Vacation rentals get talked about in revenue. '¥500,000 a month' sounds good; what lands in the owner's account is that line minus a long subtraction. This article walks the subtraction.
We run our own apartments and send managed owners a report with exactly this structure every month. The numbers below are rounded hypotheticals for teaching proportions — real figures move with the property and the season. Take home the structure, not the example.
The structure
From that last line the owner's fixed costs still come out: rent or mortgage, insurance, property tax, and the recovery of the setup investment. Even just carrying the ratio — variable costs eat 50 to 60 percent of revenue — makes any candidate property's arithmetic realistic.
| Line | Example month | Share of revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Gross booking revenue | ¥500,000 | 100% |
| Platform fees | −¥75,000 | 10–18% |
| Cleaning and linen, at cost | −¥60,000 | 8–15% |
| Utilities and internet | −¥25,000 | 3–7% (double in a Sapporo winter) |
| Consumables, small repairs | −¥10,000 | 1–3% |
| Accommodation tax | −¥10,000 | city- and rate-dependent |
| Management (at 20% of revenue) | −¥100,000 | 15–25% |
| Owner's gross take | ¥220,000 | 40–50% is the healthy band |
The four classic leaks
- Cleaning economics: when guests' cleaning fees run below actual turnover costs, a string of one-night two-guest stays loses money per booking. Minimum stays and the cleaning fee are P/L settings, not details
- Averaged-away seasonality: a '40% average' property may really be 80% in winter and 20% in spring. Whether you can carry fixed costs through the trough decides survival — the two-peak curve in the Sapporo article is this point
- Static pricing: at identical occupancy, capturing demand-day rates moves monthly revenue 20–30%. A full-but-unprofitable property is usually a cheaply-filled one
- Small accumulating leaks: unlimited amenities, unmetered utilities, unrevisited insurance. Individually invisible, jointly a tenth of the take
The four numbers worth watching monthly
Revenue, occupancy, ADR, and the take. The most explanatory is ADR: high occupancy on a low rate means underselling; low occupancy on a high rate means over-reaching; both low means the listing and photos. Our monthly reports carry these four plus every cost line and the month's reviews — because, as the fees article says, an operation that will not show you numbers is telling you something.
Ask for a read on your property's numbers