How do I find comparable listings to Air BnBs like mine?

[Imani15]

I live in Jersey City by Journal Square (25 min from Manhattan). I rent out my apartment as a shared space (meaning, I’m still living in the apartment while the guest shares the space with me. However, the guest takes the bedroom while I take the living room).

i charge $40/night, $28 for an extra person and a $25 cleaning fee. I get great reviews. However, i want to increase my prices. Should I? If so, what should I charge?

[Linda108]

As a host, pricing is number one in running a successful business, right?  While I do look at the various types of information provided by Air BNB, I have been hosting long enough to trust my own investigations.  Every once in while, especially if I am noticing that I am not getting enough inquiries or bookings, I will go to the search engine and put in the general criteria similar to mine and see what the nightly rate is.  I  then look into each listing to see the quality of the listing and the reviews for the host.  It takes some time, but it is useful for my pricing.  Hope this idea helps you.

[Mark116]

@Imani15  Hi,  we're fairly close to you, but renting out an entire apartment. 

I would just do a search for Jersey City listings that are similar to yours and use that as a guideline on the price.  I do find that the search algo for our area seems very price sensitive, every time we've tried to raise our price, despite great reviews/super host/accepting 97% of requests, we drop down really far in the search, and even w/out raising our prices we're very, very far below the average for page views, etc.

[Imani15]

hm...that's so interesting. Thank you for your response!