Airbnb just changed how cancellations work and I need to rethink my numbers before I wire anything into this space

Your revised cancellation assumption is the right call, and your instinct to wait for real post-change data before committing $285k is exactly the kind of discipline that keeps a deal from turning into a lesson.

A quick definition for anyone following along: a cap rate (capitalization rate) is the property's annual income divided by its purchase price, before financing. At 6.8%, a $285k cabin would need to produce roughly $19,400 in net operating income per year to hold that rate. When you shave $4,500 to $5,500 off gross revenue before expenses, the actual cap rate you end up holding could slide noticeably below 6.8%, depending on how your expense stack looks.

The extenuating circumstances exposure is the part I'd flag separately. The strategy guide notes that STR returns are more sensitive to platform policy changes than most investors model for going in, precisely because a single policy update can reprice a core assumption overnight. You've already done that repricing, which puts you ahead of most people at this stage.

One thing your question didn't quite land on: occupancy assumptions and cancellation assumptions interact. If the new policy also affects how guests book in the first place (booking windows, refundable vs. non-refundable rate selection), your gross $62k projection may carry a second layer of drift that isn't just about refund bleed. Worth asking any Hocking Hills hosts whether they're seeing a shift in booking lead time or rate tier selection since the policy change, alongside the refund numbers.

I can't tell you whether this deal makes sense for your situation, and nothing here is a projection of what you'd actually earn.

What does your expense load look like below that $62k gross? That number would help frame whether the revised cancellation buffer changes the picture materially or just tightens the margin.

The assumption doing the most work is not the cancellation rate itself but the gross projection of $62k, because that number almost certainly comes from comparable listings that were built under the old policy terms and may not yet reflect demand softening from guests who now face stricter non-refundable conditions. Some guests book more cautiously when they know they cannot recover the nightly rate on a short-notice cancel, which can suppress booking velocity on the front end, not just increase the refund bleed you are already modeling on the back end. At a 6.8 cap going in, your margin for a gross revenue miss plus the revised cancellation drag is thin enough that the two effects together could push your effective yield below what justifies the illiquidity. The two months of post-change data you are waiting on is the right instinct, and I would specifically ask hosts to separate out their extenuating circumstances claim losses from their standard cancellation losses, because the policy change treats those buckets differently and the blended refund number hides which one is moving.

What does your current expense stack look like as a percentage of that $62k gross, and have you stress-tested the cap rate at, say, $55k gross to see where the acquisition price would need to land for the deal to still make sense?

The unmodeled risk is that the new extenuating circumstances window resets your nightly rate anchor if refunded nights get re-listed below your original price to fill gaps quickly.

The structure worth comparing here is waiting two to three months for clean post-policy data versus writing an offer now with a due diligence period long enough to collect it. If you can negotiate 60 to 75 days of inspection period on a $285k cabin where the seller is motivated, you spend that time pulling AirDNA comps from active Hocking Hills hosts, requesting actual payout histories from two or three operators willing to share, and stress-testing the revised gross at both your 12 percent and a harder 15 percent bleed scenario before your earnest money goes hard. The waiting-on-the-sidelines path keeps your cash clean but costs you the option on this specific asset, which matters if Hocking Hills inventory at that price point is thin. The under-contract path costs you negotiating leverage if the seller reads the extended DD as a signal to shop the listing, so the tradeoff is really about how replaceable this particular cabin is versus how much you trust projections built on data you do not yet have. At a 6.8 going-in cap with a $4,500 to $5,500 gross haircut already penciled, there is not a lot of cushion for the platform to move the extenuating circumstances threshold again in a year, which it has done before.

How firm is that $285k ask, and does the seller have any operating history from prior STR use on the property you could request as a disclosure item?

The piece missing from your cap rate math is that a tighter platform cancellation policy tends to shift guest behavior toward booking further out with longer minimum stays, which can actually reduce refund bleed while also changing your occupancy curve in ways that hurt shoulder-season fill. Those two effects can partially cancel each other, and right now you have no Hocking Hills data to know which one dominates at that price point.

One structure worth running in parallel while you wait: approach the seller about a lease-option or extended inspection period with a nominal deposit, so you are not fully on the sidelines for two months while someone else closes it. What flexibility has the seller shown on timeline so far?