Real estate has seen a surge in demand particularly for rental properties as high occupancy rates pique the interest of investors. In this clip from "Ask Us Anything" on Motley Fool Live, recorded on March 23, Motley Fool contributor Jon Quast shares a go-to resource for research and analytics on rental properties.


Jon Quast: I'll preface this by saying I do intend to own a short-term rental. Over the next two years, I want to acquire my first property, and one of the main resources that I have been using and doing my research is a website called AirDNA. AirDNA.co. Fantastic, third-party data that spans, not only Airbnb (ABNB -4.74%), but also [Expedia (EXPE -0.84%)] Vrbo and HomeAway and any platform that provides short-term rental properties. You can go on there. Some of these things are totally free on AirDNA, including its reports and it just shared a report. I believe it was the day before yesterday on February data. What February data showed for the short-term rental market as a whole is that average daily rates, what the average cost per night is for a short-term rental, is at an all-time high. What was it? It was $274 a night, I think, on average if I'm remembering that right. Yeah, $273. What's interesting about this to me is that during the early days of the pandemic, people stopped listing their properties a little bit. The supply of properties was decreased and we saw the average daily rate go up because supply went down and demand went up as people wanted these exclusive spaces by themselves. What we've actually seen right now is that occupancy rates are at an all-time high. Supply is actually recovering nicely. We have these very high occupancy rates. We have growing, actually, record occupancy rates for short-term rentals in February. During the winter months, typically, you have lower occupancy than what you do in the summer time, but a record for February as far as occupancy rates go and also hitting those record average daily rates. This is very interesting for the industry. It does show there is strong ongoing demand. In my opinion, that demand is going to attract more supply. That is how economics works. When there is something that is very strong in demand, more and more people, including myself, are going to look to take advantage of this and get in on that by providing more supply. I just thought it was interesting. You can go to AirDNA and look at that.