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You can see the host's response rate and typical response time on the accommodation page.

And some accommodation will have a "lightning" symbol which means you can book instantly without any waiting for communication required.

Yeah, this is why I've been leaning towards regular hotels more and more. You can see dates of availability, and confirmation is instant. With Expedia, I always have that stress factor of "are they going to say yes or no?" and often times I end up placing several inquiries just to cover my bases.

I agree - though there are a lot of airbnb hosts these days who do automatic confirmation. Like hotels, if you booked it, you got it, basically.

Does this mean you typically request same or next day bookings? From my experience, most AirBnB hosts are wary of doing anything last second as they typically need to plan ahead to accommodate a guest.

I had great success in Italy with very short notice bookings (a day or two ahead of time). Most of the places we stayed were set up to be full time rentals, which may make that more feasible.