Unit 2 · Assessing Your Market · Lesson 2.10
Assessing your market
A full market dashboard tracks 36 items across seven sections, but 13 of them, read in five steps, are enough for a meaningful market assessment: comp sets, active listings, occupancy and price trends, length-of-stay and booking-window patterns, and market conventions on discounts, cleaning fees and cancellation policies. Two case studies, the two-bedroom market in Waco, Texas and the four-bedroom market at Big Bear Lake, California, show the process end to end.
The full lesson text below is an edited transcript of the video, published 2026-08-24. The complete course is free at the playbook.
Thirteen items, five steps
A market dashboard in a dynamic pricing tool such as PriceLabs presents around 36 individual data items across seven sections. The good news: covering 13 of the 36 is sufficient for a meaningful analysis, whether assessing a new market or working on the pricing strategy for a listing already in one. They group into five steps, in a deliberate order.
Step one is the listing map and comp set section, because the comp set gets created first: with that done, the rest of the analysis can move freely between market, bedroom-category and comp-set views of the same data. Step two is the number of active listings across the last 365 days, read together with the active listings graph, at both bedroom and comp-set level, to establish the market’s supply and demand situation. Step three is the future occupancy, bookings and cancellations graph alongside the future price graph: the information here is central to pricing, especially when setting actual price points, and it amounts to a comprehensive market pricing and occupancy summary.
Step four is length of stay by stay date and length of stay versus booking window, both to learn the market and to inform length-of-stay and minimum stay decisions. Step five is the market’s conventions: weekly and monthly discounts, cleaning fees and cancellation policies, to identify guest and operator preferences and refine the strategy further.
Comp set construction is a discipline of its own, so both case studies that follow work one level up, at the bedroom-category market level: the two-bedroom market in Waco, Texas, and the four-bedroom market at Big Bear Lake, California.
Waco: supply up 20%
The headline KPI reports 251 active listings in the two-bedroom market over the last 365 days, and the natural assumption is that 251 listings are currently active. The supply and demand table underneath tells the real story. In November a year earlier the market held roughly 148 to 150 two-bedroom listings; that climbed to about 180 by April, and the comparable current figure sits near 185. Year over year that is roughly 35 more listings, close to a 20% increase in supply. The 251 headline counts everything that entered or left the market during the year, which is why it overstates the standing supply.
The 20% matters. Any comparison against the prior year, whether revenue, occupancy or earning potential, is being made against a market that has since grown by a fifth. That is not something to underestimate: supply and demand move as a relationship, and a fifth more supply competing for the same guests has to be accounted for in every number that follows.
Waco: a weekend market
The future occupancy graph makes the first pattern obvious: demand is much higher for weekends than for weekdays. Weekend occupancy peaks run at 80, 83, 85, even 87 to 89%, while midweek sits around 45 to 50%. The first message is simply that this is a market where weekends are more popular than weekdays.
The next pass looks for seasonality and key dates. Over the summer holidays, June through August, the gap between weekend and weekday occupancy narrows: more midweek activity, consistent with holiday travel. A distinct spike shows around mid-May, a full week of strong occupancy that reads like an annual event with guests booking by the week. Thanksgiving weekend performs well, and the pattern repeats across years: an earlier Thanksgiving shows 61% occupancy, elevated even if not the strongest on record. That is the method: find the midweek-versus-weekend split, the seasonal shape, the key dates, and the peaks that betray local events and public holidays.
The conclusion for a Waco operator: the money has to be made on weekends. But a midweek floor of 40 to 50% almost year-round is genuinely respectable. Some markets go as low as 10 to 15% midweek, which is cutthroat, Hunger Games territory. Waco instead shows a steady supply and demand situation across the year, with the extra happening on weekends and peak periods.
Waco: the price range
The future price graph echoes the occupancy story. The mid-May spike shows up in pricing too: rates around that week go significantly higher than the rest of the year, especially at the top end of the market. On ordinary dates the bottom of the market is consistent, with the familiar midweek-to-weekend move running from roughly $105 up to $130, and long stretches sitting around $99 to $110, call it $100 on average. Key dates stretch much wider: from about $145 all the way to $490, depending on where in the market a listing sits. Every percentile follows a similar pattern, and the earning potential is real, especially at the higher end.
Waco: stays and booking windows
Length of stay by stay date shows two-night and three-to-four-night stays as the most popular across the year, which fits a weekend-driven market: weekends naturally produce two-night stays, with extended weekends and some weekly stays alongside. The May spike shows week-long stays, more evidence of an event. These patterns become the raw material for seasonal minimum stay decisions later.
On booking windows, most bookings arrive two to four weeks or one to two months before check-in, but not dramatically more than in the two-to-six-day window. Some markets produce a steep curve, booking heavily last minute and fading with distance, or heavily six months out and fading toward check-in. Waco takes bookings across the whole range, from same-day check-ins to six months ahead: a consistent demand situation, and a good sign.
Crossing the two dimensions adds one more layer: guests booking four to six months in advance predominantly book three-to-four-night stays, and read from the other side, three-to-four-night stays are mostly booked between one and four months ahead. That is exactly the kind of detail a pricing strategy gets fine-tuned around later.
Waco: discounts, fees, policies
A discount is always money left on the table, so it should only exist where the market requires it: last-minute situations, or a genuine incentive for longer stays. In Waco the majority of listings, and the majority of bookings, involve no weekly discount at all; the next most common band is 6 to 10%. The read is straightforward: this market does not require a weekly discount. If a gesture feels right, 1 to 5% or 6 to 10% is plenty, and since the data does not reveal what any given discount refers to, a promotion run directly on Airbnb is an alternative with more control.
Monthly discounts are even clearer. Zero is the most common offering, and nearly two-thirds of bookings, about 63%, came in at 0% discount: guests booking a month without needing anything knocked off. Offerings run all the way to 46% and beyond, and it is fair to wonder how those listings make money. The interpretation: a good listing in Waco can skip long-stay discounts entirely. If bookings ever slow last minute, that is where a discount might earn its keep, and even then a small one.
Cleaning fees cluster at $61 to $80 and $81 to $100, both listed and booked, and activity drops away sharply past $100. The majority of operators, assuming fees pass through at cost, get a two-bedroom in this market cleaned for under $100. The question for any individual listing is whether its own cleaning costs can live in that range. Slightly above is no problem; sitting at $160 or $180 creates a perception problem on shorter bookings, where a large cleaning line looms next to the nightly rate.
Cancellation policies show supply and demand following almost identical patterns: moderate is the most popular, followed by strict, then flexible. Anything up to strict follows the market. The firm policy is not captured in the PriceLabs data, but it sits naturally between moderate and strict. Where personal preference allows, strict is worth taking, and here the demand for strict policies actually runs higher than the supply. What to avoid is the super strict tiers, which can deter guests from booking at all. One connection worth making: the healthy last-minute demand visible in the booking windows means a cancelled night in Waco can often be re-sold, which is partly why the market tolerates moderate policies; markets without that last-minute cushion trend stricter.
Big Bear Lake: growth with churn
The four-bedroom market at Big Bear Lake, California opens with the same lesson in reading the KPI. The headline reports 137 active listings over the last 365 days, but only about 97 are currently in the market. November a year earlier averaged roughly 93 listings; the comparable current figure is 98. That is five more listings, about 5% growth: not dramatic, simply healthy. In between, supply oscillated, up to 104, back to 98, up to 106, down to 100, up to 110, then a slow slide back to 97.
The gap between 137 and 97 means a meaningful number of listings left the market during the year. Listings arriving, listings leaving, modest net growth: that is the supply picture to carry into everything that follows.
Big Bear Lake: feast and famine
Occupancy is dramatically weekend-driven. Weekend spikes reach 70, 76, even 82%, while midweek collapses to 16, 17, 20, in places under 10%. October runs consistently under 20% midweek. Summer shows a little more midweek life, consistent with guests staying through the week on holiday, and winter is unmistakably the strong season, with the key dates performing: Thanksgiving around 75%, the same strength visible at the same point a year earlier, and Christmas behind it.
A market where midweek occupancy sits that low across most of the year is going to be Hunger Games: really aggressive pricing strategies midweek, and a premium pricing strategy on weekends to make the calendar pay. The graph also shows a handful of recent cancellations, a detail worth holding onto for the cancellation policy decision later.
Big Bear Lake: reading the percentiles
Price and occupancy are best read together, because they correlate. In the December-January peak it is not just demand that rises; pricing rises with it, and the same coupling shows around Thanksgiving. The percentile bands make the structure legible: the 25th percentile is the bottom of the market, the 50th the middle, the 75th the higher end, and the 90th the top performers in the market. In peak season even the lower percentiles command premiums, and the further up the market a listing sits, the wider its price range: more pricing flexibility at the top.
The spread makes the potential concrete. Over the Christmas and New Year’s period, some listings price at $2,500 a night while others in the same market sit at $750. Pick an off-season midweek date instead and the market shows $399, even $250. There are 365 days in the year and the goal is to fill the calendar at premium rates, so the honest read is this: the premiums live on key dates and weekends, and midweek it will be very hard to achieve high prices.
Big Bear Lake: stays and windows
Length of stay by stay date repeats the weekend disparity and adds a ranking: three-to-four-night stays are the most popular across the year, with two-night stays powering the weekend peaks. Stays of seven nights and longer, whether 7 to 14, 15 to 28 or a month plus, come and go: some periods show barely any long-stay demand at all. Christmas and New Year’s pull week-long stays, but three to four nights dominates overall. If a weekend booking can be stretched to a third night, excellent; if not, two nights is what the history supports.
The booking window centres on one to two months ahead, with good demand at two to four weeks and at two to four months: the majority of bookings arrive between two weeks and four months before check-in. There is some activity beyond four months, and some genuinely short-term demand, from same-day check-ins out to a month. The shape is a vague bell curve, neither good nor bad, simply something to acknowledge. Length of stay through this lens confirms the earlier read: two-night and three-to-four-night stays lead, with smaller counts of one-night stays and of the longer brackets.
Big Bear Lake: discounts, fees, policies
On weekly discounts, 0% is both the most offered and the most booked. Offerings run up to 21 to 25% with an outlier at 36 to 40%, and that much deserves a second thought: this is a business, not a charity. If skipping the discount entirely works, do that. Otherwise 1 to 5%, 6 to 10%, even 11 to 15% is the range worth considering. Guests will always book discounts when they exist; that is not the same as the market requiring them.
Monthly discounts are even more decisive. Roughly 40% of offerings carry no discount at all, yet 83% of bookings went to listings without one, close to a testimony that guests here are shopping for quality homes and are willing to pay for them. The whole range up to 46% and beyond is on the market, but nothing from 21% upward was actually booked: worth putting in perspective. The 10-to-15 and 16-to-20% bands do see bookings, the familiar mental convention that a month-long stay deserves something off, but the data speaks for itself. Most listings get away with no discount, 20% is the sensible ceiling if one must be given, and a discount is a reactive tool for when bookings slow, never the opening move.
Cleaning fees run higher here, as expected for a four-bedroom home. Barely anyone in this market cleans under $100; the popular band is $176 to $210, call it the $200 mark, and it stretches to $300 and beyond. The principle stays the same: pass cleaning through at cost, perhaps with a small buffer for the difficult turnovers, and stay inside the market’s range rather than drifting toward $500 or $1,000. The relative perception matters most on short stays: against a one or two-night booking, $300 to $400 of cleaning reads as enormous, and hotels, where cleaning is cheaper anyway, never itemise it at all.
Cancellation policies close it out, and given everything above, the strict side makes sense here: cancellation policies are revenue protectors. Strict is well accepted in this market and makes up the majority of what is on offer; flexible and moderate exist, and a few listings go super strict, which could prove too much if bookings slowed, since guests booking far in advance often want a little flexibility. Sitting at strict, or at the firm policy, matches what the market lists and what gets booked.
Two markets, one method
The process was identical in both markets; the conclusions were not. Waco: supply up about 20% year over year, a 40-to-50% midweek floor, pricing around $100 with key dates reaching $490, no real need for discounts, sub-$100 cleans, and a moderate-led policy market where strict demand outruns supply. Big Bear Lake: 5% growth with real churn, sub-20% midweeks against 70-to-80% weekends, wide percentile spreads peaking at $2,500 nights, discounts again unnecessary, cleans around $200, and strict policies as the standard. Thirteen data points, five steps, and two very different pricing strategies waiting to be built on top of them.