Fort Mill, SC · Member since 2015 · 11 posts · 4 votes
We're looking at testing the water on vacation rentals in Florida - and am wondering how reliable is the data from Mashvisor - is it worth the subscription fee? We're working with a broker but i hate to put all my trust in one source/opinion. Thoughts?
Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2018 · 29 posts · 18 votes
8y
I hate to say that i agree with Tyler. I just ended my paid subscription because it didn't really help me that much. I bought two properties last year that I turned into airbnbs and it put it in a 50-60% occupancy rate and I only had 15 vacant days the entire year!
Investor · Denver, CO · Member since 2016 · 533 posts · 433 votes
8y
Hi Vance,
I would recommend doing your own homework and analysis within the OTA's. Create a spreadsheet and find your local competitors, then compare their rates to what you would like to obtain. Doing so will produce as close, if not a better idea of how successful you can be. Then run your cash on cash and financial statements to see if this plays out the way you want it to. I would also take a look at @Jon Crosby's very cool app Click2Flip for a high level view. It's a lot of numbers to crunch but will be worth it in the end. You can also use this data to maintain your rates and compare your YOY performance.
Olympia, WA · Member since 2017 · 91 posts · 80 votes
8y
I had the full paid account with Mashvisor for a couple of months, hoping it had good long-term rental info as well, which it didn't. I found the short-term rental info to be pretty solid in the markets I was looking at, I liked what I saw, but just wasn't interested in short-term. Cancelled Mashvisor shortly thereafter, and shared my feedback with Nathan Miller through a few email exchanges. It's a cool idea and a decent system, and I'm not aware of anything comparable on that level.
Rental Property Investor · Denver, CO · Member since 2017 · 179 posts · 208 votes
8y
@Vance Kibler I have the paid subscription but have yet to get any real value out of it. If you're looking at data specifically from Airbnb, AirDNA is the best followed by Everbooked. If someone has success using Mashvisor I would love to hear how they use it, I'm probably held up by user error :(
Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2018 · 29 posts · 18 votes
8y
I hate to say that i agree with Tyler. I just ended my paid subscription because it didn't really help me that much. I bought two properties last year that I turned into airbnbs and it put it in a 50-60% occupancy rate and I only had 15 vacant days the entire year!
Fort Mill, SC · Member since 2015 · 11 posts · 4 votes
8y
This is really good input - thanks everyone. We're currently looking at New Smyrna Beach area. Prefer to land on a multi (duplex or tri) - just haven't seen it yet.
Been actively trying to use Mashvisor for past 6 weeks.
1. Their data is quite inaccurate.
Particularly their airbnb occupancy rates, rental estimates (short/long) are way off of ground reality. Verified this by going around locally and talking to people in the Orlando, Kissimmee area. Their airbnb occupancy rates are closer to the 75th percentile properties on airbnb and not the 50th percentile as should be the case.
Also, half of their 'HOA' fees numbers are wrong, which leads to very high income valuations on those properties.
2. All the properties with high income that it is able to find are junk properties. There is no way for you to balance income/risk. The only way is to go neighborhood by neighborhood: which is VERY time consuming and very gross. There is lot of variance within a single neighborhood. They dont have key filters like 'schools' and 'crime'.
Lost a good 6-8 weeks of my time and 360$ of good money on them !! (They charged me before the 14day trial period and refused to refund the money)
@David Gwiltundefined ..... i am going to buy their $350 lifetime membership. i think it worth investing $350 for life time. atleast you are not paying monthly subscription. The tool is decent looking. they have made some good improvements over the year. like adding a property if already not on mashvisor, foreclosure properties are now available.
@David Gwiltundefined ..... i am going to buy their $350 lifetime membership. i think it worth investing $350 for life time. atleast you are not paying monthly subscription. The tool is decent looking. they have made some good improvements over the year. like adding a property if already not on mashvisor, foreclosure properties are now available.
Property Manager · Smoky Mountains, TN · Member since 2019 · 48 posts · 20 votes
6y
I think Mashvisor + AirDNA are both accurate up to a certain point. I was looking at short term rentals in Smokies and in Orlando Disney area and I don't think they are off by that much. But the problem with AirDNA is that the numbers look inflated since it counts cleaning fees in it as well. Of course you would adjust for it in your own calculations, but just off of first look it's very misleading and can unconsciously skew your perspective. Mashvisor I've found to be fairly accurate in the Smokies but not too accurate for the Florida rentals I was looking at - it seemed to not have as much data in the Disney area and gave me a slew of either very high revenues or extremely low revenues.
What I usually do is use Mashvisor's free or trial data to look at a location, buy AirDNA for one month to look at the data, and then also start spreadsheets while pouring through Airbnb and VRBO to get a holistic idea of what the rental numbers should look like. I then also call various different realtors who are investors themselves or focus on investors, as well as property management companies to get their opinions on what revenues should be. I'm a big believer in getting as much data as possible, and then making your own judgements. I would not advocate for just looking at Mashvisor/AirDNA and deciding where you're going to put your tens of thousands of $.
Real Estate Agent · Charleston, SC · Member since 2018 · 37 posts · 29 votes
6y
I like Mashvisor for one reason, you can export the data and actually make sense out of what's being reported. Conversely, the reason I can't take the numbers too seriously is they do not collect and report Vrbo (or other platform) bookings. So anything on the Airbnb calendar that's "blocked" whether a Vrbo booking or you shut down for a month to do a renovation, they assume its a booking and apply a nightly average to those dates.
As for Airdna, the numbers are much more accurate since they also pull from Vrbo, however you can't see the data that makes up the reports unless you pay for an additional subscription. Again, be careful when reading the reports from the dashboard it can be misleading. They will report annual rev numbers based on a given property that may have 10 total bookings.
If you could mesh the two tools together, it would be a great source of information. As an agent and investor in Charleston SC, I've been able to acquire a lot of data from sellers as part of the process in analyzing a potential deal. Anyone looking to invest in STR's within a market they're not too familiar with, I'd highly suggest seeking out an agent in that city who can help navigate the waters. A quality agent who understands their market AND short-term rentals should be able to give you the most accurate data.
Real Estate Consultant · NY · Member since 2014 · 23 posts · 11 votes
6y
Originally posted by @Account Closed:
I think Mashvisor + AirDNA are both accurate up to a certain point. I was looking at short term rentals in Smokies and in Orlando Disney area and I don't think they are off by that much. But the problem with AirDNA is that the numbers look inflated since it counts cleaning fees in it as well. Of course you would adjust for it in your own calculations, but just off of first look it's very misleading and can unconsciously skew your perspective. Mashvisor I've found to be fairly accurate in the Smokies but not too accurate for the Florida rentals I was looking at - it seemed to not have as much data in the Disney area and gave me a slew of either very high revenues or extremely low revenues.
What I usually do is use Mashvisor's free or trial data to look at a location, buy AirDNA for one month to look at the data, and then also start spreadsheets while pouring through Airbnb and VRBO to get a holistic idea of what the rental numbers should look like. I then also call various different realtors who are investors themselves or focus on investors, as well as property management companies to get their opinions on what revenues should be. I'm a big believer in getting as much data as possible, and then making your own judgements. I would not advocate for just looking at Mashvisor/AirDNA and deciding where you're going to put your tens of thousands of $.
Hope this helps.
I would agree that this is the best approach. Mashvisor and AirDNA have a beautiful interface but the data gets fuzzy when you scale at the level that they do. When I share with property owners the estimates from our internal STR tool, I similarly encourage them to pull up their spreadsheets to input what they found after manually reviewing comps themselves. The good ol' 'trust but verify' approach. It's usually easy for anyone to manually confirm the comps but the problem nowadays is that the data is quite skewed because of the vacancy rates and inactive listings.
If you still decide to go ahead and manually review, don't forget to adjust for the outliers. The one or two luxury properties with very high nightly prices will skew your data. I've learned that it's best to target the median (rather than the average) price after dropping a couple of the outliers. Your CapEx and other expenses may vary so do take those into consideration, as well.
Been actively trying to use Mashvisor for past 6 weeks.
1. Their data is quite inaccurate.
Particularly their airbnb occupancy rates, rental estimates (short/long) are way off of ground reality. Verified this by going around locally and talking to people in the Orlando, Kissimmee area. Their airbnb occupancy rates are closer to the 75th percentile properties on airbnb and not the 50th percentile as should be the case.
Also, half of their 'HOA' fees numbers are wrong, which leads to very high income valuations on those properties.
2. All the properties with high income that it is able to find are junk properties. There is no way for you to balance income/risk. The only way is to go neighborhood by neighborhood: which is VERY time consuming and very gross. There is lot of variance within a single neighborhood. They dont have key filters like 'schools' and 'crime'.
Lost a good 6-8 weeks of my time and 360$ of good money on them !! (They charged me before the 14day trial period and refused to refund the money)
what did you end up using and liking? the neighborhood by neighborhood thing is quite time consuming