Case study · Short-term rental management

Houst: Retool apps that run property operations for a short-term rental company

Houst manages Airbnb and other short-term rental properties for their owners, from listings and guest vetting to check-ins, cleaning and maintenance, across several markets. We built the internal Retool apps the operations team runs that portfolio from: one dashboard, a map of every property, market data from AirDNA and fast search over BigQuery.

Talk about a project like thisWhat we built

The challenge

What wasn’t working

Houst’s portfolio spans many properties in different markets. Listings, bookings, maintenance and finances lived in separate places, so getting a full picture meant switching between systems.

Pricing decisions needed market data, and the team needed to search a large, growing property dataset quickly.

Routine data checks were done by hand, so mistakes in property records could go unnoticed.

The solution

What we built

Property dashboard

One Retool dashboard for every property: listings, guest bookings, maintenance schedules and financial figures, across all markets.

Properties on a map

A Mapbox map with a marker for each property, showing its location, nearby amenities and comparative pricing.

Market analysis with AirDNA

AirDNA market data brought into the apps, with charts for demand, occupancy, competitor pricing and expected revenue.

Fast search on BigQuery

Property data lives in BigQuery, with search and filters by location, property type, occupancy and more, tuned to stay quick as the dataset grows.

Scheduled data checks

Workflows that check and update property records in BigQuery on a schedule, so listings, bookings and finances stay current.

Alerts on problems

Administrators are alerted when a check finds a discrepancy, so it gets fixed before it causes trouble.

How it works

How the operations team works with the apps

  1. 1

    Open the dashboard

    The team starts from one view of every property, booking and maintenance job.

  2. 2

    Check the map

    Mapbox shows where each property is, with nearby amenities and pricing around it.

  3. 3

    Read the market

    AirDNA data and charts show demand, competitor prices and expected revenue for a property or market.

  4. 4

    Search the portfolio

    BigQuery-backed search finds the right properties by location, type or occupancy in seconds.

  5. 5

    Stay accurate

    Scheduled workflows check the data and alert administrators when something looks wrong.

The result

What changed

  • Listings, bookings, maintenance and finances sit in one place instead of separate systems
  • Pricing and acquisition decisions are made with AirDNA market data to hand
  • Routine property data checks run automatically, with alerts when something is off
  • The apps are modular, so new markets and features can be added as Houst grows

More work

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