Buying a short-term rental is a different search than buying a home — you are underwriting income, not just a floor plan. These are the agents, marketplaces, and data tools investors use to find and vet STR property.
This mixes three models on purpose, because a real buying process usually uses all of them: a dedicated STR brokerage, agent-matching networks, and the data platforms you underwrite with. We have labeled each so you know what you are getting — a couple help you buy, and a couple are research tools, not agents.
The largest short-term-rental-specific brokerage in the US, pairing investors with agents who only sell vacation rentals.
Cavmir take: An agent network under eXp, so coverage and quality depend on your market — excellent in their core vacation markets, thinner outside them.
Visit The Short-Term Shop →A short-term-rental brokerage and data platform that matches investors with vetted STR-savvy buyer's agents in their target market, for free.
Cavmir take: A matching layer over a partner-agent network, not one in-house team — so vet the specific agent Chalet pairs you with.
Visit Chalet →A nationwide Airbnb-investment marketplace and data platform that helps investors find, analyze, and finance short-term rentals.
Cavmir take: A data-and-marketplace platform first; the agent help is a referral layer, and its projections are estimates — verify comps independently before you buy.
Visit Rabbu →The best-known short-term-rental data platform, providing the occupancy, rate, and revenue estimates investors use to underwrite deals.
Cavmir take: A data and analytics tool, not a brokerage — it does not sell property. Use it to research and underwrite, then bring an agent from elsewhere on this list.
Visit AirDNA →A high-volume Seattle-area brokerage with a dedicated STR-investor buyer's-agent practice for income-property purchases.
Cavmir take: Regional — Seattle and the Eastside only, not national. A strong pick if you are buying in Puget Sound, not relevant elsewhere.
Visit RexMont Real Estate →Cavmir is a marketing agency, not a real-estate brokerage, and this is not investment or real-estate advice. Revenue projections from any data tool are estimates — verify comps and local short-term-rental rules independently before you buy.
An STR purchase has two failure modes: buying the wrong property, and buying the right property on the wrong numbers. The agent protects you from the first, the data from the second, and neither replaces the other. Here is the vetting that separates help from salesmanship.
Do you own or operate short-term rentals yourself? How many STR transactions have you closed in this specific market in the last year? Will you show me the underwriting behind the listing you are excited about — not the brochure, the numbers? What do you know about the permit caps, zoning overlays, or pending ordinances here? And can you introduce me to the local bench — cleaners, handymen, managers? That last one is a quiet test: an agent with no operational network has never had to make one of these properties actually run.
Revenue estimates from platforms like AirDNA and Rabbu are modeled from active-listing data, which makes them strong for comparing markets and property types and weaker for predicting one specific address. Ask what the estimate is built on and how deep the comp sample runs in your submarket. Look at seasonality curves, not just the annual number — a market that earns its year in ten weekends is a different business. Then cross-check the model against the real calendars and rates of three to five comparable live listings before you trust it.
Guaranteed revenue anywhere in a listing sheet. Projections nobody will stand behind in writing. An agent who has never once asked whether the property can be legally permitted — that question should arrive before the showing, and our free permit data makes it easy to check yourself. And buying into a market where you have not priced a cleaning: operations are what turn paper returns into real ones, and cleaning capacity is the first place paper meets reality.
They are estimates modeled from listing data — genuinely useful for comparing markets and property types, and honest tools when used that way. For a single address they carry real error bars, and a new listing ramps rather than earning the mature comp's number in month one. Underwrite below the estimate and stress-test the deal in our ROI calculator with the pessimistic inputs before you write the offer.
A good generalist can close the transaction. Specialists earn their fee on the parts a generalist never touches: revenue reality by street, permit awareness, and an operational network you inherit on day one. Either way, verify the permits and the numbers independently — it is your capital, and no commission structure in the world makes someone else responsible for your underwriting.
Four things, in order: whether the market will legally let you operate — start with our free permit data and the licensing guide; what comparable live listings actually earn across a full season; what insurance and financing genuinely cost for that property; and whether the deal still clears the ROI calculator with conservative inputs. If it survives all four, you are not gambling — you are buying a small business.
Cavmir is a marketing agency, not a brokerage or investment advisor. This is a homework list, not a recommendation to buy — verify everything independently before committing capital.
Finding the deal is step one. Turning it into a listing that books and a brand that earns repeat guests is where we come in.
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