The 2 Numbers That Decide If Your Market Is Full

You keep telling yourself the market's too crowded to bother listing.

The host who checks the real numbers before deciding is rare. The host who assumes and never lists is common. There's a real way to check instead of guessing.

1. Pull your city's annual visitor count. Search "[your city] convention and visitors bureau annual report." Cities like Raleigh publish this yearly with a total visitor count front and center. Raleigh's most recent report is a good example of what to look for. These reports usually run about a year behind, so don't expect to find this year's number yet, last year's is still the real data point to work with.

2. Pull the active listing count for that same city. Go to airdna.co, search your city, and check "Total available listings" on the overview page. It's free and visible without creating an account.

3. Compare the 2 numbers. If visitor traffic is outpacing listing count by a wide margin, the crowded story falls apart on the math alone.

4. Check page one, not the whole market. Even in a genuinely tight market, only 5 listings get seen at all. If those 5 are outdated or thin on reviews, the market has room for a strong one regardless of the total count.

Run the numbers before you count yourself out.

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Written by: Rob Abasolo