Analyze a short-term rental
Enter your nightly rate, occupancy and operating costs in Deal Analyzer to see cash flow, break-even occupancy and, optionally, month-by-month seasonality.
Use the Short Term Rental strategy when you plan to rent a property by the night. This page covers the sections specific to a short-term rental. The steps every strategy shares are in Run the numbers.
What you need
Section titled “What you need”| Fields | |
|---|---|
| Required | Property Address, City, State, ZIP Code, Purchase Price, Average Daily Rate (ADR) |
Required fields have a red asterisk, and Analyze My Deal stays disabled until they are filled in. If some fields are missing, you see Score withheld instead of a Deal Score, with a banner listing what to add. If you check Cash Purchase, the loan fields are not needed.
Enter your short-term rental
Section titled “Enter your short-term rental”In Deal Analyzer, under Select Your Investment Strategy, select Short Term Rental, then pick the property address under Property Information.
Enter the Purchase Price, Down Payment %, Closing Costs, Interest Rate % and Loan Term (Years). Check Cash Purchase for an all-cash deal.
Enter your Furnishing / Startup Costs (furniture, linens, kitchen, smart locks). They are added to the cash you invest. Then enter:
- Average Daily Rate (ADR): your base nightly rate.
- Occupancy %: the annual average.
- Available Nights / Year: reduce it from 365 for owner-use or blocked days.
- Avg Length of Stay (nights): this sets how many turnovers you have.
- Cleaning Fee Charged to Guest: the per-stay fee. Check Cleaning fee is a pass-through to the guest if cleaning should net to zero, or leave it unchecked if you absorb the cleaning cost.
Check Model seasonality (12 monthly inputs) to enter an Occ % for each month from Jan to Dec, and an optional ADR (opt), instead of one annual occupancy.
Enter Property Management % and Channel / Platform Fees % (the fee your booking site takes), Cleaning Cost per Turnover, and monthly Supplies / Consumables, Utilities, Internet / Streaming and Software / Subscriptions. Add Repairs & Maintenance %, HOA (monthly), Property Tax (annual) and Insurance (annual). For Lodging / Occupancy Tax %, check Host absorbs lodging tax only if you pay it yourself. By default it is treated as a pass-through and left out of your costs.
Under Market Data (optional), enter the Market ADR and Market Occupancy % of comparable rentals in the area.
The button is in the results column on the right.
Chat with Annie appears on the Revenue & Setup and Market Data sections to help with realistic rates and occupancy. Check Comps is in the Property Information header. Short-term rentals have no ARV, so comps are for reference. See Check comps and set ARV.
Read the results
Section titled “Read the results”The Investment Summary shows:
- Monthly Cash Flow.
- Cash-on-Cash ROI.
- Cap Rate.
- Break-even Occupancy: the occupancy you need to cover your costs, with your margin above or below it in brackets.
A Deal Summary card shows your Total Investment. Then these sections open and close:
- Revenue (Annual): ADR, RevPAR, booked nights, turnovers, rental revenue, cleaning revenue (when you charge it) and Gross Revenue.
- Operating Expenses (Annual): each cost you entered, then Total Operating Expenses and Net Operating Income (NOI).
- Financing & Cash Invested: monthly mortgage, down payment, closing costs, furnishing and startup, and Total Cash Invested.
- Seasonality: only if you turned it on. It shows Months Cash-Flow Positive as a count out of 12, plus each month.
The badge next to the score reads Excellent Deal, Good Deal, Fair Deal or Poor Deal. See Deal Score for how to use it.
Save the deal to your pipeline
Section titled “Save the deal to your pipeline”Select Save to Pipeline, at the top of the page or under the Deal Score. Fill in every required field first.