Websites for Evaluating Vacation Rentals

The arrival and subsequent growth of Airbnb has made people look at vacation property in Ellicottville and elsewhere a little differently. Whereas, historically an Ellicottville ski chalet was primarily for personal use, owners are increasingly using vacation rentals to offset costs and supplement income. Some are even looking to vacation rental properties as an addition to their investment property portfolio.

If you are looking at the possibility of an Ellicottville vacation rental, here are some sites that might be useful for you.

Airbnb.com

This is a great place to start to see what other properties are available and what rates they are charging. By looking at the availability calendar, you can also get some idea of how succesful they are in renting their chalet. Just a word of caution here. A property owner can block off as many nights as they want for personal use so, just because the nights are unavailable, it doesn’t necessarily mean they were all rented.

You can also check the reviews. They will give you an idea of whether people who stayed at the property were happy with their stay. In particular, it’s interesting to see if they thought the property was good value.

AirDNA.co

Airdna is a site that pulls data from Airbnb and VRBO in order to predict various vacation rental indictors such as occupancy rate, average nightly rate and revenue.

“In reporting the active supply of vacation rentals, CBRE found AirDNA data to be 97.5% accurate. For the revenue earned by short-term rental hosts, 96.2% accurate”

Airdna.co provides a free service that allows you to estimate the revenue from an Airbnb almost anywhere in the world. The site asks you to provide an address, the number of bedrooms, the number of bathrooms and the maximum number of guests. It will then give you its best estimate of the rental potential of that property. We should stress that we are in no way affiliated with AirDNA nor do we officially endorse them, but we are a user of their product.

When Airbnb announced their IPO, they were obliged to disclose much of their propreitary data which allowed AirDNA to benchmark their predictions against actual Airbnb data. The results were impressive:

As mentioned previously, we are a user of AirDNA. We subscribe to its full service which provides even more information. It grades Ellicottville against other vacation rental markets. It gives us the top performers in the Ellicottville market. AirDNA also gives us more detailed information on occupancy rates, average nightly rates and how that changes over the course of the year. We can also use it to help with our pricing strategy, when to offer discounts and when to promote our best offers.

Zillow.com

There are many sites where you can find real estate listings and you probably have your favorite already.

We like Zillow because it’s easy to see what’s for sale and also what has already sold. This is important because ultimately what a property actually sells for is more important than what a seller (or their agent) would like it to sell for!

These are a selection of sites that we like. If there are any that you have found useful, please let us know!

Most importantly, while these sites can be useful in doing your own research, they are not a substitute for proper professional advice. You should always consult with the relevant professionals before making any important decision.

Ellicottville in the Fall

Skiing is what put Ellicottville on the map, but it is beautiful in all seasons. Fall in Ellicottville is spectacular! Our partners as Eagle 1 photography recently took the drone up on a flight and captured some great shots for us. Unfortunately, the colors haven’t been quite as spectacular this year. This is as a result of the milder nights we had in October. The best color years are usually when there is a big temperature contract between night and day. However, even a less spectacular year is still pretty great so please enjoy!

Flying Over Lot 7

Vibrant Fall Colours Over Lot 7 at 42 Degrees North. Lot 7 dominates the bottom left hand side of this photo. Lot 1 in Phase 2 is in the top left hand corner. Lots 12 and 13 from Phase 2 are to the right.

Flying Over the Communal Area

This photo shows the communal area dominated by the patch of spruce trees in the middle. In the distance in the top right, you can see another line of spruce trees. This marks the end of the road in Phase 2. It also the highest point in Ellicottville - a few feet higher than Holimont and Holiday Valley.

The View Towards Ellicottville, Holiday Valley and Holimont

This great picture shows just how close 42 Degrees North is to Ellicottville. You can see Holiday Valley and Holimont. If you look really closely, you can even see one of the fairways at the Double Black Diamond at Holiday Valley. Where else on the Ellicottville real estate scene can you get this amount of privacy and seclusion so close to Ellicottville?

Flying Over Lots 5, 6 and 7

Another great shot. The drone is probably over lot 5 in this shot. It then looks over lots 6 and 7 in Phase 1 and over the whole of Phase 2. Once again, you can see the patch of spruce trees in the distance that marks the end of the road. From there, you really are on top of the world.

Winter is Coming

It’s fall now, but winter is coming and we’re one day closer to ski season. As soon as the snow comes, we’ll send the drone up again and get some great winter shots.

In the meantime, if you are looking for a ski chalet in Ellicottville, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. 42 Degrees North is poised to be the most exciting resort development on the Ellicottville Real Estate scene.

Meet The Neighbours

42 Degrees North brings space and seclusion to the Ellicottville real estate scene. With over 140 acres in total and average lot sizes over 5 acres, there’s plenty of room to spread out and relax. Every lot has been protected by a 25 foot buffer in which no tree clearing is allowed. This means that there will never be less than 50 feet of trees between you and your immediate neighbour and, in most cases, much more than that.

So, unless you want to, it’s unlikely that you will bump in to you neighbours. But what about 42 Degrees North’s neighbours?

Well, good news! The eastern boundary of the project is Poverty Hill Road. To the south, is a very exclusive estate on over 100 acres and to the west and the north is the Poverty Hill Wildlife Management Area.

The Poverty Hill Wildlife Management Area is over 950 areas of land that is fully protected. You can read about it here, but essentially it is as the name implies. It’s an area protected for wildlife and wildlife related recreation. Snowmobiling, ATVs and, most importantly development, are prohibited. So when you buy in to the 140 acres at 42 Degrees North, you are effectively buying in to over 1000 acres of wilderness. All of this just 5 minutes from the skiing, bars and restaurants of Ellicottville.