What the platform actually takes now, why occupancy assumptions sink people, and the rules that change under you.
Occupancy and nightly rate are set by the area, the season and the competing supply — not by how nice you make it. Pull real comparable data for your specific zip code before you buy or sign anything, and model at the market's actual occupancy rather than the one that makes the spreadsheet work.
Nothing else moves the needle in year one. Price low enough to fill the calendar and collect reviews, because search placement follows review count and recency far more than it follows your photos. This is the one season where being cheap is the strategy.
The second property doesn't double the work, it changes its nature — you need a cleaner who can cover both, a lockbox and messaging setup that runs without you, and a pricing tool. Owners who add a second door before building that end up with two badly-run listings instead of one good one.
At three or four listings the 15.5% becomes a real line item, and a direct-booking site with repeat guests and an email list starts paying for itself. Co-hosting other owners' properties is the other route: revenue without buying more real estate.
| Revenue stream | Pays | Scales |
|---|---|---|
| Nightly bookings (Airbnb/Vrbo) Real demand you cannot otherwise reach. Necessary early; expensive to depend on forever. | Minus 15.5% | Excellent |
| Direct bookings The same night, worth 10+ points more. Every repeat guest should be routed here. | ~3–5% all-in | Good |
| Mid-term stays (30+ nights) Travelling nurses, relocations, insurance placements. Often falls outside short-term lodging rules and tax — check locally. | Lower nightly, near-zero churn | Excellent |
| Cleaning fee Not income. Price it at actual cost — marking it up costs you bookings and you now pay platform fee on the markup. | Pass-through | None |
| Add-ons Early check-in, pet fee, mid-stay clean, parking. The cheapest revenue you have. | Small, high margin | Medium |
| Co-hosting / management Income from properties you don't own. Your systems are the product, not the real estate. | 10–25% of owner revenue | Good |
This is the most regulation-exposed business in this set, and the rules are LOCAL and change often. In Florida, operators renting for under 30 days more than three times a year generally need a state DBPR vacation-rental license (roughly $170–180 a year), must collect 6% state sales tax plus a county tourist development tax of about 1–6%, and must register with both the Department of Revenue and the county tax collector. Florida's preemption statute stops cities from newly banning or restricting rental duration and frequency — but ordinances already in place before 1 June 2011 are grandfathered, so a handful of cities are far stricter than the state framework suggests. Elsewhere, whole cities have effectively ended short-term letting by ordinance. Add HOA and condo rules, which can prohibit it outright regardless of what the city allows, and insurance and mortgage terms that often exclude it. Verify at the ADDRESS, in writing, before you buy. And since May 12, 2025 the FTC's fees rule requires any nightly price you advertise, on your own booking site too, to include every mandatory fee, the cleaning fee among them; only taxes and optional extras may be added later.
Run this against real numbers → The same handbook inside the tool, on a worked example you can swap for your own spreadsheet. Free, no account.Figures are sourced from published industry research (IBISWorld, trade associations and regulator data) and are stated with their year. They describe typical conditions, not your situation. This is general information for business owners, not financial, tax, or legal advice.