How we count
The definitions behind every DwellSignal number, what measured and modeled mean on a page, and where a figure is withheld rather than guessed.
Every figure on a DwellSignal page traces back to a specific listing, permit, or open dataset, and every figure carries one of three labels. This page says what the labels mean and what has to be true before a number is shown.
Three labels
Measured. Observed directly. A nightly rate is the price the listing shows. A permit match is a listing sitting at an address that holds a current registration. Booked nights are nights we watched flip from available to unavailable between two of our own calendar snapshots.
Modeled. Produced by a model we have tested out of sample and whose error we publish. Occupancy for a place without measured listings comes from a small-area model trained on places that have them. A modeled figure is served as a band, never a point, and the band is calibrated to hold the true value at the stated rate.
Not measured. Nothing is shown. The page says why: too few listings, no permit registry for the city, no forward calendar readings, or a figure that did not reconcile with the others.
What has to be true before a number appears
- A revenue median needs at least eight distinct listings with an estimate.
- A revenue median must sit within half to twice the product of nightly rate, occupancy, and 365. If it does not, the estimated listings are not the market, and the figure is withheld with the reason.
- A top-quartile comparison needs at least fifteen estimated listings on each side of the split, and an amenity is listed only when the lower bound of its interval clears zero.
- A bedroom tier needs eight listings.
- A badge share is not served when zero listings carry the badge, because a badge nobody earns is an uncaptured field, not a measured zero.
- A hazard rating comes from FEMA's own rating for that hazard, never backfilled from the county composite.
Denominators, named
Occupancy is served on the underwriting basis: booked nights over all nights in the window. The vendor-comparable basis, booked over available nights with host blocks removed, runs about ten points higher on the same bookings, and where we show it we say so. We do not drop listings with no recent booking from an average; a dead listing is information about the market.
Sources
Listings, calendars, and reviews come from our own market dataset and from Inside Airbnb; permits from city and county registries and published ordinances, matched at the address level; rents and home values from Zillow research data; hazards from FEMA's National Risk Index; demographics from the Census. Each page names the dataset behind each figure and the date it was taken.
Errors we publish
The nightly-rate model's leave-one-city-out error is 16.9%. The occupancy model's is 21.8%, and it is served only where its calibration holds. When a definition changes, the change is dated in the methodology changelog and the affected pages say "updated".