Bentonville, AR · Member since 2016 · 43 posts · 5 votes
I've been looking around online for either just a data dump of Airbnb for my local area or even a site that can give accurate insights. I've looked at AirDNA but it seems to have a lot of noise on it and doesn't accurately display the cost per rental. Are there any other places anyone uses to get insights for their area?
Investor · Denver, CO · Member since 2016 · 533 posts · 433 votes
7y
@John Clark Airdna will sell you their raw data (I have purchased) in spreadsheet format, just reach out to them. It's a lot of data, so if you're good with spreadsheet, it's worth the purchase. They also now capture HA/VRBO data as well and I recently witnessed their accuracy being in the 90-95% range.
I had looked into this a few months ago and came up empty. I looked into AirDNA and came to the same conclusion you did along with many online reviews alleging the same. Problem is that both of these platforms (AirBnB and VRBO) allow hosts to blackout weeks for personal use or whatever. On the client side, these blackout weeks look just the same as booked time which is ultimately what data aggregators like AirDNA look at to determine demand. Fundamental problem with the platform APIs is that there is no distinction between blackedout time vs booked time.
Investor · Denver, CO · Member since 2016 · 533 posts · 433 votes
7y
@John Clark Airdna will sell you their raw data (I have purchased) in spreadsheet format, just reach out to them. It's a lot of data, so if you're good with spreadsheet, it's worth the purchase. They also now capture HA/VRBO data as well and I recently witnessed their accuracy being in the 90-95% range.
Investor · Roseville, CA · Member since 2016 · 893 posts · 1k+ votes
7y
@John Clark, what exactly is your goal with the data you want to analyze? I would hate for you to spend a few hundred dollars on raw data only if you are going to put it back together for the same $20 market report AirDNA offers off the shelf?
@Michael Greenberg Even with the raw data, it’s impossible to distinguish between blackedout time vs booked time, right?
I believe you are correct Eric, which likely accounts for the 5-10% delta. As an investment tool, it has been quite useful. I haven't spent a lot of time with their MarketMinder as without integration with the OTA's I might as well manage the pricing myself. I know of another tool that is coming out in the next 6-12 months that will add additional functionality and address the blacked out dates.
@John Clark, what exactly is your goal with the data you want to analyze? I would hate for you to spend a few hundred dollars on raw data only if you are going to put it back together for the same $20 market report AirDNA offers off the shelf?
I think what I like about the raw data Jon is the ability to narrow down the competitive set I want to study. Airdna looks at each market as a whole, whereas the data provides links to each property it has scraped. I used the raw data to validate an area I did NOT end up buying in, whereas I might have if I didn't have the ability to limit the data set. In the end it was worth the expense and effort.
@John Clark, what exactly is your goal with the data you want to analyze? I would hate for you to spend a few hundred dollars on raw data only if you are going to put it back together for the same $20 market report AirDNA offers off the shelf?
I have a few reasons I would like the info. We're looking at local businesses to partner with us in our houses and would like to be able to show them data on how well it's doing in the area and how much traffic we'll expect to come through them. It can also give us a chance to be more proactive with our pricing throughout the year and take a lot of guessing out it. Also once our properties are built we plan to expand to other markets and having clean data to evaluate the market can be very valuable. I think where I stand now, we can probably work with some manual digging on AirDNA, but knowing they sell their data is helpful.
Investor · Roseville, CA · Member since 2016 · 893 posts · 1k+ votes
7y
Sounds good @John Clark, that makes sense and sounds like a few hundred bucks is more than a worthwhile investment for startup costs related to your business. Let me know if I can be of any help in your venture, sounds interesting! :)
Frisco, TX · Member since 2017 · 24 posts · 13 votes
7y
I could see it depending on the area, but we used AirDNA's rentalizer to analyze our potential and have found it to be remarkably accurate. I appreciate that it gives you 25th, 50th, and 75th percentile so you can see an acceptable range. Good photos will keep you in the top half.