Most people who fail in short-term rentals don't fail because they picked the wrong property.

They fail because they underwrote with fantasy numbers.

The Problem

Here's what typically happens: someone finds a property on Zillow, plugs it into AirDNA, sees a projected revenue of $45,000/year, and thinks they've found a goldmine.

But they missed:

• Actual RevPAR vs. projected RevPAR. Most tools show you potential revenue at 100% occupancy with optimistic nightly rates. Reality is 55-70% occupancy in most markets, with seasonal rate compression that can cut your nightly rate in half for 4-5 months.

• True operating costs. Cleaning fees, property management (20-25% if outsourced), supplies, maintenance reserves, insurance premiums (STR insurance costs 2-3x traditional), utilities, platform fees (Airbnb takes 3%, VRBO takes 5%), and furniture replacement.

• STR regulation risk. Over 200 U.S. cities have introduced or tightened STR regulations since 2020. If your city passes a 90-day cap or requires a permit you can't get, your "investment" becomes a long-term rental overnight — at half the revenue.

The Math That Actually Matters

Forget gross revenue. The only number that matters is net monthly cash flow after all expenses and debt service.

Here's a simplified framework:

Realistic Annual Revenue = (Average Nightly Rate × 0.60 occupancy × 365)
Annual Operating Costs = Revenue × 0.45 (conservative)
Annual Debt Service = Mortgage × 12 (if purchasing)
Net Cash Flow = Revenue - Operating Costs - Debt Service

If that number isn't positive by a meaningful margin, the deal doesn't work. Period.

What We Do Differently at Staylytics

We built Staylytics because we were tired of seeing investors get burned by bad data.

Every deal we surface is underwritten against actual RevPAR data — not projections, not estimates, not "potential." We factor in real operating costs, check STR legality in every jurisdiction, and score each deal 1-100 based on true profitability metrics.

We'd rather send you 2 real deals than 50 fake ones.

If you're serious about building wealth through short-term rentals — whether through rental arbitrage (no purchase required) or buying properties — the data has to be right. That's the foundation everything else is built on.

The edge isn't finding more deals. It's finding the right ones.