Golden Age of Airbnb? The STR Investing Playbook for 2026

**John Bianchi** (0:05)
Welcome to the STR Data Lab.

**Rohit Bezewada** (0:12)
Welcome to the latest episode of the STR Data Lab. I am Rohit, the CEO of AirDNA, stepping into the host seat today for a special guest, John Bianchi. John is also known as the Airbnb Data Guy. He's the founder of STR Search. John, welcome.
Ready to dive in?

**John Bianchi** (0:27)
I'm ready. Let's do it. Thanks for having me.

**Rohit Bezewada** (0:29)
Yeah, let's do it. Most of our guests already know who you are, for those who don't, why don't you give a quick introduction of STR Search, your background experience, and then we can dive in.

**John Bianchi** (0:41)
Sure. What I'll do is just try to build credibility really quickly. Everything I'm saying here is just to build credibility, not to brag or anything along those lines.
Within the past four and a half years, between myself and my employees and my company, we have helped identify 426 plus properties. Every single last one of them we have purchased, they are all profitable, and we have the best track record in the entire industry for finding properties that turn out to be profitable. We are genuinely taking over specific markets. On top of that, before I even started STR Search, which is this company that helps people do this, I was the head of data for the larger short-term investment fund in America. It was my job to figure out what market we go into, what property do we buy, and how do we drive the most amount of revenue out of it. I had $80 million to play with, and we learned a ridiculous amount in that timeframe, so much so that we have two identical sized properties, the bones of the property are the same, but one makes $100,000 more than the other, and I can specifically tell you why. It's not just luck, it's like there is very clear data that shows as to why one did better than the other. I've also created four Airbnb data courses about AirDNA software and how to use it and how to actually make sense of it and how I go about it. The last one I made was 40 hours long, and I made it after finding 120 plus properties. At STR Search, we're a team of 30 now. I think we actually, I know for a fact, we have the largest data analytical team in the entire world, I would assume, that 100 percent uses AirDNA's data day in and day out. We're currently at eight employees. We're probably going to be jumping up to around 12 That are four-time data analysts that all they do is look for new markets, look for properties, underwrite properties, use AirDNA's data to forecast that revenue, try to figure out how do we can help form our competition. That's all we do all day, every day for 40 to 60 hours a week.
That's a little bit about us.

**Rohit Bezewada** (2:33)
I love it, John, and a disclaimer for the listeners. I actually worked with John and Taylor when I was looking to buy my own Airbnb.
You cannot be running a short-term rental data company without getting into the journey yourself. Again, a huge shout out to both of you guys for the work you guys are doing in the process. Let's dig in there with the process.
I live in New York City, and I had a criteria in terms of what I was looking for a property. I was like, hey, my wife and I want to be able to enjoy a second home. We want to get some short-term rental tax savings against our W2 incomes, and at the same time, try and read our beak with what it means to be a short-term rental host and find some cash flow. You guys helped us through that process. Why don't you walk me through, what is your typical inflow of customers? Who are you mainly serving at STR Search? Because we have listeners from all walks of life, so if there's someone this resonates with, I would love for this to reach them.

**John Bianchi** (3:31)
I appreciate that.
I definitely want to talk about the process of working with you, because you were a different client, but you got the special privileges, the CEO of AirDNA privileges, and we got to work in a completely different way. I hope we were still helpful through the process. But the typical route is quite different than I would say what you went through.
We mainly work with people with money but no time. I think that's the best way to explain it. The reason being is because people who want to do things themselves, they are DIYer, they want to learn how to understand Airbnb data, they want to be able to design the property, set it up, they want to manage it themselves, the people who want to get their hands dirty, they have the time to be able to do so. They are using their capital, they're figuring it all out, they're going out there. For those individuals, find STR Search on our website, we have the free training that I told you about. I'm not selling it for $5,000 or $10,000 and making you pay me to be able to get this knowledge. It's free on the website. For everyone who's a DIYer, you got to go through that training because it will help you avoid buying a bad deal which is like the entire mission of my company. So that's the free thing that we have for the DIYers. Now for everyone else who does not want to do it themselves, because they straight up do not have the time. They are people like yourself or even me, business owners or executives who are extraordinarily busy. Then on top of that, more than likely have a family. So if you are a little demanding job and you have kids, I mean, I'm going through right now. I got a two-year-old and a three-month-old.