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Nightly rate and occupancy are the easy part. This works through turnover cleaning, platform fees, and debt service to what actually reaches your account. Pre-tax, before depreciation.
| Line | How it is calculated |
|---|---|
| Nights booked | 365 × occupancy |
| Turnovers | Nights booked ÷ average length of stay |
| Gross revenue | (Nightly rate × nights) + (cleaning fee × turnovers) |
| NOI before debt | Gross revenue − platform fee − management − cleaning cost − fixed costs |
| Annual cash flow | NOI before debt − mortgage payment |
Cleaning is the line most models get wrong. Charging a $150 fee and paying a $130 cleaner looks like a $20 gain per stay, but the fee is part of the booking subtotal, so the platform takes its cut of it too. Shorter stays multiply that spread across more turns.
Running several listings and want net-by-property every month rather than one lumped deposit? That is the STR bookkeeping we do.
Book a free consultationPre-tax cash flow. It stops at what lands in your account after operating costs and the mortgage payment. It does not include depreciation, which is a large non-cash deduction on a short-term rental, so your taxable income will usually be far lower than the cash flow shown here — sometimes negative while cash flow is positive.
Airbnb's split-fee structure charges most hosts roughly 3% of the booking subtotal, and the guest pays the rest. Host-only pricing, which is mandatory for many hotel-classified and software-connected listings, runs closer to 14 to 16% with nothing charged to the guest. Vrbo's pay-per-booking model sits around 8% all in. Check your own payout report rather than trusting a default.
It sets how many turnovers you pay for. At 70% occupancy, a listing averaging two-night stays runs roughly 128 turns a year; at seven-night stays it runs about 37. Same revenue, very different cleaning bill. It also affects the seven-day-average test that governs whether the activity is treated as a rental or a business for tax purposes.
Not necessarily, and this is the whole reason short-term rentals get attention. Depreciation, and a cost segregation study if one is worth doing, frequently produce a taxable loss on a property that is cash-flow positive. Whether that loss can offset your other income depends on material participation and the average-stay test, not on the cash flow figure.
General information, not tax or accounting advice. Your situation and current law (which changes) govern; confirm with a qualified advisor.