Short-term rental management on Costa del Sol, from licence to payout
Not every property on this coast may be let to tourists, and that is the first thing worth settling. Andalusia, the municipality and the community of owners each hold a veto, and since April 2025 a community can refuse a new short-term rental with a three fifths majority. So we start by checking whether renting is legally possible at your exact address, and only then do we talk about running it. If it is possible, we run the whole thing with our own team and our own cleaners: the licence with your lawyer, the listings, the pricing, every guest, the turnovers, the police registration Spain requires, and one statement a month with the money in your Spanish account. We take 20 % + VAT of each booking, and nothing at all if nothing is booked.
First, whether you are allowed to rent it out at all
Buying a property on this coast and renting it to tourists are two different permissions, and the second one is not automatic. Whether short-term rental is possible at a specific address is decided by three separate authorities, and all three have to say yes. Two almost identical apartments in the same urbanisation can have completely different answers.This matters more than anything else on this page, because it is the one thing that cannot be fixed afterwards. A commission is negotiable, a listing can be rewritten and a cleaner can be replaced. A community that has voted against short-term rental has voted, and the property you bought for that reason is now a property you own for another one.
| Who decides | What it decides | Who checks it, and when |
|---|---|---|
| Andalusia and its tourist register | The regional rules for a vivienda de uso turístico, and the registration itself. You cannot legally advertise a short-term rental without it. Since July 2025 there is also a separate national registration number, from the state rental registry, that platforms require before a listing goes live, so a compliant property today carries both. The regional register also will not accept a registration in a municipality that has brought in its own restriction, which is how the town hall’s decision overrides the regional one. | Your lawyer files it, together with us. We check before that whether the property can be registered at all, because a licence application on a property that cannot hold one is money and weeks spent on nothing. |
| The municipality | Towns set their own limits and several have tightened the rules for new tourist lets in their busiest districts. The answer is per town and sometimes per district, and it is the one that changes most often. | We check the rules for your exact address before anything is spent on photography or setup. A rule that applied in a neighbouring town, or last year, is not an answer. |
| The community of owners | Since 3 April 2025 starting a new short-term rental needs the express consent of a three fifths majority of the owners. Situations that already existed before that may be assessed differently, which is a question for your lawyer rather than for us. | On a resale property we read the statutes and the meeting minutes and your lawyer verifies them. On a new build we ask the developer up front whether renting was allowed for in the community rules. On a property you already own we read what has been decided since you bought. |
Sources
Can I let my apartment to tourists at all?Not automatically. It depends on the specific property, the municipality, the community rules and the current rules for tourist accommodation. That is why we verify short-term rental before the reservation, if renting is part of the reason you are buying. On a property you already own the same three checks apply, they just happen now instead of then.
The listing says a tourist licence is available. Is that enough?No. A licence that exists today tells you what was true when it was granted, not what the community decided at its last meeting or what the town has done to new registrations since. It also does not survive every change of ownership as automatically as sellers tend to assume. We check the current position for the specific property, in writing, and your lawyer confirms it.
What is free, and what the 20 % is actually for
There are two halves to this and they are priced completely differently. Finding out whether a property may be let is free, and it stays free whether you go on to use us or not, because it is the answer that protects you from the one mistake on this page that cannot be undone. Running the renting is the paid service, and it is paid out of what the property earns.The reason the first half is free is not generosity. If renting is the reason you are buying and it turns out not to be possible, we would rather you found out before the reservation deposit than after, and so would you.
Free, whether you ever use us or notThe paid service, 20 % + VAT of each booking
- You send us an address and we tell you whether short-term rental is legally possible there at all
- We do the registration with your lawyer, build the listing, set the pricing and take the property to market.
- If you are buying with us, renting legality is verified before the reservation deposit, as part of the purchase
- We hold the calendar afterwards, keep the registration current and deal with the community as the operator rather than as the buyer.
- We tell you which properties and which towns fall away if the property has to earn
- We price the property week by week against what is actually happening in the market that season.
- We say plainly when a property will not let well, including one we could otherwise sell you
- We take every guest from the first question to the review, and our own cleaners turn the property around between stays.
- If the answer is no, you get the reasoning and it costs you nothing
- You get one statement a month with the money in your Spanish account and every cost itemised on the same document.
One thing does not change either way. Saying no to the renting service does not make the free half worse. The contacts, the answers and the ordinary help after the keys carry on exactly as they were, and if you would rather the property simply sat there and was looked after, that is a different and cheaper service.
I have not bought yet. Can you check a property before I make an offer?Yes, and it is the single most useful thing we do on this topic. Tell us the property and what you intend to do with it, and we will tell you what all three authorities say and what would still have to be verified by a lawyer. If you are buying through us this happens as a matter of course before the reservation. If you are not, it still costs nothing.
What we actually do, and what comes out of the money
Short-term renting is not a passive income arrangement, it is a small hospitality business with your front door on it. Somebody has to answer a message at eleven at night, decide whether a booking three weeks out is priced right, be there when a guest cannot open the gate, register every arrival with the police, and have the property genuinely clean four hours after the last guest left. That is the work, and the 20 % is the price of not doing it.The table below is the whole scope. It is deliberately specific, because the difference between one manager and another is almost never in the headline percentage.
| What | How it is charged | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Inside the 20 % | ||
| The listings and the channels | In the commission | Professional photography, the listing copy, and the property live on Airbnb, Booking.com and the other portals through one channel manager, so one calendar controls all of them and the property cannot be double booked. We also bring our own direct guests, who cost no platform commission at all. |
| The pricing | In the commission | Set by season, by day of week and by what is actually selling that month, and adjusted as the calendar fills. A fixed nightly price is the most common reason a property earns less than the one next door. |
| Every guest, from the first question to the review | In the commission | Enquiries, the booking, arrival instructions, the problem at midnight, the checkout, disputes and the reviews. In whatever language the guest writes in, which is not Czech and is often not English either. |
| Check in and access | In the commission | Arrival is handled on the ground, including the guests who land at one in the morning and the ones who cannot work the gate. Keys, codes and access are ours to manage, not yours to arrange from Czechia. The standard arrangement is a lockbox at the property, which is simple, cheap and does not fail when the wifi does. Where you would rather have a smart lock, that is available too, and arrival then runs as self check-in on a code issued per booking that stops working at checkout, which suits late flights. Neither choice changes what you pay us. The commission is a flat 20 % + VAT whether somebody meets the guest at the door or not, because meeting them was never the expensive part of this work. |
| Guest registration with the police | In the commission | Spain requires every guest to be registered, per stay, and the obligation sits with the host rather than with the platform. The registration goes into SES.HOSPEDAJES, the Interior Ministry’s system, and we file it digitally at check in for every guest on every booking. It is one of the two obligations owners who let privately most often do not know exist, and it is the one that carries a fine. |
| The turnover between stays | In the commission | Our own cleaners, not a subcontracted agency, to the same standard every time, with the linen changed and the property photographed on the way out so the state it was left in is a fact rather than an argument. |
| The monthly statement and the payout | In the commission | One document a month: what came in per booking, what went out and why, our commission, and the figure that lands in your Spanish account. Not a total with no working shown. And the statement is the summary rather than the limit of what you can see, because you also get access to a portal with the calendar and the bookings on it: what is confirmed, what is coming and which dates are still open, without having to ask anybody. Owners who want to look every week can, and owners who want to read one document a month and nothing else are the ordinary case. |
| Charged to the guest, not to you | ||
| The cleaning fee | The guest pays it | Every booking carries a cleaning fee, the same way it does on any listing you have ever booked yourself. It is charged to the guest, it does not come off your income, and we keep it, less the laundry, which runs at roughly 12 to 15 € a guest for towels and linen. |
| Paid out of the rental income, itemised on your statement | ||
| Small repairs while the property is renting | Paid from the income, at cost | A broken blind, a failed boiler, a replacement kettle. It is paid out of what the property earned and it appears on the statement with the invoice behind it. Nothing is added on top and we take nothing from the tradesman for the introduction. |
| Coordinating a tradesman for a bigger job | 25 € / h, plus 25 € for the drive | The same rate as our property management, and the drive is waived when it lands on a turnover we were doing anyway. His invoice is his; ours is only for the time somebody has to be standing there. |
| Not ours. Somebody else does it and we work with them | ||
| The tourist licence and the registration | Your lawyer, one off | Filed by your lawyer, prepared together with us. It is a cost you pay once, before the first guest, and it is in the price table below. |
| Tax on the rental income | Your tax adviser | We are not tax advisers and this page does not quietly become tax advice. We give your adviser the figures, per month, in the form they ask for. What is deductible and at what rate depends on your tax residence. |
| Insurance | Referred | A policy written for an owner occupier is not a policy written for a property with paying guests in it, and telling your insurer the truth about what the property is used for is not optional. A specialist handles it. |
Who talks to the guests, and in what language?We do, in whatever language the guest is writing in, which is usually English, Spanish or German. You are not in the conversation at all unless something needs a decision from you, and you are never the person a guest messages at midnight because the air conditioning has stopped.
Do you use a subcontracted cleaning company?No. The cleaners are our own, on our own payroll, and cleaning is a business we run rather than a service we buy in. That is the single biggest practical difference between managers on this coast, because a turnover that does not happen on time is a cancelled booking and a review you cannot remove.
How the money actually moves
This is the part owners ask about last and worry about most, so here is the whole chain. Nothing in it is unusual, but almost nobody publishes it, and an owner who does not know the order of these steps cannot tell whether a statement is right.
- The guest books and paysThe guest pays the nightly rate plus the cleaning fee, either to the platform or directly to us. The platform takes its own commission at this point. That percentage is set by Airbnb or Booking rather than by us, and it appears on your statement as its own line rather than being folded into anything of ours.
- The stay happens and the property is turned aroundCheck in, the stay itself, checkout, then the clean and the linen. The cleaning fee the guest paid covers this and it never touches your income. The laundry comes out of that fee at roughly 12 to 15 € a guest.
- Costs that belong to the property come offA repair, a replacement, a consumable, an access visit somebody had to make. Each one is itemised with the invoice behind it. Nothing is added on top of a tradesman’s price, and nothing is taken from him for the introduction.
- Our 20 % comes off what is leftIt is a share of the rental income, which is why there is nothing to pay in a month with no bookings. Commission after the property’s own costs rather than before them is the version that keeps our incentives pointing the same way as yours.
- The rest goes to your Spanish accountMonthly, to an account in your name in Spain. You need a Spanish account for this and we can point you at the page about opening one if you do not have it yet.
- The statement arrives with itOne document: every booking, every cost, the commission, the payout. It is also the document your tax adviser needs, which is the other reason it is itemised rather than summarised.
What we deliberately do not do is quote you a monthly figure to expect. What a property earns depends on the market, the property, its reviews and its pricing, and a manager who promises a number before the first season has not told you the truth about which of those they control.
What it costs
One commission, agreed before anything starts, and nothing to pay until the property earns. There is no setup fee, no monthly retainer, no listing fee and no charge for the photography.
| What | How much | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Our commission | 20 % + VAT of each booking | Firm. Taken from the rental income after the property’s own costs. The exact figure is confirmed for your property before you decide anything, because a property that needs more work to let costs more to run. |
| Getting started | 0 € | Firm. Professional photography, the listing copy, the pricing setup and getting the property onto the channels are all inside the commission. You are not asked for money before the property has earned any. |
| A month with no bookings | 0 € | Firm. The commission exists only as a share of the rental income, so an empty month costs you nothing. You can also leave whenever you want, and confirmed bookings are honoured on the way out. |
| Property management alongside the renting | 0 € | Firm. If the property is earning through us, the custodial side is already covered by the rental commission and there is no separate management fee. |
| Cleaning between stays | The guest pays | Firm. Charged to the guest as the cleaning fee on every booking, so it does not come off your income. We keep it, less laundry at roughly 12 to 15 € a guest for the towels and the linen. |
| Coordinating a tradesman | 25 € / h, plus 25 € for the drive | Firm, and the same rate as our property management. Waived where the job lands on a turnover somebody was making anyway. |
| The tourist licence and the registration | 150 to 400 €, once | Draft figure. Filed by your lawyer, prepared with us, paid once before the first guest. It is the lawyer’s fee rather than ours and it depends on the property. |
| Platform commission | Set by the platform | Airbnb and Booking take their own percentage before the money reaches us. We do not set it and we do not take a share of it. It appears as its own line on your statement, and a direct guest carries none of it. |
What are the terms, and what happens to my bookings if I leave?There is a written agreement, it is a plain one, and you can end it whenever you want. Bookings already confirmed are honoured on the way out, because a guest who booked in good faith should not lose a holiday over a change of manager. Nothing else has a notice period attached to it, and the calendar, the listing and the photographs are yours.
The four things every owner asks before they say yes
These come up in the same order every time, and none of them is unreasonable. It is your home and the proposal is that strangers sleep in it while you are two thousand kilometres away.
- Strangers in my homeEvery guest is identified and registered with the police before they are in the property, which is a legal obligation rather than a service we invented. Bookings are screened, and a request that looks like a party rather than a holiday is refused. We would rather lose a weekend than a neighbour relationship.
- What if they damage somethingThree different instruments cover this and which one applies depends on where the booking came from, so it is worth knowing all three. A booking through a platform is covered by that platform’s own host guarantee or damage cover, and the claim goes through them. A booking that comes to us directly carries a deposit, taken before arrival and returned after the property has been checked. And behind both sits your own policy, which has to be written for a property with paying guests in it rather than for an owner occupier, because a policy that describes the wrong use is a policy that declines the claim. What makes any of the three work is evidence: the property is photographed after every turnover, so what a guest arrived to and what they left are both on record with a date on them. Small things break constantly. Those are repaired out of the income and appear on the statement, and nobody claims for a wine glass.
- Is this going to become a jobIt is a job. It is our job. You are not in the guest conversation, you do not price the calendar, you do not chase a cleaner and you do not register anybody with anybody. What comes to you is a monthly statement and the occasional decision that costs money.
- Do I lose the use of my own homeNo. You block the dates you want before the season and use the property yourself. The common pattern is the opposite of what people expect: owners come in the shoulder months and at Christmas, when the coast is nicer to be in anyway, and let the property earn through the summer weeks they were unlikely to use.
Can I keep my own things in the property?A locked owner cupboard is normal and most of our owners have one. Everything else has to be replaceable, because at some point something will be broken or taken. The rule of thumb is that anything you would be upset to lose should not be in a property that guests use.
When the property is yours
You set your own dates first and the calendar is built around them. In practice that means telling us before the season which weeks you want, and blocking anything else later as long as the dates are not already sold. A booking that has been confirmed cannot be cancelled to make room for you, which is the only real constraint and it is the same one any hotel operates under.It is worth being honest about the trade-off, because it is the whole decision. The weeks the property earns most are the weeks you would most like to be here. An owner who wants August every year and also wants the property to cover its costs is asking for two different things, and it is better to know that in advance than to find out in June. Owners who are here several times a year and take the shoulder seasons tend to be very happy with this arrangement. Owners whose one trip is the first fortnight of August tend to be happier with a property they simply own.And you arrive to a property that is genuinely ready, which is the underrated part. It has been cleaned to the standard a paying guest gets, the linen is fresh, and anything that stopped working in March was fixed in March rather than being discovered by you at eleven at night with a suitcase in the hall.
If short-term rental is not possible
Sometimes the answer to the first section is no. The community has voted against it, the town has closed new registrations, or the building simply was never set up for it. That is not the end of the property and it is not the end of the conversation, it just means a different plan.
- A long-term rentalIf the building does not allow short-term rental you can usually still let the property long term, just not through Airbnb or Booking. The income is lower per month and far steadier, and there is one tenant instead of forty guests. The trade-off is the one that matters: the property is occupied, so you cannot use it yourself.
- A medium let, a few months at a timeWinter monthly lets are a real market on this coast, because northern Europeans come here for the winter and the summer visitors have gone. It sits between the two: better income than a long-term rental, and the property is free in the months you actually want it.
- And we can take either of them on, if you askBoth are on request rather than a standing product, so tell us and we will say whether the property suits it. Where we take it on we put the property on Idealista, which is where the tenants on this coast actually look, and we pay for the photography ourselves. There is no onboarding fee and nothing to pay to get it listed. The point of that is not generosity. It is that a property standing empty because renting fell through is worth nothing to either of us.
- Own it and have it looked afterIf the property is not going to earn, the question becomes who watches an empty home. That is a separate and much cheaper service, and it is a different page.
- Wait, and check againA community can vote again and a town can change its rules in either direction. If the answer today is no, it is worth knowing what would have to change for it to become yes, and that is something we can tell you rather than guess at.
I already rented the property myself. What happens to my listing and my reviews?We take the calendar over rather than starting again. Confirmed bookings are honoured on your existing terms, and where it is possible we keep the existing listing so the review history is not lost, because a listing with two years of reviews earns more than a new one with none. What usually changes first is the pricing and the photography. Tell us before you sign anything, because a handover in the middle of a season needs planning around the bookings that already exist.
What we check before anything is spent
This runs before the photography, before the licence application and before any money moves. It takes days rather than weeks, most of it is desk work, and the output is a plain answer: yes and here is what it needs, or no and here is why. If the answer is no we have both saved a great deal of time and you have paid nothing.| What we check | Why it decides the answer | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| The property itself | ||
| The occupancy and habitability paperwork | A property cannot be registered for tourist use without the documents that say it is legally habitable. On a new build this arrives with the handover; on an older resale property it is occasionally missing entirely, which is a problem that predates you. | Confirmed from the documents, with the gaps named. Anything missing goes to your lawyer, not to us. |
| Whether a registration can exist at this address | A licence application on a property that cannot hold one costs weeks and the lawyer’s fee, and ends where it started. | Checked against the register before anything is filed. |
| The layout, the beds and what the rules require | Tourist accommodation has minimum requirements, and the number of guests you can legally take decides what the property can earn more than the nightly rate does. | A written capacity, and what would have to change to increase it. |
| The town and the register | ||
| The municipality’s own restrictions | Several towns have tightened the rules for new tourist lets, and it is decided per town and sometimes per district. The Andalusian register will not accept a registration where the town has restricted it. | The current position for your exact address, dated, so you know when it was checked. |
| Whether the rules are being reviewed | A rule that is about to change matters as much as one that already has, and it is the difference between spending on setup now and waiting three months. | What is known and what is not, said plainly rather than presented as certainty. |
| The community of owners | ||
| The community statutes | A prohibition can be written into the statutes and simply never mentioned by anybody selling the property. This is the same document your lawyer reads before a purchase. | Read, and the relevant clauses quoted to you. |
| The minutes of the meetings | The three fifths vote that matters may already have happened, or may be on the agenda of a meeting nobody told you about. A vote scheduled for next month can decide the whole reason you are buying. | Read as far back as they exist, with anything relevant flagged. |
| The community’s actual position | A building where renting is legal but the neighbours are hostile is a building where every guest is a complaint. This is a judgement rather than a document, and it is worth having. | An honest read, including when it is the reason we would say no. |
| Whether it will actually work | ||
| Guest registration and the operational obligations | Every guest must be registered, per stay, and the obligation sits with the host. It is the thing owners renting privately most often do not know about. | Set up before the first booking, and done digitally at every check in. |
| Access, keys and how a guest gets in | A gated urbanisation with a code the community will not give out, or a building where the concierge refuses tourist guests, turns a good property into an operationally impossible one. | Walked through in practice, not assumed. |
| Whether we can turn it around in time | A checkout at ten and a check in at three is four hours for a full clean and a linen change. If our team cannot reliably be there, the property is outside what we take on, and we would rather say that than accept it. | A straight yes or no, based on where the property actually is. |
| What the property needs before the first guest | Beds, linen, a kitchen that works for six people rather than two, blackout in the bedrooms, air conditioning that has been serviced. A property that is furnished for an owner is rarely furnished for guests. | A list, with what is essential separated from what is worth doing later. |
How it starts
The purchase is fifteen steps and it ends with the keys. This is what happens after that. If you bought through us, the renting check in step 01 already happened before your reservation, so this begins at step 02. If you did not, it begins with an address and a phone call.Step 15 of 15, and beyond
- The suitability checkFree, approximately daysYou give us the address and what you want to do with the property. We check the three layers and give you a written answer with the reasoning. This is free, it is free whether you go ahead or not, and it is the step that decides everything after it.New buildWe ask the developer up front whether short-term rental was allowed for in the community rules, because on a new build there may be no minutes to read yet and the statutes are the developer’s draft. Getting the answer before completion is much easier than getting it after.ResaleWe read the statutes and the meeting minutes and your lawyer verifies them. On a property that has been rented before, we also check whether the existing registration transfers or whether a new one has to be filed, because sellers routinely assume the first and it is not always true.
- We stand in the propertyBefore listingWe do not take on a property we have not seen. The visit is where the real answer appears: how the property will photograph, how many people can sleep in it comfortably rather than technically, what is missing, whether the terrace is the reason someone books it, and how quickly our team can get in and out on a changeover day.
- The licence, with your lawyerWeeksThe registration is filed by your lawyer and prepared with us. In parallel we tell you what the property needs before the first guest, separated into what is essential and what can wait until after the first season.
- Photography, listing and pricingApproximately daysProfessional photographs, the listing written for each channel, the pricing calendar built for the season it is launching into, and the property live on the platforms through one calendar. This is inside the commission and you are not invoiced for any of it.
- The first guest, and the first statementFrom that point onwardsBookings come in, the property is turned around between them, and a month later you get the first statement and the first payout. After that you hear from us when something needs a decision, and otherwise once a month.
Doing it yourself, or not
The same property, the same season, two ways. The left column is what renting privately from Czechia actually involves, not a caricature of it.| On your own, or through another agency | With Arevont | |
|---|---|---|
| Who verified you may let it | Usually nobody. An agent said yes, or the listing said a licence was available, and neither is a document. | We do, across all three layers, before anything is spent. We do not treat an agent’s answer as confirmation. |
| Who answers the guest at eleven at night | You do, in English, in a different time zone, about a boiler you have never seen. | We do, in the guest’s language, and you find out about it on the statement. |
| Who cleans between stays | A cleaning agency you have never met, booked by message, whose non-arrival you find out about from the next guest. | Our own cleaners, on our own payroll, on a schedule we control. |
| Who registers the guests with the police | You, per stay, and most private hosts do not know the obligation exists. | Done digitally at every check in, as part of the service. |
| Who pays for a broken boiler in August | You, by transfer from Czechia, after finding a plumber who answers in a language you do not speak. | Paid out of the income at cost, itemised on the statement, with somebody standing there while the work is done. |
| What happens in a month with no bookings | 0 €, and the listing keeps sitting there. | 0 €. The commission is a share of the income, so no income means no commission. |
| What it costs when it does let | The platform commission, plus your own time, which is the cost nobody counts. | 20 % + VAT of the booking, plus the platform’s own commission, and no platform commission at all on our direct guests. |
| The language it all happens in | Spanish with the town hall, the community and the tradesman. English with the guests. | Czech with us, everything else by us. |
The apartment made sense. A meeting nobody had mentioned decided the outcome
This is one of the cases already on our homepage, and it belongs on this page more than on any other, because short-term rental was the entire reason the client was buying. A 495.000 € apartment in Mijas, matching the budget and matching how the client wanted to use it. It was already reserved and the deposit was paid.- What the client was buyingAn apartment that fitted the budget and fitted the plan. Short-term renting was part of that plan. The property was reserved and the reservation deposit had been paid.
- What we foundWorking with the lawyer, we found that a community meeting was scheduled shortly after the reservation, and that the agenda included a vote concerning short-term lets. The information that would decide whether the purchase made sense was not in the listing.
- What we didWe recommended not continuing automatically simply because the property was already reserved. We waited for the result of the vote.
- How it endedThe vote did not permit what the client had been counting on. We recommended not proceeding with the purchase. The reservation deposit was returned and the client withdrew from the deal.
The client avoided not only a bad purchase. They also did not lose the reservation deposit.
How it is paid
- HostPays the nightly rate and the cleaning fee. The platform takes its own commission from that before it reaches us, and a guest who books with us directly carries none of it.
- YouPay nothing up front and nothing monthly. Our 20 % and the property’s own costs come out of what the property earned, and both are itemised on the same statement.
- Arevont20 % of each booking, the cleaning fee less the laundry, and 25 € an hour when somebody has to stand in the property for a tradesman. That is the whole of it. Nothing arrives from anywhere else and nothing is taken from a tradesman for the introduction.
There is nothing to pay to start and nothing to pay in a month with no bookings. The agreement runs on and you can end it whenever you want, with confirmed bookings honoured on the way out.If we also run the short-term rental on the property, there is no separate management fee at all: the custodial side is already covered by the rental commission. That is not a discount we invented for this page, it is how the two services have always fitted together.Everything you already have from us stays where it is. The contacts, the answers and the ordinary help after the keys do not have a price and never will, whether the property earns a euro or not.
We handle property management, cleaning, and complete short-term rentals ourselves.
What we will not tell you, and when you should not do this
We do not guarantee occupancy and we do not guarantee income, and no honest manager should. What a property earns depends on the market, the property itself, its reviews and its pricing, and we control the last two of those four. Anybody who gives you a number before they have seen your property and before the first season has told you something they cannot know.That is also why there is not one earnings figure anywhere on this page. No occupancy rate, no average nightly rate, no yield. We had figures like that on the old version of this page and they were placeholders that nobody had verified, which is worse than having none. When we publish numbers here they will be real ones from properties we actually manage, and until then the absence is the honest answer.Renting is the one genuine risk of the whole purchase, and it is worth repeating at the end as well as the beginning. We have watched buyers build an entire budget around rental returns and then find that their community had voted against short-term lets. If renting is the reason you are buying, verify it before the reservation deposit, whether you do that with us or with somebody else.We only do this from Manilva to Marbella: Manilva, Casares, Estepona, Benahavís and Marbella. Outside those five we say no. A manager who cannot have a cleaner at the door on a changeover day is a phone number, not an operation, and taking your money for one would be worse than not having the page at all. We also take on a limited number of properties for the same reason.And there is a version of you who should not do this. If your one trip a year is the first fortnight of August, renting will take the weeks you actually want. If the property is somewhere with little off-season life, it may let for ten weeks and sit for forty two, which is a lot of turnover for not very much. If you would simply rather nobody else slept in your bed, that is a completely legitimate answer and there is a cheaper service for you: somebody looks after the property, nobody stays in it.
Most common questions about short-term renting
- What is your commission, and is there anything else?
- 20 % of each booking, taken from the rental income after the property’s own costs. There is nothing to start, no monthly fee, no listing fee and no charge for photography. The exact percentage is confirmed for your property before you decide anything, because a property that takes more work to let costs more to run. The only other things that ever appear on a statement are the platform’s own commission, costs the property itself incurred, and 25 € an hour if somebody had to stand there for a tradesman.
- When and how do I get paid?
- Monthly, to an account in your name in Spain, with a statement showing every booking, every cost and the commission. You need a Spanish bank account for this. If you do not have one yet, that is a separate and straightforward job and there is a page about it.
- Who registers the guests with the police?
- We do, digitally, at every check in. Spain requires it for every guest of every stay and the obligation sits with the host rather than with Airbnb or Booking. It is one of the two things owners who let privately most often do not know about, the other being that the property has to be registered before it may be advertised at all.
- Can I use the property myself?
- Yes. You block the dates you want before the season and use it. The one constraint is that a confirmed booking cannot be cancelled to make room, which is the same rule any hotel operates under. Most owners who are happy with this arrangement come in the shoulder months and at Christmas and let the property earn through the summer.
- What happens if something breaks while a guest is in the property?
- We deal with it. Small things are fixed the same day out of the income and appear on your statement with the invoice behind them. Anything expensive gets a price and a message to you before it is done, unless it is actively causing damage, in which case we stop the damage first and call you second. You are not the person a guest messages about a boiler.
- Do you guarantee a minimum income or a minimum number of nights?
- No, and no honest manager should. Results depend on the market, the property, its reviews and its pricing. What we will do is tell you before we start whether we think a property will let well, including when the answer is that it will not, and we would rather lose the property from the portfolio than take on one that produces a disappointed owner.
- How long is it from the first call to the first guest?
- The suitability check is days. The licence and the registration through your lawyer are the long pole and they are weeks rather than days. Photography, the listings and the pricing are days once the property is ready. What usually decides the timeline is not paperwork, it is whether the property is furnished and equipped for guests, which for a property bought empty is a separate job with its own lead time.
- Do I pay tax in Spain on the rental income?
- Yes, and it is assessed differently for the periods the property is rented and the periods you use it or it stands empty. Allowable costs can be deducted against rental income where the legal conditions are met, and the calculation depends on your tax residence and how the property is used. We are not tax advisers and we do not pretend to be: what we provide is the monthly figures your adviser needs, in the form they ask for.
