A co-host wants 20% of my inherited lake cabin. Does that number work?

First thing I would ask is what the 20 percent actually buys. Some co-hosts include listing setup, photography, and a restock run every month. Others take the fee and hand you a shopping list. The word co-hosting covers both and the pitch never says which one you got.

Also ask her how many properties she runs right now and how many she ran a year ago. Twelve is a business. Two is a neighbor with a side income who might stop answering in July.

The gross question is the whole ballgame and you should get it in writing before anything else. Twenty percent of what the guest pays and 20 percent of what lands in your bank account are different numbers, because the platform host fee comes out in between. On 19,950 that gap is a few hundred dollars a year, which is small, but the fact that she pitched a fee without defining the base tells you something about how the rest of the agreement will read.

Cleaning washing out is the other thing I would not accept at face value. The guest pays 145, the cleaner gets paid something, and the difference is either your money or hers. Ask her flat out who keeps the spread and what happens on a two night stay where the cleaner still charges a full turn. I have seen co-hosts run their whole margin out of the cleaning line and quote a soft management percentage on top so the headline number looks friendly.

95 nights at 210 for a lake cabin sounds like a summer number stretched across a calendar. Ask her for the month by month split, not the annual. If 60 of those nights are June through August you are running a business that lives or dies in ten weeks and you need the cleaner locked in before May, because every other owner in that town is calling the same two cleaners.

My team turns places in a mountain market with the same shape. The thing that bit us the first year was not occupancy, it was the shoulder season where you still pay utilities and the listing sits at 90 dollars a night to stay visible in search. Budget for that. Also ask what her response time commitment is at 11pm, and what happens when the hot water heater goes out on a Saturday. Who calls the plumber and who pays the after hours rate. That answer is worth more to you than the difference between 15 and 20 percent.

Nobody in the pitch counted wear. I do trades work and a cabin that turns 30 times a year ages like a house that turns 30 times a year. Door hardware, faucet cartridges, drywall dings from luggage, the deck stain going twice as fast because bare feet and wet towels.

On a place like yours I would carry 1,500 to 2,500 a year in maintenance and small replacements and be pleasantly surprised if it comes in under. That is separate from furnishing. Furnishing a 3 bed to a guest ready standard, mattresses included, is not a weekend and a warehouse store run. I have watched owners do it for 12,000 and watched others land at 25,000 because they bought a hot tub.

Also check the septic if it is on septic. Grandfather's cabin on a two bedroom leach field, suddenly hosting eight people a weekend, is a very expensive surprise.

One thing worth pinning down before you sign anything. Whether a co-host who handles bookings and money on your behalf needs a real estate or property management license depends on the state, and the line is drawn differently place to place. Some states carve out short-term rental management, some pull it under the same license as long-term management, and some look at whether the manager holds your funds. That is a question for an attorney licensed where the cabin sits, and it takes one phone call.

I ask because it changes who is on the hook if something goes sideways. An unlicensed operator in a state that requires licensing usually cannot enforce their own fee agreement, and their insurance may be thin. Ask her directly what she holds and get the number, then check it against the state's license lookup yourself. Takes ten minutes.

Ask who owns the listing. This matters more than the percentage and it is the thing new owners give away without noticing. If she creates the Airbnb account under her profile, your reviews, your ranking, and your booking history live in her account. Season two you either accept her renewal terms or you start from zero as a brand new listing with no reviews in a competitive lake market.

The fix is straightforward. The account is in your name with your bank details attached, and you add her as a co-host with the permissions she needs. She may push back and say her system works better with everything under her roof. That is a real operational point and it is also how leverage gets built against you.

Second thing, put a termination clause with a 30 day out on the first season. If she is good she will not care.

I run the long-term side and I would still tell you the 8 percent versus 20 percent comparison is meaningless as stated. You have to compare net to net.

Long term at 1,450 a month: 17,400 gross, less 1,392 management, less a month of vacancy and turn costs in a typical year, less normal repairs. Call it somewhere in the low 13s if the tenant is decent and nothing breaks. That number is fairly stable and it arrives whether you pay attention or not.

Short term at her comps: 19,950 gross, less her 4,000, less platform fees, less cleaning spread if she keeps it, less consumables at 30 to 40 a turn, less the utility load of a fully occupied house, less insurance that actually covers short-term use, less whatever you amortize the furnishings at. You are running the second business for a lower net in year one and possibly year two.

Where short term wins is when the ADR is a lot higher than the long-term equivalent, and 210 a night against 1,450 a month is not a lot higher. It is roughly seven nights a month to match rent. In strong short-term markets that ratio is three or four nights.

Read the permit ordinance this week before you spend another hour on the spreadsheet. Everything else is downstream of whether you can legally book a night.

Reading through this and something is bugging me. Arbor, do you actually want to run a short-term rental business, or do you want the cabin to pay for itself while you go do the land thing you said you were interested in.

Because the co-host pitch is sold as hands off and it is not hands off in year one. You are buying furniture, reading an ordinance, choosing an insurance policy, and approving a pricing strategy you do not yet have opinions about. The hands off part starts around month eight. If the whole appeal was that someone else does it, notice how much of this thread is things only you can do.

I ran your numbers the way I would underwrite them.

Short term, her comps as given. Gross 19,950. Co-host fee at 20 percent of gross bookings, 3,990. Platform host fee at roughly 3 percent, 600. Consumables at 40 a turn across 30 turns, 1,200. Incremental utilities over a vacant or long-term occupied house, call it 900. Short-term rental insurance premium over a standard policy, call it 600. Maintenance at solder's low end, 1,500. That leaves about 11,160 before you account for furnishings. Amortize an 18,000 furnishing package over five years and you are at roughly 7,600 in year one through five, then it steps back up when you replace mattresses and sofas.

Long term at 13,000 to 13,500 net, which trellis already laid out, beats that comfortably on her own comps.

So the short-term case only works if her comps are conservative. That is the assumption the entire decision rests on. Ask her for three actual comparable listings with visible booking calendars and pull their availability yourself over the next 60 days. If real 3 bed cabins in that pocket are clearing 130 nights at 260, the picture flips hard and the 20 percent stops mattering. If they are clearing 95 at 210, you are paying a fee to earn less than the long-term manager delivers while doing more work.

Do not sign a season on a number someone else produced.

I would take the 20 percent if the comps hold up and fight about the price in year two with your own data.

Total beginner here so forgive the basic question. What does the co-host physically do each day. From this thread I have gathered messaging guests, setting nightly prices, and scheduling the cleaner, but sextant is describing a job that mostly happens in a spreadsheet and cobalt is describing someone taking a call at 11pm about a water heater.

Is that the same person in a small market. Arbor, when she pitched you, did she say anything about being on call, or did she just talk about revenue.