How do you track true net profit per property across your STR portfolio?

Question

I self-manage a handful of short-term rentals and I've become a little obsessed with knowing the real net profit on each property — not gross revenue, but what's actually left after cleaning, platform fees, supplies, utilities, and everything else, broken out property by property.

Curious how the investors here handle it. Are you building your own spreadsheet, leaning on your PMS/channel manager reports, using accounting software, or some combination?

And which numbers do you actually make decisions on — occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, net margin, cash-on-cash? I keep going back and forth on which metric tells me the most about whether a property is genuinely earning its keep vs. one that looks busy on the calendar but barely clears anything after expenses.

Trying to get sharper about the "keep it, refinance it, or sell it" call, so I'd love to hear how you all track the money side of your portfolios.

Collin Hays · Answer

I typically take income and subtract expenses. Gives me a decent idea.

Adam Cope · Answer

Really appreciate all of these, and sorry for the slow return to my own thread.

Collin - hard to argue with income minus expenses, and honestly "a decent idea" is where most of us live. The gap I keep hitting is that at the portfolio level it tells me the business is fine while one specific property is quietly dragging. Do you break it out per property, or is portfolio-level enough once you have a feel for each one?

Andrew - that's a useful line to see drawn. At 60 doors you buy the process, at a handful you build it. The part that interests me is PMS + QBO in tandem, because the reservation data and the books never quite reconcile on their own. Is the firm stitching those together manually each month, or is there a real integration doing it?

Bill - ROE is a good call-out. I've been anchoring on net margin and cash-on-cash, and return on equity is the one that actually answers whether a property should stay in the portfolio once it has appreciated. Do you recompute equity annually off an appraisal or AVM, or only at refi time?

Wesley - "occupancy and ADR are dials you turn, not scores" is the cleanest way I have heard that put, and I'm stealing it. The property-as-primary-key point is the one I got wrong for two years: I was tagging by month and category first and then trying to reconstruct the per-property view afterward, which never really worked. Your cleaning fee warning is real too. My highest-turnover unit looked like my best performer on gross and was middle of the pack on net, because every turn was pushing cost through a fee that hadn't moved in over a year. Where do you land on accruing the smaller stuff - do you spread consumables and linen as well, or only genuine capex?

The common thread across all of this seems to be that the math is trivial and the data hygiene is the entire job. Tag by property first, reconcile against the bank rather than the platform, and do it monthly instead of at tax time.

Andrew Steffens · Answer

Im managing over 60 properties so I cannot rely on tracking myself. I have a specialty bookkeeping firm that utilize the PMS and QBO in tandem to do reporting. I think if you have a portfolio it will likely look something similar to what I do but if you are have 1 or a few you can do spreadsheets and/or QB

Ashish Acharya · Answer

Adam, I’d track this at the property level first, then roll everything up into the portfolio. For each STR, I’d want a clean monthly P&L that separates gross booking revenue from cleaning, platform fees, utilities, supplies, repairs, maintenance, management, insurance, property taxes, HOA, and debt service. I’d also keep CapEx separate from normal operating expenses so you don’t accidentally make a good property look bad because you replaced an HVAC or furnished it heavily in one month.

The metrics I’d personally watch most are NOI, true cash flow after debt service, cash-on-cash return, operating margin, occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, and how much cash the property actually distributes after reserves. I’d also compare trailing 12-month performance rather than relying too heavily on one month because STR seasonality can distort the picture.

For “keep, refinance, or sell,” I’d go one step further and compare the property’s current equity to the cash flow it is producing. A property may technically be profitable but still be a poor use of capital if you have a large amount of equity tied up earning a very low return.

From the tax side, I’d also keep depreciation and tax savings visible but separate from operating performance. They matter to the after-tax return, but I wouldn’t use them to hide weak property-level economics.

Feel free to DM me, I’d be happy to send over our Real Estate Portfolio Management Tool. It was built for exactly this kind of property-by-property tracking.

Kasing Ng · Answer

Hi Adam, CPA here, so I will stick to the money side.

Your net profit list is solid, but it is missing the biggest line on an STR: depreciation. It is non cash so it never shows up next to cleaning and utilities, but it is what actually sets your tax bill. With a cost seg and bonus back at 100 percent, it can throw a big paper loss in year one.

And STR has an edge long term rentals do not. If your average guest stay is seven days or less, the IRS does not treat it as a rental for the passive loss rules. Materially participate and those losses can hit other income instead of getting trapped. That is the whole reason people chase the STR label. Easy to get wrong though, so confirm you qualify before you build around it.

The keep, refi, or sell call is really an after tax question, and none of your metrics see it. Occupancy and RevPAR say if the place is busy, net margin says if it clears cash, but neither shows what happens at sale. All that depreciation comes back as recapture when you sell, so the one that looks best to dump on paper can be the worst after tax. A refi pulls the cash out with no tax at all, which is why it beats selling more often than people expect.

If I ran the decision off one number it would be after tax cash on cash, with the recapture you are sitting on noted right beside it.

Simon W. · Answer

For STRs, "gross revenue" is basically a trailer for the real movie. I track each property from gross booking revenue, then pull out platform fees, cleaning and turnover labor, consumables and replenishment, utilities and wifi, channel and software fees, plus supplies, linen, and damage waivers if the owner pays them. What's left is the property operating result before debt. Then I subtract debt service and owner-level items separately.

Useful metrics are occupancy, ADR, RevPAR, and net margin after those fees. Cash-on-cash only after debt and real cash outflows, not after a marketing screenshot.

The practical system is property tags, consistent categories, and a monthly bank reconciliation. If cleaning and platform fees float in a catch-all bucket, you'll never know which door is actually working.

Matthew Tregoning · Answer

We break everything out by property each month.

The PMS gives us the reservation and payout data. The accounting side gives us the actual expenses.

I care most about what is left after rent or debt, cleaning, utilities, supplies, platform fees, refunds, repairs, and operating labor.

Then I compare that with the cash invested in the property.

Occupancy can look great while a property barely earns anything.

Julian Schmidt · Answer

@Adam Cope:

Good question. From portfolios I've analyzed, the tool matters less than the definitions. Most hosts track revenue and the big expenses fine, but net profit gets fuzzy in three places: supplies and small recurring costs, CapEx that hits irregularly, and platform fees that come netted out of payouts instead of as a line item. What works best: one simple P&L per property, same categories everywhere, closed once a month. The interesting part starts when you compare those actuals to the assumptions you bought each property with, that shows which unit really earns its keep. Do you reconcile against your original purchase numbers, or mainly month over month?

Wesley Portegies · Answer

@Adam Cope: "the math is trivial and the data hygiene is the entire job" >>> YES, it's exactly this! You steal my ADR dial phrase, I'll steal this one from you haha!

Re: "Where do you land on accruing the smaller stuff - do you spread consumables and linen as well, or only genuine capex?"

My two cents: I'd say it's all about consistency. Set an amount for yourself above which you accrue. Also, the more regular an expense occurs, the less it matters to accrue it. It's easy to overengineer - we want to get to a point where our data can inform our decision making, rather than it being "perfect" to the last cent.

Johnathan Martinez · Answer

Same boat for a while. Gross revenue is easy to see in your PMS but the real net per property doesn't show up anywhere by default, since Airbnb/VRBO payouts land as one lump sum that bundles nightly rate, cleaning fee, pet fee, taxes, and their commission all together. If you're not breaking that out at the transaction level you're basically guessing.

What's worked for me: track two layers. Revenue side, pull ADR and occupancy straight from the PMS, that's where they're accurate. Expense side, categorize everything down to the property level (cleaning, supplies, utilities, mortgage/insurance, repairs) and reconcile against what actually hit the bank account, not what the platform says you're owed. Net margin per property is the number that actually answers keep/refi/sell. Cash-on-cash only means something once you trust the net number underneath it.

Doing this monthly instead of at tax time is what saved me, a couple properties looked "busy" on the calendar but were quietly bleeding money on turnover costs I hadn't noticed until I started reconciling more often.

Honestly the annoying part isn't the math, it's untangling the payout deposits since Airbnb/VRBO dump it all in as one number. I switched to PnLBnB a while back since it auto-splits the payouts into rate/fees/taxes/commission per property and syncs to the bank feed, but the core answer holds no matter what tool you use: net per property, tracked monthly, not gross, not just at tax time.

How do you track true net profit per property across your STR portfolio?

How do you track true net profit per property across your STR portfolio?

Most Popular Reply

12 Replies