Predict Revenue with an Airbnb Host Calculator [+Best Free Tools]

Predict Revenue with an Airbnb Host Calculator Best Free Tools

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With so many variables affecting Airbnb profitability, from seasonal demand to maintenance costs, hosts need reliable tools to forecast their financial success before committing to a property. You need to keep a healthy balance to ensure that your Airbnb income covers the overall operating expenses.

This is where a short-term rental host calculator comes into play. It can also be useful for property managers who are looking for new investment opportunities and Airbnb hosts who want to run a profitable Airbnb business. These calculators make it easy to determine your Airbnb income potential.

Let’s take a closer look at how a short-term rental host calculator can help you determine an Airbnb rental estimate, the viability of an investment property market, and the best free Airbnb calculators in the market.

How Much Can I Make with Airbnb?

One of the most important questions that you might ask as a beginner host is how much you can make with Airbnb short-term rentals. While there is no one correct answer, the average Airbnb income of US hosts is $36,678 per year, or $3056 per month on average, according to Airbtics. This can vary depending on the region, rental location, seasonality, maximum occupancy, pricing strategy, and other factors. 

You use an Airbnb calculator to help determine if the potential ROI on your short-term rental property is worth the investment. 

What is a Short-Term Rental Calculator? 

An Airbnb calculator (or short-term rental calculator or Airbnb estimator) is an online tool that uses relevant statistics and analytics to generate projections related to the profitability of a short-term rental property. It essentially runs an Airbnb investment analysis on a property based on its size, location, cost price, and the price of comparable properties in the area. 

How Does an Airbnb Calculator Work?

First and foremost, an Airbnb rental host calculator takes into account the location of your short-term rental market. There are specific calculators for different markets across regions and countries. This enables you to get insights into your specific area and calculate an accurate Airbnb income potential report.

By using a host calculator, you’ll be able to estimate the income potential for a new listing based on rental demand for the area. Moreover, you can gain insight to make smart decisions regarding your existing Airbnb listings. All you have to do is enter the address of your vacation rental property and other required input details like the number of bedrooms.

Benefits of Using an Airbnb Hosting Calculator for Short-Term Rentals

An Airbnb calculator is essential for uncovering current and future market trends. Real estate investors use it to find the most lucrative locations for their future investments.

Here are some of the metrics and projections that an Airbnb estimator can deliver:

Cash flow

Cash flow is the rent minus the property expenses. Only when an Airbnb property has positive cash flow can it be regarded as a short-term rental worth renting out.

Short-term rentals depend on cash flow for profitability, rental property expense management, surviving turbulent seasonal changes in demand, and being able to afford the upkeep and maintenance of the Airbnb property itself.

Capitalization Rate (Cap Rate)

The Cap Rate indicates the rate of return you can generate on your short-term rental investment. It is the ratio that you get when you divide the net operating income for your property by the market value. An Airbnb investment property that has a cap rate of 10% or greater is considered to be a good investment, excluding other factors.

Occupancy Rate

The occupancy rate is the number of days during which the vacation rental listing is occupied by Airbnb guests. Some of the factors that determine the occupancy rate include location, the nightly rate, seasonal changes, and guest reviews. Maintaining a high occupancy rate increases rental income profits for your short-term rental business.

Potential rental income

This is the estimated amount that Airbnb hosts could potentially earn from renting their property as a short-term rental on an Online Travel Agency (OTA) site like Airbnb.

Depending on the Airbnb calculator that you decide to use, you will be able to generate different types of forecasts for your business. This will give you an opportunity to choose the best strategy to follow to ensure a profitable Airbnb business.

Top Airbnb Host Calculators

When you use an Airbnb host calculator, you don’t need to create long spreadsheets, crunch endless numbers, or rely on gut instinct. These services do not charge a service fee, but you may need to set up an account.

Here are some of the most popular tools and services that can come in handy to estimate your vacation rental income and potential ROI for your Airbnb rental property. 

Mashvisor

Mashvisor claims to be able to turn three months of research into just 15 minutes. With Mashvisor, you’ll get the necessary information to outperform your vacation rental competitors.

Mashvisor pulls statistics from billions of data points from multiple reliable sources like the MLS, the Airbnb website, and public records. It provides real estate comps for both traditional and Airbnb rentals. The calculator fetches figures, like the average Occupancy Rate, for any city area that it covers. 

The Mashvisor host calculator uses a heat map to identify areas that meet your search criteria. Moreover, you’ll be able to see how many vacation rental properties there are in a particular city in the US.

Airbtics

Airbtics calculator can predict potential revenue and profitability for any property, anywhere in the world. Thanks to its global coverage, it's enough to type the address and you will get estimates of metrics like: nightly rate, occupancy rate, cap rate, cash on cash return, debt service coverage ratio, and rental yield.

This tool allows you to refine your estimate. For example, you can remove comps that don't match your property in terms of types, reviews, close proximity to get even more accurate analysis. If you're planning to do rental arbitrage, this Airbnb calculator shows whether subleasing a property will be profitable by analyzing rent, startup costs, and monthly expenses.

AirDNA

AirDNA calculator called Rentalizer is also a useful tool for estimating short-term rental revenue and deciding on your pricing. It allows you to compare the performance of your vacation rentals to other Airbnb hosts in your area. 

AirDNA can assist in identifying short-term rental trends. This calculator provides custom projections for: annual revenue, average daily rate (ADR), occupancy rate, seasonality's impact on profits, and a competitive analysis of other rentals in the neighborhood.

Their tool features a unique Confidence Score metric that measures the accuracy of your revenue projections, recognizing that not all market data carries the same weight.

AirDNA has extensive global coverage for short-term rental data. It tracks over 10 million properties across more than 120,000 markets worldwide.

Who Should Use an Airbnb Calculator?

An Airbnb estimator or calculator is a versatile tool that can be used to plan and predict the profitability of multiple decisions relating to investment property. So, who exactly could benefit from using a rental calculator?

• Beginner hosts who want to determine if hosting will be a profitable decision.
• Second-home owners who are considering converting their extra property into a vacation rental for passive income.
• Property investors and property managers evaluating the worth and potential ROI of a property.
• Rental arbitrage investors looking to evaluate the difference in revenue between short and long-term rentals.

Are Airbnb Calculators Completely Accurate? 

An Airbnb calculator pulls data from reliable sources such as MLS, Redfin, and Airbnb directly. These are the same tools that professional real estate agents use to get market data on short-term rental properties. Resources like MLS are not available to users outside of the real estate industry. This makes an Airbnb rental host calculator an indispensable tool for accessing real estate market data.

Here are a few things to remember when assessing the accuracy of hosting income calculators:

Data collected

These tools use historical statistics, market trends, and algorithms to generate estimates. They consider things like locations, property size, amenities, local events, booking rates, and more. The accuracy of these estimations depends on the quality of the data used.

Market dynamics

The vacation rental market fluctuates according to local happenings, seasonality, changes in local laws and regulations, and more. These hosting calculators are not able to capture complex concepts like these dynamic variables. It affects the relevance of the market research.

Competitive landscape

Host calculators do not take the individual level of competition into account in their analysis. This means unique features, reviews, or proximity to nearby attractions are not considered. A nearby attraction can be anything that is of special note in your town, like a famous city hall or perhaps a sports stadium. These factors significantly influence the performance of your Airbnb listing.

User input

Airbnb income calculators use the statistics that individuals provide, with no kind of verification process, which means that the basis of the entire analysis could have been entered erroneously for a specific property. The input could have been market-generated to ensure the highest potential earning figure.

Changes in the Airbnb algorithm

Periodically, Airbnb updates the algorithm and everything changes. It can alter how listings are ranked, priced, and displayed on the Airbnb platform. This can throw a serious spanner in the works and often results in incorrect revenue predictions via hosting calculators, as these tools have not updated (or been updated) to reflect the new algorithm.

Local laws and regulations

Any specific property will be under the jurisdiction of local ordinances and laws in relation to short-term rentals. Most hosts will check these rules and regulations before they purchase a particular property for vacation rentals over and above their own home. It's usually entire home rentals that are subject to stricter rules in order to ensure that local renters are not forced into higher average rental rates.

Conclusion

Selecting the most lucrative property for your next investment or setting the right price will get you closer to making your Airbnb profitable.

A vacation rental business based on analytics and research has a greater chance of taking off. You need a good money-making strategy and this is why you should add an Airbnb rental host calculator to your digital toolbox.

The next step is to maintain success, boost rental income, and amplify your business growth. Luckily, there are plenty of software solutions, such as iGMS, to level up your hosting efforts and make your Airbnb profitable. Automating parts of your business will save you time and remove the everyday hassle of constant upkeep.