Airbnb Host Calculator - How Much Could You Be Earning?
What is an Airbnb hosting calculator and why should you use one? Airbnb hosts have a lot of things to keep under control. You have to handle guest communication, organize cleanings, and make sure your guests follow your house rules. Another important thing to monitor is your pricing. To make your Airbnb profitable, increase rental income and boost your Airbnb revenue, you first need to figure out what your vacation rental is actually worth.
Whether you rent out an entire place or simply a private room as a short-term rental, you should adopt the right pricing strategy and set the optimal pricing to generate profit. You need to keep a healthy balance to ensure that your Airbnb income covers the overall operating expenses and it also allows you to scale your business and acquire more Airbnb properties, if you want to.
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 where to focus your Airbnb investing efforts.
How Much Can I Make with Airbnb?
One of the most important questions that you might ask as a beginner host is how much can you make with Airbnb short-term rentals. While there is no one correct answer, the average Airbnb income hosts can make is around $924 per month. This can vary depending on how many rental properties you own or manage, the rental location, seasonality, maximum occupancy, pricing strategy, etc.
You can 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. Host calculators deliver estimations and findings instantly. 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 can use it to find the most lucrative locations for their future investments.
To grow your business and boost profitability, you need to keep up with pricing trends. Many aspiring hosts neglect this aspect of rental income and it can lead to lower net income and losing money even in periods of high demand.
Here are some of the metrics and projections that an Airbnb estimator can deliver:
Cash flow
Cash flow is the rent less than 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. Airbnb hosts need to stay on top of their cash flow management to ensure that their Airbnb listing is succeeding.
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 your 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
Relying on data when making a decision is a proven way to keep your business up and running. So, by introducing the right technology you will improve the decision-making process for your vacation rental property.
You don’t have to create long spreadsheets and rake in loads of figures or try to rely on your gut feeling. These services also 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 profit and potential return on investment (ROI) for your Airbnb rental property.
Mashvisor
Mashvisor claims to be able to turn three months of research into just 15 minutes. Their Airbnb rental host calculator delivers comprehensive details in only a few clicks. With Mashvisor, you’ll get the necessary information to outperform your vacation rental competitors.
Mashvisor pulls statistics from over 450,000 properties. 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.
LearnAirbnb
LearnAirbnb goes beyond just a simple Airbnb hosting calculator. It provides a comprehensive financial model for your Airbnb business. It is a downloadable template that uses formulas to create financial statements for your business.
It allows you to estimate startup and recurring costs and your Airbnb earnings. Moreover, the calculator can analyze your pricing strategy. Finally, you can also produce a two-year profit plan and ROI calculation over and above your annual revenue report.
AirDNA
AirDNA 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. Using the AirDNA tool can help you boost your rental income and Airbnb revenue.
It also comes in handy if you are going to extend your property portfolio. By using competitive analysis statistics from over 10 million vacation rentals in 80,000 cities worldwide, the tool helps hosts to make decisions about where to buy a good investment property.
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 as a 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 accessing 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.
New hosts need to pay attention to the fine print and keep an entrepreneurial mindset when it comes to researching a new venture in the vacation rental field.
Conclusion
Selecting the most lucrative property for your next investment or setting the right price will get you closer to making your Airbnb profitable. By accessing the necessary statistics and actionable insights, you will be able to make the best choice right from the start.
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. Getting your business automated will save you time and remove the everyday hassle of constant upkeep on the Airbnb platform. With iGMS, as a host, you can:
- Use a channel manager to manage your multiple accounts and Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo listings within a single interface; other platforms can be added via iCal;
- Handle all your guest inquiries from a unified inbox and convert your regular responses into automated replies;
- Using automated templates and triggered messaging to improve communication;
- Create review templates and automate the process of review send-outs directly from the software;
- Manage bookings coming from your business website, messengers, or other channels by taking advantage of our direct booking management toolkit;
- Processing payments securely via integration with Stripe;
- Automate cleaning schedules and collaborate with your team within a single dashboard;
- Create professional reports to keep track of your business growth.