← Real Estate Rookie
Real Estate Rookie
The BEST Airbnb Markets in 2025 and How to Do Your Own Market Research
00:42:10
Want to get into short-term rentals in 2025? Your first step is to find the right Airbnb market for you. But we know that wading through 20,000 US towns and cities can be overwhelming, which is why we’re turning to our resident short-term rental expert for everything you might need to know! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Vacation rentals are Tony’s specialty, and in this episode, he’s going to share his best tips and tricks for choosing a market in 2025. First, he’ll help you pin down your investing goals before covering some of the most crucial factors to consider when analyzing a short-term rental market—including home price, supply and demand, competition, and others. You’ll also learn how to perform your own market research from scratch so that you’re armed with the most accurate data when making your decision! But that’s not all. Once you’ve chosen your market, you’ll need to determine which types of amenities to include. We’ll show you what’s needed, what’s...
Loading summary
Transcript47 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, rookies, how can you find the best Airbnb markets to invest in for 2025?
- [00:06]
B
There's so many factors to look at that drilling down can be an overwhelming process, and so many markets are oversaturated.
- [00:12]
A
Today, Tony will teach you how to find the right markets for your new Airbnb location. I'm Ashley Kerr.
- [00:24]
B
And I'm Tony Jay Robinson. And welcome to the Real Estate Rookie Podcast.
- [00:27]
A
So, Tony, before we actually get started. Started. Remind everyone of what markets you are already currently investing in.
- [00:33]
B
We're in three markets right now. We're in California, just outside of Joshua Tree National Park. We are in Utah, outside of Zion national park, and we are in Tennessee, outside of the Smoky Mountains National Park.
- [00:43]
A
So before you find a market, what are some of the things you should start doing before you even start looking for the market you want to invest in?
- [00:52]
B
So when we talk about, like choosing a market, I, I think the first, first thing before we talk about buy a box, before we talk about how much cash you have, I think the very, very first thing you have to do is understand what your motivations are for wanting to purchase an Airbnb. And generally there are kind of four key motivations I see that people have. There's appreciation. So someone's buying because they want to build wealth over time, supplement their retirement age income. The tax benefits. Right. The short term rental tax loopholes. There were some people who do it for that reason. There's the actual cash flow that it generates. Right. Generally speaking, a short term rental should be able to outperform a traditional long term rental. And then the, the kind of fourth one is some people just want to have a nice vacation home that someone else is paying for. So for them, even if they break even, they're happy because their goal is just to have a beach house or a ski, you know, place in a ski resort, whatever it may be. So appreciation, taxes, cash flow, and the vacations. And then rank those from most important to least important. And you have to rank them because oftentimes you'll be forced to choose which one in the market that you're looking at is actually going to deliver, because many times you're not going to get all four of those in equal doses. So you've got to choose which one is most important. So to me, actually, that's the very first step, knowing your motivations.
- [02:13]
A
Okay, so once you've figured out what you're motivated by, where do you even start finding the data to analyze the market? We have how many neighborhoods and cities across the country. What's the best way to kind of narrow down all that data? So you're not looking at every single.
- [02:32]
B
City across the U.S. yeah, yeah, every single city across the U.S. just on that point first, right? We've talked about this before on the rookie podcast, guys. There are 20,000 plus cities in the United States. And the chances of you being able to do thorough, absolute research on every single city is unrealistic. And the goal isn't to find every single potential city that you could invest into. The goal is just to find enough that you can get enough volume of deals to look at and analyze and start submitting offers on. And I found the kind of sweet spot for most new investors is like three to five markets. If you have three to five Airbnb markets that you're considering, that typically gives you enough coverage, enough options, enough volume of deals to analyze to actually find the right one. So just the first point, three to five is a good, good benchmark in terms of where I like to go to find the data. Airdna, I think, is probably one of the best tools out there for the market research phase of being an Airbnb investor. They have data from Airbnb, from vrbo and you know, according to them, their Data is like 99% accurate. And they've made a pretty big update to their website late last year, which now gives you access to the entire United States. And you can look at different markets across different states, across different everything, and kind of drill down and see a lot of the top line data.
- [03:55]
A
So when we're starting to look at data, what data do we actually want to know? So, you know, for a long term rental, you're looking at vacancy rate, you're looking at unemployment, you're looking at population growth. But I would assume some of these metrics would actually be different for analyzing a short term rental market.
- [04:14]
B
I think there's two sets of data points that you want to look at. One is your kind of own personal data points, and then the second set is the data points that are specific to that market. So the personal ones are kind of what we talked about, right? Like, how much appreciation am I going to get? You know what, what, how would I rank this city as a potential vacation destination for myself? Am I able to get more or less tax benefits in this, in the city or in this state? And then what kind of cash flow can I expect to produce? So that's like one piece, can I afford to buy here, right? Like, can I actually afford to buy in this market? And then the other piece is the data that's specific to that market. And when we look at the market, there are some important things we want to consider. Number one is regulations. So just in general, what is the regulatory landscape as it relates to short term rentals in that market? And you want to make sure you do that research early.
- [05:09]
A
Tony, what would be when you're looking at that, do you want one that's heavily regulated? Do you want something that has no regulation? Where do you kind of stand on that?
- [05:21]
B
In the short answer in my mind is that established regulation that's strict is better than no established regulation at all. Because at least with the established yet strict regulation, you know what you're getting yourself into, right? And if the city says, hey, you've got to have an Airbnb that's within this zone, you know, there's a map of the city, the parts of the city where you can buy an Airbnb, that's fine. At least now I know where to go buy. Or hey, you can buy an Airbnb, but you can't be within, you know, 700ft of another Airbnb. Or you can have an Airbnb, but you need to do X, Y and Z. So having those rules, I think gives you at least confidence that the city has already thought about what their short term rental ordinance is and they've decided. Right. If you go into a city that hasn't decided, it's a flip of a coin and you don't really know which way that coin is going to land. We were actually looking at some property a couple summers ago in the, in the Finger Lakes region of New York. And in the Finger Lakes, one of the cities there is Ithaca. Ithaca, New York. It's on one of the lakes up there. And I don't know how, I don't know if like it just got searched me, but I saw, you know, just like kind of reading some local news about the area that Ithaca had just passed. Like literally the week that we were there, they just passed new short term rental ordinances. And the ordinance stated that if you owned a lakefront property, you could only short term rented for two thirds of the year. So like 270 days out of the year you could short term rent your property. If you weren't lakefront, you could only rent your property out for, I think it was 30 days out of the year. 30 days. So imagine being one of those people that went into that market, bought an Airbnb thinking they were going to get 365 days of use. And now they get 10% of that. There's no way that you're profitable.
- [07:05]
A
We have a ski resort market near us that they keep changing the zoning so they have their regulation in place, but they go and change the zoning. I think it's like every two years. So like one year you care, your house could be in the short term rental area and then two years later it could not be in it. And we actually have friends that bought a house there and it got changed where they're not in that zone anymore. But I mean, it's like, oh, like it's almost like a lottery. Like, oh yeah, I get to rent my house out for the next two years and then, oh no, I don't. You know, it's like, who, who does that actually benefit? Is that actually like a benefit to anyone that you can rent it out only for a couple of years?
- [07:50]
B
You know, I think that every city has decided to handle short term rentals in a slightly different approach. And it is very much a localized thing. And I would be surprised if we ever see any kind of statewide regulation on short term rentals because it is very much a city and county specific problem or decision. So the other layer of this is you want to know what the regulations are, but you also want to assess just the regulatory risk in a market. And for us, we've mostly opted towards cities where the regulatory risk is low. So what do I mean by that? We look for cities where the main economic driver is the vacation rental industry. And we tend to buy in cities where there isn't a mass, you know, like, like there's not another big economic driver. So there are no massive universities, there are no massive hospitals or business headquarters. There's no, there's nothing really except for people coming into Airbnbs, staying for several nights, spending their money at the local businesses and then going back home. And when you invest in markets that have that kind of profile, right, where the, the majority of the people at any given time in that city are actually people who were visiting who are staying at Airbnbs and not primary residents who, when you buy in a city that has that type of profile, you reduce your risk of regulation shifting in the way that you just said, actually. So that's, that's one of the things that we look for. Now, if I were to buy in the market you just talked about, the thing that I would make sure that, that, that is true for any property that I'm looking at is that it also cash flows or at least breaks even as a potential midterm. Or long term rental. Because if I'm stepping in and there's that risk there, I want to make sure that I have more than one exit strategy.
- [09:42]
A
Yeah, in the scenario that I mentioned, they tried to do it as a long term rental, but obviously you're not getting the same as you do as a short term rental. And the property ended up losing money and so they actually ended up listing the property for sale to sell the property. So we're going to take a quick break here, but we do want you guys to check out our new Instagram @realestate. Rookie. We're going to be posting a lot more real estate content there, so make sure to give us a follow. We are going to be right back to talk more with Tony about choosing your short term rental market. Okay, we are back from our short break. Thank you so much for joining us, Tony. We kind of left off about, you know, what you should be looking for when analyzing a market. What kind of markets are you looking into is that you're going for? You know, big cities with lots of attractions, lots of tourism. Time to give us some Insight going into 2025, what kind of cities you're looking at.
- [10:47]
B
So this is me, my own kind of personal preference based on the data that I'm seeing. We are mostly focused right now on targeting kind of secondary or sometimes even tertiary Airbnb destinations. And the reason we're, we're avoiding some of the kind of the primary or hotspot airbnb cities with, you know, a lot of the, the, the kind of well known Airbnb destinations that a lot of us have talked about in those cities over the last couple of years, we've seen two things happen, maybe even three things. Number one, we've seen a dramatic increase in purchase price. Like the median sales price in a lot of those markets have increased exponentially. So for example, we own right now in the Smoky Mountains and the first property that we bought there, five bedroom cabin, almost 3,000 square feet, we bought it for three, $580,000 I think now those scene cabins are worth probably a million bucks. Right? So we saw what is that, a 40% almost increase in purchase price. The revenues in that property have not increased by 40%. They've been about flat. So we saw revenue do this, but we saw purchase price do this. So what does that do to your margins? Right. So we're seeing a reduction in the actual profitability in some of these bigger markets. And it's a theme that I've seen across a lot of these big Airbnb cities where there are 20, 30,000 Airbnb you're competing against. So that's the first thing that we're seeing is, you know, the purchase price have gone up. The second thing is that a lot of these bigger markets just have so much supply that you are competing against. And the rate of increase in supply oftentimes is outpaced the rate of increase in demand in those markets. So if supply saw a year over year increase of 15, 20% for three years straight, if demand wasn't also growing at that same pace, well, now you've got this imbalance of supply and demand. And when that happens, basic law of economics, we see the rates that you can charge as an Airbnb host, those come down. So those are some of the dynamics we're seeing in a lot of these bigger markets, which is why we started to shift our research and our offers in some more of the secondary tertiary markets.
- [12:57]
A
So, Tony, I snuck into Dave Meyer's presentation that he's doing for a Momentum Summit. I took a look at the PowerPoint that he's using, and he's actually talking about that during the momentum. Virtual Summit is supply and demand and how you should be using that and studying that when you're analyzing a market. So if you want to find out more information about that, make sure to attend Dave's session. You can go to biggerpockets.com//summit25. Okay, so, Tony, what about attractions? Like, the Airbnbs that I have are, you know, in just small rural areas, and it's basically people who just want to get away from the world and come and stay in cozy cabins. But what is going. You're looking into a new market. Should you be looking for attractions and what type of attractions?
- [13:48]
B
I guess maybe I'll even take it one step back and then I'll kind of finish off with the, with the, with the attractions. But for me, there, there are kind of two things that we're looking at right now. One, we're looking for places where the purchase price is still reasonable, right? So ideally, we want something that's a little less expensive than some of these major markets. And then second, we are looking for some major attraction that's actually going to pull people in for the, for the price perspective. Like, guys, if you just search, like, average median home price in the United States right now, I want to say it's somewhere just north of $400,000, like the average median home price. Last time I checked, There were like 20 states where the median home price was less than the $417,000 national average. So there's 20 potential states where there's a lot of opportunity there to find less expensive homes. And then within those states, doesn't matter which one you pick, any one. All you have to do is type in, you know, things to do in Arkansas. I think Arkansas is like the third lowest median home price state. Things to do in Arkansas. If you've never been to Arkansas, you probably don't know all the things that are in Arkansas, but there's Hot Springs national park, there's, you know, other things going on in Hot Springs. So if you just type in things to do in XYZ State, the beauty of Google Chat GPT will give you some ideas of, okay, what are people doing in that local market. And if you find something that you feel is maybe a big enough attraction, then just type in, you know, go to Airbnb, type in Hot Springs national park, and just see are there actual other Airbnbs that are already existing in this market? And if there are, now, you've just checked kind of two big boxes. A, you found a state with a lower than average median home price, and B, you found an area that has some sort of attraction that's drawing people in. So it could be national parks, it could be museums, it could be universities, it could be something else. Right. Who knows, was pulling the people in, but is there something to kind of bring a steady flow of folks in? Is one of the things we're looking.
- [15:43]
A
For now, based on your professional opinion, are you drawn towards seasonal properties that have a high peak and then, you know, kind of decrease over a certain season? Or do you rather something that is steadier throughout the whole year? And should we even care about that? Does that even matter?
- [16:02]
B
I guess too, I think every Airbnb market has some degree of seasonality. Like, I, I really haven't seen a market that just like every single month, you're, you're pretty much charging the exact same rates. Even places that, you know, probably have good weather year round, Hawaii, they probably are still charging more during some months and other months just because there's more demand in those months. Um, so every market has some layer of seasonality now. There are some markets that I think are more sensitive to seasonality where it's like you're really only going to rent from, you know, you know, Memorial Day to, to Labor Day. And then outside of that, you're pretty much dead. We, we have kind of tended to stay away from looking in those markets just because we want A little bit more regularity with the income that's coming in. Right. A little bit more predictability. And you don't necessarily have to like pile away, you know, six weeks worth of revenue to last you the other 48 weeks out of the year. So we do look for markets that have a little bit more stability there.
- [16:59]
A
To when you're analyzing the market and trying to understand, you know, when the peak is and you're looking at the, the data, are you looking at kind of vacancy rate at different times? The, you know, you mentioned the daily rate. Give us some of those metrics that you're kind of using to determine this has steady income throughout the whole year.
- [17:19]
B
Yeah. So it's, and I don't know why this happens. Maybe it's like a hotel thing, but in the short term rental industry, we actually look at occupancy versus vacancy. So we look at occupancy rates for certain markets and it does kind of tell us like, hey, where, where the ebbs and the flows are. But occupancy is only kind of one metric. You also want to look at the actual amount that properties are charging on a daily basis. Because while we might see some drop off in some markets, from, from an occupancy perspective, where you typically see a bigger drop off is what they're actually able to charge. So for us, like I'll give you an example. We're in Joshua Tree, California, Right. And that market does really well during the springtime. Does really well kind of during the fall. It's okay during the winter. It is very slow during the summer because it's so hot, which is kind of counterintuitive. Right. But it just gets so hot out there that there's less travel demand during the summer months. Our occupancy doesn't swing much from springtime to summer, but what really swings is the rates that we're charging. So for example, I have a tiny house in Joshua Tree. And during spring season there are some nights we're charging over $300 per night for a 391 square foot tiny home. That same property. During the summer months, we might be charging 80 bucks a night for the same exact property. So you'll, you'll sometimes see a bigger swing in the actual rates that are being charged in the occupancy to some extent as well.
- [18:46]
A
So kind of going into 2025, and I know this question will be market dependent, but do you see any trends as far as amenities that people are expecting that maybe as a host you should be adding to your property to stay competitive. Or even if you gave us an example of a market where you're seeing something that everybody is implementing.
- [19:07]
B
I think someone told me once, and I've used this many times since then, but someone told me that we are entering the Airbnb amenities arms race and that couldn't be, you know, closer to the truth. I think post or pre Covid I should say amenities were. Were things like Wi Fi and smart TVs, right? Like those were the amenities that people were offering. Now I think you're seeing much more sophistication in the types of amenities that are being offered now to your point, actually I think it is somewhat market dependent. But here's the thing. You can take amenities that are working well in other markets and use that in whatever market you're in. Because if it's proven to do well in a competitive market like Orlando, then why wouldn't it work well in maybe like a less competitive market like Buffalo, Right. Like, you know, if someone enjoyed it there, there's a good chance they enjoy it there. So I don't know if there's just like, hey, these are the core amenities that you want to offer. But looking at the data, some things that tend to have an impact, at least some of the filters that we can search by professional design always goes a long way. I don't know if that's necessarily an amenity, but it is something that just like by and large you see across better performing listings. Professional photos, another one as well, right? How you just present the property to potential guests. Your your kind of like true amenities like an in ground pool, right. Typically in a lot of markets having a pool, you'll be able to charge more than properties that don't. Having a hot tub or jacuzzi, another amenity that tends to drive more game rooms, theater rooms, you know, kind of just unique stays even if you build something that's unique, that's a not necessarily an amenity, but it is something that drives some additional revenue. So I think one of the best things you can do is look at the other top performing properties in your market, see what amenities they're offering and that's your table stakes. Like those are just the things you need to add regardless in order to compete with the best. And then take your gaze elsewhere, go look at some of these bigger markets that have tons of properties. Orlando, Scottsdale, you know, Smoky Mountains, Gulf Shores, Destin. See what amenities are offered there that maybe aren't yet super popular in your destination and find ways to incorporate those as well.
- [21:23]
A
We're going to take our last break here, but we're going to come back with Tony and we're going to find out what his top market picks are going into 2025. We'll be right back. Okay, let's jump back in with Tony. So, Tony, before we get to the good stuff, your top market picks that everyone should invest in in 2025. What? Is there anything else that we missed? When you are analyzing a market, we went over daily rate, we went over occupancy rate, not vacancy rate. Right. Is there anything else that maybe we didn't touch on that you should look at when analyzing a short term rental market? A metric.
- [22:06]
B
Yeah. Again, I think the only one that I would really harp on right now, actually, I guess there's a couple. Right. But it's your, it's kind of your supply and your demand. So aside from the regulations, aside from, you know, the purchase price, can actually afford to invest there, besides your own kind of personal motivations, Supply and demand is a big one and then level of competition is another big one. So I'll kind of break each of those down. Supply and demand. What I'm looking at from that perspective, let's talk about supply. First, I want to know the raw number of Airbnb listings in that market and then I want to know the rate of change of listings in that market. So if I go into an Airbnb city and I see 50,000 Airbnbs in that market, that's a lot of listings to compete against. If I go into another market and I see 2000 listings, that's more reasonable, more manageable. So you gotta ask yourself, do you want to be one of 50,000 or do you want to be one of 2,000? Which one's going to give you a better shot at actually getting booked? The raw number of listings is one thing, and then it's the rate of change. And I touched on this briefly as well. But if I see, you know, 15, 20, 30% listing growth year over year, I've really got to make sure that the demand is growing at a pace that's greater than that to give me the confidence. And again, using something like AIR DNA, you can track both the supply and the demand in a market and you can compare those numbers. And what we've seen in a lot of markets recently is that 2021, 2022 caused massive increases in supply. And then we saw the impacts of that in 2023 and 2024 in terms of revenue, where the 20% growth of supply Wasn't sustainable. And then we start to see, you know, low single digit, double digit declines in revenue in those same markets. So you want to go back and look at that piece first. So, so that's the first. And I'll touch on the competition. But the supply and demand is the first piece. So that's supply and demand. The, the kind of second one is level of competition. Okay, the level of competition in that market. And I keep going back to Orlando because nine times out of 10, if I meet someone who wants to buy an Airbnb, they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I've been thinking about Orlando and when I say why, they're like, oh, because, I mean, Disney's down there. Like, everyone loves to go to Orlando. And I say, okay, well, what specific data have you looked at to make me to make you believe that Orlando is the best place? So I haven't looked at anything.
- [24:26]
A
It is so cheap to rent a house in Orlando because there's so many options.
- [24:31]
B
I mean, like, and, and I think the crazier part about Orlando is that there are so many good options. Some of the, some of the most expensive kind of well thought out Airbnbs that I've seen are in that Orlando market. So when you talk about level of competition, Orlando's got to be one of the hardest markets to break through in. And there are Airbnb investors that I know who are good Airbnb investors who go into Orlando and kind of get their butts handed to them because the competition is so stiff. So as we're looking for markets, I want to go into a market and see with kind of the best properties in that city have poor design. They like DIY the design. They're lacking a lot of the basic amenities that we talked about. They have DIY photos. They took the photos themselves. And like their razor flip phone from 2003, they're not using any dynamic pricing tools. But yet despite all of that, their reviews are still great. And there are people raving about how amazing this property is. So if I can go into a market and see those things yet those properties are still getting booked, they're still getting positive reviews. That's a sign for me that I can come in with a better product and potentially outperform a lot of what's in there. And when we bought our hotel, actually, that was, that was kind of the thought process that went into it. We looked at the other kind of similar hotels in that market, but when we looked at the other hotel options, we felt that we could compete with some of the best ones in that city. And so far since launch, and we feel like we've been able to accomplish that. So supply and demand and then level of competition are two big things to look at.
- [26:10]
A
And I guess the kind of the last follow up to this. Are you getting all of this information on Air DNA or are there other resources to get this information?
- [26:20]
B
Air DNA I think is the best place to go because it gives you access to nationwide data. And if you're really just kind of starting from a blank slate and you've got no idea of where to go, that nationwide access is super beneficial. To help you drill down to the right cities, there's other data providers out there. I know Rabu is another one that comes up. Price Labs offers market specific data, but you have to pay by the market. So that gets a little bit more. It can get a little bit more expensive. You can use Airbnb also, but you just don't get any historical data. You only get forward looking data and it's very manual because you have to go through and look at the calendar. So for me, from a market selection standpoint, I do believe is probably the best tool to use.
- [27:02]
A
Okay, so how do we stay updated on a market that we want to learn more information about besides searching into forward information from Airbnb?
- [27:16]
B
Yeah, so I think there's two things. Number one, I would subscribe to like that city or that county's newsletter. So, for example, we have a lot of properties here in Southern California and we are on like the newsletter for the council for this county. So as different things come up, you know, we can be present, we can be active. There was actually like a, gosh, there was some kind of like town hall where representatives from the county, disgruntled owners in that city, and then Airbnb hosts like myself, it was a big open hall. All the sides kind of got to air their grievances. And we only knew about that because we were the loop with what's going on. So I think it, it sounds, you know, almost like overkill. But I think the more integrated you can be and the more knowledge you can have, the better you can protect yourself. And then second, I think it's just refreshing the data on a regular basis. So for me, we try and go in on like a quarterly basis and just reassess, hey, who are we competing against now? What new listings have come online that we weren't aware of before, what with old listings have gone offline that we thought we were competing against before and just Keeping a fresh set of data to compare yourself against helps you make better decisions as you start to either build your, your, you know, your portfolio from scratch or scale it up if you've already got one. But in my mind, the data and the information, the two most important things.
- [28:37]
A
And also you can go to the BiggerPockets forums and set a keyword alert for that city, for that market that you want to invest in. And you can actually do that for any strategy. So anytime someone is talking about that market, you'll get a little notification. You can set it up to get an email so that you can go ahead and check out what somebody is actually saying for that market, too. Okay, so, Tony, what we've all been waiting for, what are some markets to be watching going into 2025?
- [29:09]
B
The million dollar question. I think I'm going to disappoint everyone.
- [29:13]
A
Okay, I'm on the edge of my seat, Tony.
- [29:17]
B
We've kind of cast a bit of a wide net and honestly, a lot of our acquisition kind of focus right now is on getting another commercial property, another hotel. So slightly different than what we're doing. We're looking at the single family homes. But again, because everyone is taking this at a slightly different approach and everyone's motivations are slightly different, I can tell you guys a list of cities that from a data perspective, looks great. Like, for example, Bakersfield, California. I have family in Bakersfield. I lived there briefly in my own life. Never in a million years would I have thought that Bakersfield, California would be a great place to buy an Airbnb. But when you look at the data, supply versus demand, excellent. The level of competition, very low. So someone could go into that market and potentially do incredibly well. But do you want to buy in Bakersfield? Maybe, maybe not. Right? So I could give you guys a list of cities, but I think what's more important is first that you understand that there are thousands of potential cities that make sense for you to invest into. So the goal isn't to find all of them. The goal is to find three to five that match your investment criteria. And second, looking at cities that have good underlying economics is more important than whether or not you like it or you get the warm and fuzzies about that city. And if you apply that strategy, I'm very, very confident that every single person listening to this should be able to identify three to five markets in the next two or three weeks with a little bit of dedicated work.
- [30:44]
A
Okay, well, I'm not going to be as wishy washy as Tony And I am going to give you some markets. First of all, I looked this up and I used Air DNA to gather some of this and it showed across, like, different, I don't know what you'd call it, but like, compared rural areas to urban areas, to smaller towns to suburbs, things like that in like rural remote areas had the highest increase in listings of 16%. So, Tony, is that a good thing or is that actually a bad thing? Because now there's more supply in that market or is that like, wow, more people are creating them because they're making more money in these rural things?
- [31:32]
B
So I think what you said at the end is what a lot of people go to, like, oh man, there's a lot more listings. It must mean that everyone's killing it. So, which could be the case, but you still want to go back and check. Okay, if supply increases 16%, what did demand do? And if demand wasn't at like 30%, then you might have a problem going into next year.
- [31:49]
A
Okay, then According to Air DNA, these are the 2025 best markets. So I did not research these and excuse me if I butchered this name, but it's P, Illinois. Then Fairbanks, Alaska, Akron, Ohio, Columbus, Georgia, Crescent City, California. Number six, Tony, Shreveport, Louisiana.
- [32:16]
B
I did see that. I did see that.
- [32:18]
A
And then it goes page, Arizona, Rockford, Illinois, Dayton, Ohio, Frankfurt, Kentucky, Montgomery, Alabama. And then, yeah, continues to go on. And they got a whole list. If you just Google Best places to Invest in vacation rentals, you'll find it for Air DNA.
- [32:35]
B
I do have a bit of a beef with the air DNA's best places to invest list. Right. Because, for example, I know they have Anaheim, California on this list and Anaheim is home to Disneyland here in California. So obviously it sounds like it's a fantastic place to get an Airbnb, but it is almost impossible to get a new short term rental permit in Anaheim. And the only way that you could actually get one is, is if someone sells their existing Airbnb along with the permit. And because these permits transfer with the property, you can imagine how expensive the Airbnb is in Anaheim actually are. And is it actually even profitable at that point to buy an Airbnb? Shreveport, we talked about, you know, my. If you guys have been around the podcast for a while, the flood insurance, that market can definitely get expensive. So guys, any of these lists that you find, I think they're good starting points, but at the end of the day, no one's going to hand you, hey, here is a perfect city for Ashley to buy an Airbnb in or here's the perfect city for Tony to buy an Airbnb in. You've still got to do the work yourself to identify does the city actually support my unique investment goals and does the underlying data actually support what it is that I'm looking for? So that's my beef with the with the best place to invest list. But if you guys want to want it, yeah, just Google best places to invest Air DNA. You guys will find the list for.
- [33:50]
A
For 2025 and that goes along with the long term market too. So there was a list put out biggerpockets.com resources of top markets for 2025 and it has, you know, data that is applicable to long term rentals and it's the same thing. Take it with a grain of salt because not all of it is going to be something that is useful for you and you don't know everything that's going on with that city. This these are just the data points you need to do your research but also like niching down by neighborhood too as to you can look at the numbers as a city as a whole, but everybody knows when you are in a city you can be on one street and it's a great neighborhood and you could cross the street, turn the corner and it's not where you want to be investing. So do your own research, verify the data and find out more information than just just the data points. Well Tony, thank you so much for being my guest today on the show and answering all my short term rental market questions.
- [34:53]
B
Man, it's so much easier being being on this side than it is being on that side actually. So thank you, thank you for giving me the day off. I just got to blab for 40.
- [35:00]
A
Minutes here and I just got to sit here with my feet up and listen to you blab. Thank you. Rookies are listening. If you haven't already, make sure you are subscribed to our YouTube channel at Real Estate Rookie. You can also find us on Instagram at realestate. Rookie, make sure you guys are taking us. We would love to share your investing journey in our story too. I'm Ashley and he's Tony and we'll see you guys on the next episode of Real Estate Rookie.