professionally managed listing impact overall revenue? Are trends different based on the type of listing? It’s time to get deep when researching the potential revenue of an STR investment market … like real deep. 

The more nuanced your data, the more accurate your predictions. And when it comes to making smart STR decisions, accuracy is the key to the treasure chest. Refine your revenue research based on:

Number of Bedrooms: A tried-and-true metric that has a major impact on your potential revenue. But do listings with more bedrooms really earn more in your market?

Number of Bathrooms: It may sound trivial, but guests are getting picky about the number of bathrooms in their rental. Is one bathroom enough for a three-bedroom home? Let’s find out!

Number of Guests: Should you focus on king beds or extra sets of bunk beds? Analyze how the number of guests you accommodate impacts potential overall revenue.

Listing Type: Your traditional look at Airbnb’s popular filters: Entire Place, Private Room, Shared Room.

Real Estate Type: In line with Airbnb’s push toward different stay types, filter by Houses, Apartments, B&Bs, and Unique Stays to see which type of real estate is the best investment.

Price Tier: An exciting new MarketMinder filter, Price Tier lets you evaluate revenue trends based on a more nuanced understanding of listing type. Do you specialize in more budget-friendly listings? Want to see the revenue potential for an expensive luxury-style property? Price Tier helps you really refine your search.

Professionally Managed: See how working with a professional vacation rental management company might impact your bottom line.

Ratings: All hosts strive for the highest rating they can get. Now see how ratings interact with these other filters to understand key market opportunities. 

While you may be assessing whether to rent out your spare room, most investors are researching new properties—trying to decide between a single-family home or a chic apartment. At the very top of the page is a quick overview of how Entire Places perform, along with revenue trends for Houses versus Apartments in your market. See the average revenue for the past month alongside a trending line that illustrates changes in the market over the past 12 months. 

Even after setting highly refined filters, there’s still revenue discrepancy within those listings. Some listings will be top earners while others are at the bottom—it’s a simple and inescapable fact. Looking at revenue based on percentiles lets you see how properties perform relative to the exact competition you defined with your filters. For instance, selecting “75th percentile” shows data for properties with higher rental revenue than 75% of the market. 

When researching a market, we recommend focusing on the 50th and 75th percentiles as they’ll give you a more reasonable understanding of what you’re likely to make. Including the 25th and 90th percentiles pulls in poorly performing and extremely high-performing outliers that may skew your expectations.

2020 and 2021 were banner years for many STR markets as people worked remotely, were desperate to get out of their houses, and wanted to avoid hotels. Those years were also likely an anomaly. Not everyone is working remotely anymore, and schools are back in-person, meaning people’s capacity for travel is more akin to 2019 levels. 

As markets right-size, access to meaningful historical data is critical to making smart decisions. The MarketMinder Revenue tool pulls in five years of historical data, allowing you to fully understand trends and judge if any potential downturns indicate a cooling market or simply a market that’s returning to normal. 

Taking Your Revenue Predictions to the Next Level

Once you’ve decided that a market is a good investment, determined the type and size of property you’d like, and started looking at real estate, it’s time to get an even more specific revenue prediction. Plug any address into Rentalizer™ (an Airbnb Calculator) to see its predicted Annual Revenue along with predicted average daily rate and occupancy rate expectations based on how existing Airbnb and Vrbo competition is currently performing.

Where to Invest: How to Find the Most Profitable Airbnbs

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