Have you ever wondered how much your neighbors are making with their Airbnb rental? Ever wondered how much your place is worth? You’re not alone! One of the biggest challenges Airbnb hosts face is finding out what’s the right price to charge their potential guests.
The best way to determine that is by knowing how much other Airbnb listings are booked for – i.e. finding Airbnb comps. If you haven’t been successful with Airbnb real estate investing, it’s time you start looking for Airbnb comps and start earning big bucks from your short-term investment property.
But first, let’s take a step back and explain what comps are for those who are just getting into real estate investing.
What Are Comps for Investment Properties?
Traditionally, real estate comps (or comparables) are rental properties that are similar to the one you’re investing (or thinking of investing) in. Real estate investors find comps when doing an investment property analysis to find the value of their properties and to determine how much to charge for rent. Essentially, this will let you know how profitable your rental property is compared to other similar ones in the same area.
Likewise, Airbnb comps are Airbnb listings which share similar attributes to yours and can help determine the value of your short-term rental property.
It’s important that you find comps and analyze them whether you’re already an Airbnb real estate investor or you’re thinking about becoming one and buying a vacation home rental. This is the only way to assure that you’re setting a competitive rental rate that will make you money.
However, choosing Airbnb comps can be complicated as it involves lots of factors like location, the number of bedrooms, the number of reviews, and much more. You could manually search Airbnb and find comps, but that can lead to mistakes and would take hours of effort seeing that you’d have to manually examine each listing.
Instead, successful real estate investors rely on an Airbnb analytics platform that provides them with Airbnb comps automatically.
Related: What’s the Best Airbnb Analytics Platform?
Where to Find Reliable Airbnb Comps
The analytics platform we’re talking about is Mashvisor. Mashvisor utilizes both traditional and predictive analytics, translates them into easy-to-read data, and provides it to real estate investors through a number of investment tools. In simple words, it uses the past to predict the future.
This makes it easier for you to understand and analyze any city or neighborhood’s traditional as well as Airbnb investment performance. So, if you’re searching for Airbnb comps, Mashvisor’s real estate analytics tools will greatly simplify the process!
Mashvisor lets you type in any city that interests you for an Airbnb investment. Immediately, you will get an overview of every investment opportunity in that area, allowing you to analyze the area quickly even if you aren’t familiar with it. This data includes:
- How many Airbnb properties are in that area
- Median home prices
- Monthly and annual Airbnb rental income
- Airbnb cash on cash return
- Airbnb cap rate
- Airbnb occupancy rate with seasonal trends
The result is a set of Airbnb comps that a real estate investor can compare to one another to understand how they’re performing. In short, Mashvisor provides real estate investors with critical market data needed to make wise investment decisions to reduce the risks of investing in Airbnb rental properties.
This analytics platform works both for existing Airbnb hosts and for those considering investing in a short-term rental and looking to calculate their profits and potential Airbnb return on investment.
Related: Airbnb Rental Data: Why Investors Need It Now More Than Ever
To make things even easier, Mashvisor provides a valuation analysis featuring a list of Airbnb listings close to your investment property of interest. This list of Airbnb comps displays their similarity, distance and address, nightly rate, occupancy rate, monthly rental income, as well as their ratings/reviews.
You can use this data to conduct a complete Airbnb investment analysis to understand and maximize your property’s earnings. Furthermore, you can click on each comparable listing and Mashvisor will take you straight to the original Airbnb listing so you can do your own comparison if you’d like.
Looking for profitable Airbnb investment properties for sale with readily available comps? Begin and end your search in a matter of minutes using Mashvisor’s investment tools!
How Does This Work?
In order to provide reliable Airbnb comps, Mashvisor gets its listing information from Airbnb itself. Then, we use our algorithms to make projections for nationwide areas. We use comparative and predictive data to filter properties based on our criteria: the property must be an apartment, condo, townhouse, or single-family house with a minimum of 1 bedroom and a maximum of 4 bedrooms.
After selecting the investment properties, we calculate the Airbnb rental rates of different areas based on the rental income to bedroom ratio from Airbnb listings. As for Airbnb occupancy rate, we check the number of bookings on a monthly basis. The Airbnb occupancy rate that you’ll see is based on the number of bookings that took place in the past 10 months.
From there, we’re able to project the Airbnb occupancy rates for other rental properties based on the rental rate and the property type. Finally, we estimate Airbnb rental income by multiplying the rental rate by the occupancy rate. After calculating the values for individual investment properties, we use these averages to calculate the average for the entire neighborhood or area.
The results of our algorithms are regularly tested to make sure our projections and Airbnb comps are reliable and still make sense to real estate investors. To learn more about our platform and how we will help you make faster and smarter real estate investment decisions, click here.
Real Estate Analytics Tools for Airbnb Investors
We’ve mentioned that Mashvisor provides real estate investors with its data through a number of tools. So, what are they and how do they work? Here’s a simple breakdown of what you need to know.
1. Investment Property Calculator
Mashvisor’s Investment Property Calculator allows you to conduct all the necessary analyses you need in order to make the best real estate investment decisions quickly and easily. Airbnb investors can also call this tool the “Airbnb Profitability Calculator.” Out of all of Mashvisor’s tools, this is the one that shows you the most data so you can make more informed pricing choices for your Airbnb rental property.
Simply enter details about the property’s financing and expected rental expenses. Then, using Airbnb comps near the property, the tool will provide a comparable rental income, cash flow, cash on cash return, cap rate, and Airbnb occupancy rate. Thus, this will let you know whether or not the vacation home rental in question will be profitable if you rent it out on Airbnb without the need for spreadsheets!
2. Property Finder Tool
Want to locate the most profitable Airbnb rental properties in your city without getting a headache running numbers and comparing data for comps? Then use Mashvisor’s Property Finder to find the top-performing Airbnb properties for sale in that area. The cool thing about this tool is that it uses filtering techniques so you can customize your search criteria.
Just enter your city, budget, investment property type, the number of bedrooms and bathrooms and then set the rental strategy for Airbnb. The tool then assesses and ranks the best properties for sale by their cash on cash return. You can then choose one to analyze using the calculator. Get started for free!
3. Heatmap Tool
The two tools above are all about analyzing and finding profitable properties. This tool, on the other hand, allows Airbnb real estate investors to analyze the entire neighborhood or area. The Heatmap Tool also comes with a number of filters: listing price, Airbnb rental income, Airbnb cash on cash return, and Airbnb occupancy rate.
This tool is really useful for beginner real estate investors because rather than having to look for Airbnb comps to analyze a location before buying a rental property there, it’s all done for you and presented in a color-coded map.
For example, if you set the Airbnb rental income filter, the heatmap will give you a color-coded overview of the neighborhood so you can see in which specific areas Airbnb rentals are performing better than others! So, you can do a heatmap analysis before buying a vacation home rental to make sure it’s in a profitable location for Airbnb real estate investing. To learn more, read Heatmap Analysis: The Secret to Successful Real Estate Investing.
To sum up, with Mashvisor’s investment tools and predictive Airbnb analytics, real estate investors can easily
- Understand a neighborhood’s investment performance
- Access and understand both traditional and Airbnb comps
- Find profitable rental properties for sale quickly with the returns already calculated
So, whether you’re looking for Airbnb comps to improve your Airbnb returns or you’re investing in Airbnb for the first time, Mashvisor is here to help you.
To learn more about how Mashvisor can support your Airbnb investing journey, sign up for a 7-day free trial now, followed by 15% off for life.