Vacation rental management fees, itemised

The percentage is the part everyone compares and the part that least often decides what you actually pay. This page pulls the fee apart: the three pricing shapes, what the percentage is a percentage of, what sits inside it, what gets invoiced beside it, and the eleven questions that get you to a real number before you sign.

Three pricing shapes, and what each one is really selling

Commission — a share of what the property earns

The dominant model. The company takes an agreed percentage of the revenue the property generates and bills you nothing when it sits empty. It is popular for a good reason: the incentives point roughly the same way. A manager on 25% earns more when your property earns more, so they have a reason to care about your calendar.

Roughly. The alignment is imperfect in one specific way worth knowing about. A manager is optimising a portfolio, not your house. Filling a slow week at a discount is nearly free for them and expensive for you, because they keep a quarter of a cheap booking while you carry all of the wear, the utilities and the turnover cost. When you ask about rate strategy, that is the question underneath the question.

Fixed and flat fees — a price for a service

Less common in vacation rentals than in long-term residential, but it appears in two places. Master leases, where a company pays you a fixed monthly amount and keeps the upside — AvantStay offers one alongside its percentage model, and notably publishes its own article on master-lease risk, which is more candour than the format usually gets. And flat software subscriptions, where you pay per listing per month regardless of what the listing earns.

Flat pricing transfers risk. A master lease transfers it to the operator, which is why the fixed number is lower than your good-year revenue. A flat subscription transfers it to you, which is why it is a bargain on a high-earning property and poor value on one that books six weeks a year.

Freemium and per-percentage software

The newest shape and the one that makes fee comparison genuinely confusing, because the unit changes. Hospitable is free forever at the entry tier and $29 a month for one property. Guesty starts at $9 per listing per month. Turno is free for a single property and $10 a month if you want to use your own cleaners rather than its marketplace — then a 12% upcharge on call jobs on top, which is where it gets expensive. TIDY prices as a percentage — 3.9% of gross bookings with a $39 per month minimum — which behaves like software at low revenue and like a small commission at high revenue.

Two traps live here. The first is per-property escalators: Hospitable's Mogul tier is $99 a month but charges $30 for each property beyond the three included, so a seven-property portfolio is not $99. The second is that a percentage-priced platform scales with your success in a way a flat subscription does not — on a very high-revenue property, a flat $59 a month beats 3.9% of bookings, and we would rather you notice that from us than from an invoice.

What is the percentage a percentage of?

Three different bases are in common use, and the difference between them is worth more than several points of headline rate.

Illustrative arithmetic on our worked example, not any company's quote. The spread between the first and second row is $3,125 a year — more than three points of rate — which is why "what is the fee calculated on?" belongs in the first five minutes of a sales call.

What is usually included, and what usually is not

This is where the 10% versus 25% comparison falls apart. The line items below are the ones we would check on any proposal; the "typical" columns describe the pattern across the companies in our data set, not a guarantee about any one of them.

The pattern to take from that table: the 10–18% companies are buying you distribution and inbox coverage. The 20–35% companies are buying you the physical operation. Software is buying you the coordination layer and nothing physical at all. A fair comparison prices the missing rows rather than ignoring them — see the task-by-task breakdown for what each of those rows involves in practice.

The charges that never appear on a pricing page

Everything below is real, drawn from company materials or named reporting in our data set. Not every company charges every one. The point is to know the shape of the list when you ask.

• Onboarding and setup. Evolve publishes $250 once, plus $25 per additional property. Hostaway's onboarding is reported at $300 to $1,000 or more, unverified because Hostaway publishes nothing. TIDY states no setup fee.
• Furnishing and staging. Awning sells furnishing packages from $3,000. Reasonable for a property being brought to market from empty; a large first invoice if you were not expecting it.
• Maintenance markup. Reported at roughly 10% supervisory markup at VTrips. Ask for the rate and the approval threshold in writing.
• Cleaning margin. The gap between what the guest pays and what the cleaner receives. Sometimes yours, sometimes theirs, almost never stated on a website.
• Linen programmes. Rental or replacement schemes billed monthly or per turnover, common in the larger full-service operators.
• Payment and booking-engine surcharges. On the software side these can meaningfully exceed the headline subscription — Hostaway's payment and booking-engine charges sit on top of the per-listing price, and Turno's 12% upcharge on call jobs plus per-clean marketplace and card fees push the effective cost well above its $10 headline.
• Owner-stay and blocked-night rules. Not a fee exactly, but the same economics. Some agreements limit how many nights you can hold for yourself in peak season, which is a real cost if you bought the place partly to use it.
• Early termination. Master leases are reported to carry early-termination fees. Most percentage agreements do not, but "no early-termination fee" and "no notice period" are different promises — Vacasa's terms require 90 days' written notice and that bookings checking out before termination are honoured.

Who publishes a price, and who makes you ask

We think this is the most useful sort in the whole data set, so we have ordered it by the lowest verifiable rate rather than alphabetically. Everything in this table comes from the company's own published materials.

TIDY sits at the top of this table on rate alone; its row is marked, and the tradeoffs are in the note below the table and on our alternatives page.

Read that ordering carefully, because it is a trap as much as a tool. TIDY at 3.9% and a full-service manager at 25% are not competing on the same axis: TIDY is software that leaves you as host of record with your own cleaners, and a manager is a company that sends a person. Evolve at 10% and Air Concierge's End-to-End tier at around 20% are not the same service either. Sorting by price is how you build a shortlist, not how you finish one. Note also that Houst publishes a low rate but has no current US coverage, and that Awning and RedAwning are the same company showing the same tiers twice.

The 10 that publish nothing

For these companies we could not find a rate in their own materials. Where we quote a figure it comes from third-party reporting or from owners describing what they were quoted, and it should be treated as an estimate rather than a price. We have not filled any of these gaps with a guess. Nine of them are management companies; the tenth is Hostaway, a software platform that quote-gates its pricing by listing count, which we find harder to justify than a franchise network's inability to publish one number.

AvantStay

Not published — an all-inclusive percentage of gross booking revenue, quoted per property; owner-reported at 20–35%. A master-lease alternative pays a fixed monthly amount instead.

Casago

Not published and genuinely variable — each franchisee sets its own rate. Reported figures range from about 18% all-in to 20–30% of gross revenue.

Grand Welcome

Not published; set locally by each franchise office and quoted on request

Hostaway

Not published — quote-gated by listing count. Operator reports put it near $40/listing/month at small portfolios, compressing toward the high teens at scale, plus a one-time onboarding fee commonly $300–$1,000+. Treat all of those as unverified.

iTrip Vacations

Not published; third-party sources cite roughly 25% of booking revenue, but each franchisee sets its own rate

Natural Retreats

Not published — the company states the fee is "variable by destination and revenue potential" and must be discussed directly

Portoro

Not published — the company's FAQ says fees "vary by home and market, with clear, upfront pricing shared as part of a custom proposal"

SkyRun Vacation Rentals

Not published centrally; set by each franchisee. Reported at roughly 20–30% for full service and about 15% for co-management.

Vacasa

Never published — a single "comprehensive fee", widely reported at 25–35% of gross revenue. Now set by the independent franchisee in each market.

VTrips

Not published; third-party reports cite up to about 30% of rental revenue plus a reported ~10% supervisory markup on maintenance work

Opacity is not proof of a bad deal. Franchise networks genuinely cannot publish one number, because each office sets its own, and a bespoke luxury manager arguably should not. But it does mean you cannot comparison-shop without going through a sales process for every candidate — budget the time, and get two or three proposals rather than one so the numbers have something to sit against.

The same house, priced three ways

Our worked example throughout this site is a three-bedroom house in a drive-to coastal market earning $60,000 in accommodation revenue across 150 nights and about 50 stays. Below, the fee is only the first line — we have added the operating costs each model leaves with you, so the rows are comparable as total cost rather than as headline rate.

The last row is the honest one. Everything above it is arithmetic; that row is the product. If you would rather pay $15,660 a year than be the person who answers, hire a full-service manager and stop reading fee comparisons — you are buying a different thing and you should buy it well.

Eleven questions that get you to the real number

1. What exactly is the percentage calculated on — accommodation only, or gross including cleaning and pet fees?
2. Are lodging and occupancy taxes inside or outside that base, and who files them?
3. What is the one-time onboarding, setup or listing-creation charge?
4. Is photography included, and who owns the images if I leave?
5. What does the guest pay for cleaning, what does the cleaner receive, and who keeps the difference?
6. Is there a linen or consumables programme, and is it optional?
7. What markup, if any, is applied to maintenance and repair work, and above what amount do you need my approval?
8. Are there monthly minimums or charges in months when the property does not book?
9. How many nights a year can I block for my own use, and are peak dates restricted?
10. What is the notice period, is there an early-termination fee, and what happens to bookings on the calendar when I leave?
11. Can I see a complete, unredacted owner statement for a comparable property for a full month?

Question eleven is the one that does the work. A company that will show you a real statement is telling you the fee structure survives contact with a real month; a company that will not has told you something too. Our full hiring checklist extends this into contract clauses and reference calls.

Fee questions we get asked

What is the average vacation rental property management fee?

There is no reliable average, because most companies do not publish a rate. What we can say from our data set is that full-service managers are commonly reported between 20% and 35% of accommodation revenue, half-service and hybrid companies publish rates between 10% and 18%, and software runs from free to a few percent of bookings. Anyone quoting you a precise national average is estimating, and usually estimating from the same handful of published rates we are.

Is the management fee charged on the total the guest pays?

Usually not, and this is the single most common misunderstanding. Most agreements apply the percentage to accommodation revenue — the nightly rate multiplied by nights — and exclude lodging taxes. Cleaning fees, pet fees and resort fees are sometimes in the base and sometimes out. Air Concierge's Offsite tier, for example, is explicitly 12% of gross bookings excluding taxes. Ask for the definition in writing, because a 25% fee on a wider base can cost more than a 28% fee on a narrower one.

Do vacation rental managers charge a setup or onboarding fee?

Some do and most do not say. Evolve publishes a $250 one-time onboarding fee, plus $25 for each additional property. Awning sells furnishing packages starting at $3,000, which is a different thing but hits the same first invoice. On the software side, Hostaway onboarding fees are reported at $300 to $1,000 or more, though Hostaway publishes no pricing at all so treat that as unverified. TIDY states no setup fee. Everyone else is a question you have to ask.

Who pays for cleaning between guests?

In almost every arrangement the guest pays a cleaning fee at booking and the cleaner is paid out of it. What differs is whether any surplus goes to you or to the manager, whether linens and consumables are separate, and whether deep cleans, carpet cleaning and post-pet cleans are billed to you on top. Ask to see a real owner statement for a comparable property across a full month — it will answer this faster than any conversation.

Do managers mark up maintenance work?

Some do. VTrips has been reported to add roughly a 10% supervisory markup on maintenance work, and AvantStay bills cleaning and maintenance on top of its percentage. A markup is not automatically unreasonable — coordinating a trade at a property you do not live at is real work — but it should be disclosed as a percentage in the agreement rather than discovered in a statement. Ask for the markup rate and the threshold above which they need your approval.

Which vacation rental managers publish their fees?

In our data set, five of the fourteen management companies state a rate in their own materials: Evolve (10% Core, 15% Plus), RedAwning (10%, 15%, 18%), Awning (from 10% up to 18%, mirroring RedAwning's tiers since the two are one company), Air Concierge (12% remote, around 20% end-to-end) and Houst (from 12%, though Houst has no current US coverage). The other nine publish nothing. Vacasa has never published a rate; the widely reported 25–35% range is exactly that — reported.

Is software cheaper than a property manager?

On the invoice, yes, by a large margin — on a $60,000 property the gap between a 30% manager and a percentage-priced platform like TIDY is well over $15,000 a year. But software does not replace a manager, it replaces the coordination a manager does. You still pay your own cleaners and vendors, you remain the host of record, and you make every judgement call yourself. The right comparison is not software versus manager, it is software plus your own time versus the manager's fee.

Can I negotiate a vacation rental management fee?

Frequently, especially with franchise operators who set their own rates, and especially if you have multiple properties, a high-revenue home, or you are willing to commit to a longer term. What is often more negotiable than the headline percentage is everything around it: the onboarding fee, the maintenance markup, the notice period, the number of owner nights you can block, and whether a below-target first season triggers a review. Negotiate the terms, not just the number.