Who you are really competing with: where professional hosts own the supply
Across 483,048 active entire-home and room listings in our dataset, 54% belong to hosts running three or more, and 33% to hosts running ten or more. Here is where the professionals hold the supply, and where the single-listing host still does.
The story of short-term rentals as a side income for a family with a spare room is a decade out of date in most of the markets we measure. The supply is held by operators. This page puts a number on it, market by market, from the host identifier each listing carries, which is stable across markets and lets us count a host's portfolio rather than guess at it.
The national picture
| Figure | Value |
|---|---|
| Active listings in the dataset | 483,048 |
| Distinct hosts | 220,500 |
| Listings held by hosts with 3 or more | 262,258 (54%) |
| Listings held by hosts with 10 or more | 158,517 (33%) |
| Listings held by a host with exactly one | 162,932 (34%) |
| Listings whose host also operates in another sub-market | 199,982 (41%) |
One in three listings belongs to a host with at least ten. That is not a side income. It is a property-management business, and the market behaves accordingly: professional pricing, professional cleaning turnarounds, and a professional's willingness to drop rates in a soft month.
Where the professionals hold the most
Among sub-markets with at least 400 active listings, these are the most concentrated. "Hosts with 3+ here" is the share of listings whose host holds three or more listings in this same sub-market. "Also operates elsewhere" is the share whose host has listings in at least one other sub-market in our dataset.
| Sub-market | Listings | Hosts with 3+ here | Hosts with 10+ here | Host also operates elsewhere | Single-listing hosts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Rosa Beach (30A), FL | 873 | 87% | 74% | 92% | 9% |
| Copper Mountain, CO | 422 | 86% | 82% | 48% | 9% |
| Lahaina, HI | 491 | 84% | 60% | 97% | 13% |
| Steamboat Springs, CO | 1,199 | 84% | 74% | 38% | 13% |
| Miramar Beach, FL | 2,569 | 82% | 68% | 74% | 14% |
| Destin, FL | 716 | 82% | 60% | 60% | 16% |
| North Myrtle Beach, SC | 411 | 80% | 66% | 86% | 16% |
| Seaside (30A), FL | 2,093 | 80% | 68% | 76% | 17% |
| Lihue, HI | 486 | 79% | 60% | 99% | 14% |
| Wisconsin Dells, WI | 504 | 79% | 51% | 29% | 9% |
| Pagosa Springs, CO | 461 | 79% | 48% | 70% | 14% |
| Keystone, CO | 981 | 78% | 66% | 44% | 19% |
| Myrtle Beach, SC | 2,057 | 78% | 60% | 70% | 18% |
| Philadelphia, PA | 1,329 | 77% | 40% | 70% | 16% |
| Fredericksburg, TX | 1,053 | 77% | 57% | 32% | 18% |
Almost every entry is a resort market: the Florida panhandle, the Colorado ski towns, Maui and Kauai, the Carolina coast. In these places the property-management company predates the platform; the platform is a channel for a business that existed before it. Philadelphia is the one city exception, a managed-portfolio market where a few operators hold whole buildings, and Fredericksburg is the Hill Country wine-tourism town that behaves like a coast. A buyer entering Santa Rosa Beach is not competing with families. They are competing with managers who run several hundred doors and set rates from a spreadsheet.
Where the single host still holds the supply
| Sub-market | Listings | Hosts with 3+ here | Hosts with 10+ here | Host also operates elsewhere | Single-listing hosts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evans, GA | 519 | 9% | 0% | 11% | 80% |
| Greater Carrollwood, FL | 993 | 20% | 3% | 15% | 57% |
| Largo, FL | 451 | 28% | 9% | 52% | 58% |
| Houston, TX | 707 | 29% | 5% | 32% | 59% |
| North Las Vegas, NV | 608 | 30% | 6% | 88% | 48% |
| Arlington, TX | 440 | 31% | 8% | 29% | 56% |
| Speedway, IN | 411 | 31% | 10% | 37% | 58% |
| Affton, MO | 423 | 31% | 12% | 34% | 49% |
| Tucson, AZ | 1,033 | 33% | 15% | 32% | 55% |
| North Charleston, SC | 411 | 33% | 8% | 25% | 55% |
| Oxford, MS | 668 | 33% | 29% | 13% | 61% |
| Pensacola, FL | 432 | 34% | 9% | 31% | 51% |
The pattern inverts in the suburbs of the large metros: outer Houston, Tampa's Carrollwood, Arlington outside Dallas, North Charleston, the Augusta suburb of Evans. Here the single-listing host is still the typical seller of a night, which cuts both ways: less pricing discipline to compete with, and less of a track record for a lender to underwrite.