For property owners
Short-term rentals as they really are, from running our own
What we have learned from running our own apartments, shared in the hope it is useful to owners of short-term rentals.
Staying in your own rental: blocking seven nights stops about 5.9 nights of sales
The main cost of staying in your own property is not the clean, it is the nights that would have sold: about 5.9 of every seven on our average. How the month changes that, when to say so, and what to ask before you go.
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Winding down a rental in Japan: close it in the reverse order you opened it, sales first and the permit last
A rental closes in the reverse order it opened. The first move is to set the last night and stop selling beyond it; the permit is the last. Why the calendar is already booked weeks past the day you decide, and what changes between selling, letting and moving in.
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Noise sensors and entrance cameras: outside the door at most, and only what the listing says
No camera inside a room, and anything outside the door goes into the listing. The devices our six rooms actually carry, who to ask at each kind of entrance, and what a noise sensor can and cannot tell you.
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Choosing a cleaning contractor: 37.8% of our checkouts fell on weekends and holidays
You cannot choose a cleaner by the price per clean. Of 490 checkouts across our six rooms, 185 (37.8%) fell on weekends and national holidays, and so did 21 of the 51 days when three or more rooms emptied at once. What to settle before the first booking.
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Whole house or room by room: our whole-house listing in Kameari sold 2 nights in twelve months
Our house in Kameari is listed three ways: ground floor, upper floor and whole house. In twelve months the whole house sold 2 nights, while the two floors were taken by different guests on 196. Why we keep the whole-house listing anyway, and where splitting costs nights.
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Whose name the booking-site accounts are in: our 398 reviews belong to accounts, not to buildings
Reviews build up in an account, not in a building. Whether that account is yours or the manager's decides what you still have on the day the manager changes. It is decided once per platform, and there are six things to check before you sign.
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A leak or a blackout at 2am: the first job is not the repair, it is stopping the damage and deciding whether the room is safe tonight
In a night emergency the first job is not the repair. It is stopping the damage and deciding whether the room can be slept in tonight. In August our own rooms had about three free nights each, so a moved guest usually goes to a hotel. The order of the first hour, and what to check before signing.
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Sheets and towels at a rental: decide by how many sets seven or eight changeovers a month need, not by the price of a set
The linen method is decided by turnover, not by the price of a set. Our six rooms change over seven to eight times a month each, and 66.3% of checkouts were followed by an arrival the same day. How many sets each method needs, the days it jams, and why Sapporo in winter is different.
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From booking to bank account: a booking made a median 42 days ahead turns into money only after the guest arrives
No money moves on the day a booking comes in. Our bookings arrive a median 42 days before the guest does, and platforms pay out after the stay begins. Why the arrival month and the payout month differ, what you pay before the money lands, and the gap after opening.
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What an owner still does after hiring an operator: the seven or eight changeovers a month go, the building and the tax return stay
Hand a rental to an operator and the guests, cleaning, pricing, listings, supplies and small repairs move across. What stays is the building itself, the decision on major repairs, the building insurance and the income tax return. Where the line blurs, and five lines to draw before signing.
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Foreign guests at a Japanese rental: our last 50 reviews came in seven languages, and what matters is the message before arrival
Of our last 50 guest reviews, 25 were in English and only 5 in Japanese; the rest came in five other languages. What looks after a foreign guest is less a multilingual team than one short message before arrival and a way of explaining Japan's house rules before they matter.
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Whose name the utilities are in: electricity at 2.7% and gas at 0.7%, decided by who gets the bill
The name on a utility contract decides less about the price than about who receives the bill and who can cut the supply. Across our six rooms, electricity was 2.7% of revenue and gas 0.7%. What each option changes, and the handover order that never darkens an occupied room.
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How many rooms an operator can run: the ceiling is set by 51 days, not by the monthly total
What limits an operator is not the monthly total. Across our own six rooms over 365 days, three or more rooms checked out on the same day on 51 of them, and the peak was five. The deadline is five hours wide. How we decide intake, and seven questions worth asking before you sign.
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The day something stops working: repairs were 1.0% of revenue, and six of twelve months were zero
Equipment breaks. Whether the cost line stays small is decided in the hours after it breaks, not by the equipment. Ours was 1.0% of revenue over twelve months, with six months at zero and one at 4.7%. This is what we do on the day.
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Where the bookings came from: 92.2% of 1,650 nights through one platform
Channel mix is not a question of how many sites a property is listed on. It is a question of what share of the nights sits on one of them. Ours was 92.2% Airbnb, 7.6% Booking.com, 0.1% direct, and this is what that concentration costs.
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From first enquiry to opening: three to six months to the permit, four and a half to eight to the first booking
The calendar is not spent on paperwork. It goes on construction, on inspections, and on the six weeks between listing a property and the first booking arriving. From three of our own launches: how to back-date the opening, and the four places a schedule gets re-done.
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The monthly owner report: collapse it into one line and you lose Tokyo at 60.0% against Sapporo at 83.3% in the same month
A monthly report earns its place by letting the owner decide what changes two months out, not by reassuring them. Here is why ours is built from six blocks, argued from twelve months of our own numbers.
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Difficult guests: the line is drawn at how something is demanded, not at what is demanded
We do not publish a count of harassment cases, because we have never recorded one in a form anybody could check. What we can set out is where the line is drawn, and what happens on either side of it, following the policy we publish.
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Photographs and listing copy: of the 518 pictures across our eight listings, eight do the work in search
Our eight listings carry 518 photographs, and eight of them are what a searcher is guaranteed to see. How much a better photo set lifts bookings is not measurable even at our size. Here is why, and what we build to instead.
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Who sets the nightly rate, and how often: we review every day, and at a 42-day median today's price mostly sells the month after next
We review the rate on our six rooms every day and keep no seasonal rate card. A tool proposes, a person decides. Why a 42-day median lead time means today's price mostly sells the month after next, and which levers move before the price does.
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Who pays the accommodation tax, and when: 6.8% of revenue in Sapporo against 0.1% in Tokyo, over the same six months
The guest pays it, the accommodation collects and remits it, so it does not come out of an owner's profit. What it does do is add a monthly count, and whatever is under-collected turns into a real cost. Our three Tokyo rooms ran 0.1% of revenue and our three Sapporo rooms 6.8% over the same six months.
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Furnishing a rental: supplies and repairs run 5.4% of revenue, and 60% of that lands in four months of the twelve
What you spend on furniture at the start does not set your monthly average. It sets when the replacement months arrive and how high they are. Our own 4.4% consumables and 1.0% repairs, broken out month by month.
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Rubbish at a Japanese rental: collection closes at 8am, checkout is 11, so the last bag is always ours
Collection closes at 8am and our checkout is 11, so a departing guest can never catch the truck. Why rubbish ended up handled three different ways in our three buildings, what to look for at a viewing, and the five questions to put to the city.
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Distance to the station: you cannot discount your way out of it, so all six of our rooms sit inside a five-minute walk
Our three buildings stand 30 seconds from Heiwajima station, about 5 minutes from Kameari and 4 minutes from Kita-18-jo. That was chosen, not inherited. What the walk does to your pricing and to your costs, how it shows up in reviews, and how to measure it honestly at a viewing.
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Kita ward, Sapporo: not walking distance to the nightlife, but four minutes to the subway and room for five
We run three apartments in a residential part of Sapporo, four minutes from a subway station and four subway minutes from the centre rather than a walk from the nightlife district. Giving up that walk changes who books, and that changes both the quiet months and the complaints. What actually changes, from the operating side.
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Ota, Tokyo: the airport timetable decides how long people stay, and that decides everything else
We run a room ten minutes by train from Haneda Airport. Airport demand makes stays shorter, and shorter stays change both the framework you can use and the number of times the room is cleaned. What actually changes, from the operating side.
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Katsushika, Tokyo: off the tourist map, five minutes from the station, and it fills
We run a house about five minutes from Kameari station as a ground floor, an upper floor, and the whole building. What makes a ward off the tourist map fill, what to check first, and which properties we can take, from the side that operates one.
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Starting a rental in Japan: ten steps, ordered by how cheaply you can still walk away
Sort the steps not by what they cost but by how cheaply you can still stop. The first five spend only time; from the sixth, the money sticks to the building. The ten steps, from three of our own launches.
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The properties we turn down: five reasons decided at the inspection, and why a no is cheaper for both sides
We turn some properties down at the inspection. Location, framework, cleaning economics, building and neighbours, mismatched expectations: for each of the five, what decides it and whether it can be fixed.
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Reading a management contract: eight clauses that set the price of leaving
The price of a contract is set on the day you leave, not in the fee column. Eight clauses decide it: the listing account, photographs, notice, straddling bookings, the definition of revenue, penalties, the figures you are handed, and whose name the furniture and lock are in. For each: where to look, and what happens if it is not written.
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Master lease or management: who carries the empty month, and what is left when the contract ends
The difference is not the rate. It is who carries an empty month, whose name the permit and the listing account are in, and what an owner is left holding on the day the contract ends. We lay out our own month-to-month occupancy swing and say plainly which owners are better served by a master lease.
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Self-managing or hiring an operator: with one property near home, doing it yourself usually wins
Odd for a management company to say, but with one property near home, running it yourself often leaves more in your pocket. The fee is a bigger line than cleaning, and it earns its keep only once distance, property count and nights stack up. Here is where the line sits, in numbers.
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Seasonality: in one city, the best month is 1.3 to 1.4 times the worst
The seasonal trough looks small in a company-wide figure, because Tokyo and Sapporo move in opposite directions and cancel each other out. An owner with one building has no such cancellation, so the cash plan has to be built on that city's worst month rather than on an annual average.
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An average stay of 3.3 nights: a long-stay discount stops paying at about 9%
A booking runs 3.3 nights on average. Merging two of them into one saves a changeover, but that changeover is worth only 0.58 nights, so past a discount of about 8.8% the saving is gone.
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Booking lead time: a median of 42 days, so next month is already half sold
The median gap between booking and arrival is 42 days, exactly six weeks. Next month's occupancy is therefore half decided today, and anything done at the last minute happens only on the remainder.
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Operating costs: 27.9% of revenue, and one line outweighs the other six
Managing operating costs is, in practice, managing one line. Our own 27.9% broken out, the four lines that are not in it, and the order to rebuild the ratio for a property of your own.
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Occupancy: an 83.6% average that never once happened in a month
Occupancy is a number you can buy by lowering the price, so it means nothing without the rate beside it. Why our 83.6% swings 14.0 points month to month, and why a 15% discount only breaks even at 98.4% occupancy.
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Winter in snow country: the hard month is November, not February
The hardest part of a snow-country winter is not February with a metre on the ground. It is November, our weakest month of the year at 68.3%, which is when the whole winter bill arrives. Twelve months from our own three rooms.
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Guest ratings: you do not raise an average, you stop lowering it
A rating is a lagging number, so it is not raised, it is stopped from falling. Why six rooms run by one team spread 0.19 apart, and how many fives it takes to cancel a single three.
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Key handover at a Japanese rental: three buildings, three methods
Installing a smart lock does not end the key problem. Why our six rooms ended up on three different methods, what actually fails at the door, and the part that is closed by people rather than hardware.
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Neighbour complaints at a rental: the four that actually arrive
There are few varieties of complaint and they cluster in time. What the pre-opening walk actually changes, what we do in the first hour, and which complaints booking rules prevent.
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Does a rental need 24-hour guest response, and what happens at 3am
Round-the-clock reception is necessary. Keeping a person awake around the clock is not. What actually arrives at 3am, where a human has to get involved, and what it takes to run it yourself.
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Insurance at a Japanese rental: 0.4% of revenue, for the worst day
Insurance is the smallest line we publish, 0.4% of revenue. It is also the only line that pays for the worst day. How we think about coverage, how guest damage really gets paid for, and what to ask before signing.
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Fire inspections after opening: the calendar a licensed rental lives on
The day the permit is issued is the best condition the fire equipment will ever be in. Our three buildings' inspection calendar, how the contractor cycle works, and what we check at every turnover.
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Cleaning: the largest cost line in a Japanese rental, and how it actually runs
The biggest operating cost is cleaning: 17.5% of revenue across our own six rooms over twelve months. What seven or eight turnovers a month contain, and where cutting the price shows up instead.
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What property management costs in Japan, and what you keep
Comparing headline percentages is not comparing. Here are the four fee models used in Japan, and what each one leaves in your pocket when revenue moves.
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Getting a hotel-business permit in Japan, step by step
Three buildings, three municipalities, three permits. The order nobody puts in the brochure, what it actually cost us, and how to spot a property that will never qualify.
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Switching management companies without pausing your bookings
The fear that keeps owners in bad contracts is losing bookings and reviews. Whether it is justified comes down to one thing: whose name the listing account is in. How to check, and the handover order that never takes you off sale.
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Turning an empty Japanese house into a licensed rental
The question is not whether an empty house can become a rental, but whether it is worth it. What the first thirty minutes of checking decides, real cost ranges, and the cases where the answer is no.
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Permit or notification: which framework should an owner choose?
This choice is not about which paperwork is lighter; it is investment design. What the 180-night cap does to the numbers, which properties suit which framework, and the practical sequencing move most articles miss.
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The monthly P/L of a vacation rental, line by line
'The revenue is there but nothing is left' almost always traces to the same few lines. The monthly P/L line by line, with typical ratios and the four classic leaks.
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Tokyo's 23 wards: why there is no such thing as 'Tokyo rules'
The most dangerous assumption in Tokyo is that 'Tokyo rules' exist. Each ward layers its own limits on the national framework. The overlay patterns, the permit route around them, and the checking order that works in any ward.
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Starting a vacation rental in Sapporo: the operator's view
Sapporo is a different business from Tokyo: thinner competition, better price-to-rate ratios, deep seasonal swings, and a winter that runs on snow shovels. What to know before starting, from someone who operates there.
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Owning a Japan rental from abroad: about seven arrivals a room, every month
Distance does not reduce the work at the property. Across our own six rooms a room is opened by a new guest about seven times a month, and every one of those times is physical. What that means for a non-resident owner: which framework you can run on, what the monthly report has to contain, and where we are the wrong choice.
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