Vacation rental property management, explained

Last reviewed August 2026 · 19 companies and platforms tracked

Somebody is going to run your vacation rental. The only real question is who, and what share of the revenue that person takes for doing it. This page is the version of that conversation we wish someone had given us before we signed our first management agreement — what the work actually is, what the three pricing models cost on a specific house, and the cases where hiring a manager quietly makes you less money.

We have tried to keep the opinions clearly separated from the facts. Every fee, contract term and go-live time on this site comes from the company's own materials where they publish one, and from named third-party reporting where they do not — and we say which, every time. That distinction matters more here than in most industries, because 9 of the 14 management companies we track publish no rate at all.

What vacation rental property management actually is

A vacation rental property manager takes operational responsibility for a home somebody else owns and rents to short-stay guests. That sounds like long-term residential property management, and it is not. A long-term manager places one tenant, collects twelve rent payments and handles the occasional repair. A vacation rental manager on the same house handles something like fifty arrivals, fifty departures, fifty turnovers, several hundred guest messages, a nightly pricing decision for every date on a rolling calendar, and a permanent low-grade stream of small emergencies — a lockbox that jammed, a hot tub that went cloudy, a guest who arrived at 1am to a house cleaned for the wrong date.

The difference in labour is why the fee is a percentage rather than a flat monthly amount, and why the percentage is so much higher than the 8–10% a long-term manager charges. It is also why the same word — "management" — covers services that share almost nothing. Two companies can both call themselves vacation rental property managers while one employs cleaners in your town and the other has never had a person within 400 miles of your house.

There is a second thing worth understanding before you look at any pricing page, because it is the fact that surprises owners most. In nearly every arrangement that is not software, the manager becomes the account holder. Your property gets listed under the company's Airbnb, VRBO and Booking.com accounts, not yours. The reviews accrue to their listing. The Superhost status is theirs. Of the 19 companies and platforms in our data set, 14 take over the listing, and every one of them is a manager rather than a software product. Evolve does it at 10%. RedAwning does it and appends "by RedAwning" to the listing title. This is not a scandal — it is how the model works, and it is the mechanism that lets a manager guarantee anything at all — but it should be a conscious choice, not something you discover during an exit.

What a manager does on an ordinary Tuesday

Fee percentages are abstract. The work is not. On a normal midweek day on a single three-bedroom rental, a manager is doing roughly this: reviewing the pricing algorithm's suggestions for the next 90 days and overriding it for the two dates that fall against a local event; answering the four inbound enquiries that came in overnight, one of which is a guest asking whether the house sleeps nine when it sleeps eight; confirming the cleaner for Thursday's same-day turnover and finding a backup when she reports a sick child; ordering the replacement coffee maker the last guest reported; chasing the pool company on a service visit that did not happen; filing the monthly occupancy tax return; and responding to a three-star review in a way that reads well to the next fifty people who read it.

None of that is difficult. All of it is interruptive, and the interruptions do not respect your calendar. That is the honest case for hiring someone. We have broken the job down task by task — and mapped which of the three models actually covers each task — in what a vacation rental manager does.

The three models

Almost every company you will find in a search falls into one of three buckets. The tables below are drawn from our shared company data set. They are listed alphabetically within each group; nothing here is a ranking, and the order carries no judgement.

1. Full-service managers — roughly 20–35% of revenue

These companies take the property end to end: pricing, listing, guest communication, turnovers, maintenance coordination, and in most cases local staff who can physically get to the house. This is the model most people picture when they say "property manager", and it is the one that justifies its price by removing decisions rather than by saving you money.

Two things to notice in this table. First, the fee column is mostly prose rather than a number, because most of these companies do not publish one — where we quote a range, we are quoting owners and third-party reporting, and we say so in the cell. Second, look at the contract column before the fee column. A month-to-month agreement with 30 days' notice and a 12-month term with an early-termination fee are not the same product at the same price.

None of the companies above leave you as the account holder on the booking platforms. Two caveats we would not want you to miss: Houst appears in a great many US-facing directories, but as of this research it lists no US city and a US owner cannot hire it. And Vacasa, Casago, iTrip, Grand Welcome and SkyRun are franchise networks — the national brand sets standards and software, but the person you sign with, the rate you pay and the quality you receive are all local. National review scores tell you close to nothing about your own market.

2. Half-service and hybrid — roughly 10–18% of revenue

This group sells distribution rather than operations. They build the listing, push it to the booking channels, run the pricing and answer the guests. What they generally do not do is touch the house. Cleaning, linens, restocking, maintenance and guest access stay with you, or with vendors you find, hire and pay.

That is a legitimate and often excellent deal — but only if you already have a cleaner you trust and someone who can be at the property. The trap is comparing 10% to 25% as though they are the same service at different prices. They are different services, and the difference is roughly "everything physical".

Awning and RedAwning are one company, not two options — RedAwning acquired Awning in April 2024 and the fee tiers are identical at 10%, 15% and 18%. Treat a shortlist containing both as a shortlist of one. Air Concierge is worth a look for the unusual 12% nationwide remote tier, but note the one-year commitment attached to it, which is long for a service at that price. Evolve is the only company in this group publishing its full rate card, and the only one anywhere in our data set offering a money-back window.

3. Software you run yourself

The third model is not a service at all. It is tooling: channel management, automated guest messaging, pricing integrations, turnover scheduling, task automation. You remain the host of record, your guests book on your listing, the money lands in your account, and you keep the cleaners and handymen you already use. The software removes the coordination work rather than the responsibility.

This is the only group in our data set where you keep your listing, and it is also the only group where pricing is mostly transparent — though not universally: Hostaway quote-gates everything by listing count, and Guesty publishes a price only for its smallest tier.

Heads up: this site is operated by TIDY. We include TIDY in our comparisons and tell you when we do. TIDY appears in the table below and in the recommendation later on this page, and we have marked its row.

Turno is in the table for contrast rather than as a like-for-like option: it does turnover cleaning scheduling and nothing else, which is why its channel column is empty. None of these products is a licensed property manager, none of them will drive to your house, and all of them leave the judgement calls with you.

What the three models cost on one real property

Percentages hide their own size. So here is a single property, used consistently across this site: a three-bedroom house in a drive-to coastal market that books 150 nights a year at an average $400 nightly rate. That is $60,000 of accommodation revenue before taxes, across about 50 separate stays, with a $250 cleaning fee charged to the guest on each one — roughly $12,500 of cleaning money flowing through the year in addition to the rent.

The figures below apply each company's stated or reported rate to that revenue. They are arithmetic on published numbers, not quotes, and no company has offered us these prices.

Rates are as recorded in our data set: Evolve's 10% Core tier and $250 onboarding fee, RedAwning's published 10/15/18 tiers, Air Concierge's 12% Offsite tier, TIDY's 3.9%, and Hospitable's and Guesty's published plans. The 25/30/35% full-service rows are our illustration of the commonly reported range rather than any single company's price, because most full-service managers publish nothing. AvantStay, Casago, iTrip, Natural Retreats, Portoro, SkyRun and VTrips cannot be placed on this table honestly at all — you would need a proposal.

The number that actually matters

The spread between the top of that table and the bottom is roughly $15,192 a year on one house. Over the five years most owners hold a rental, that is a kitchen renovation, or most of a down payment on a second property. This is why we think the fee question deserves more than an afternoon.

But the table is also dishonest by omission, and we would rather say so than let it sit there. The $18,000 row buys something the $2,808 row does not: somebody else's Saturday. If the water heater fails on a holiday weekend, the full-service manager finds the plumber, authorises the spend, moves the guest and tells you afterwards. In every row below it, that is your phone ringing. Software can schedule the plumber; it cannot decide to.

There is a fuller breakdown of what is included, what is excluded, and the fees that never appear on a pricing page — onboarding charges, maintenance markups, linen programmes, what happens to the guest cleaning fee — in our guide to vacation rental management fees.

The fee nobody quotes you: your own hours

Every comparison of these models leaves out the cost of your own time, which is convenient for whoever wrote the comparison. We cannot give you a researched figure — nobody has one, and any site presenting hours per month as a hard statistic is inventing it. What we can tell you is the shape of it, from running properties under all three arrangements.

Under full service, the time cost is close to zero and is mostly reading statements and approving spend. Under half service, the time goes into vendor management: you are the person a cleaner calls when a guest left the house in a state, and you are the person who finds a backup cleaner for a Thursday turnover. Under software, the time is front-loaded — setup, automations, templates, standing instructions — and then drops to exception handling, which is genuinely light in a good month and genuinely disruptive in a bad one.

The honest test is not "how many hours". It is: when the phone rings at an inconvenient time, do you want to be the person who answers it? Owners who answer yes should not pay 25%. Owners who answer no should stop optimising the percentage and go find a good local manager.

When hiring a manager is the right call

If you have decided to hire, the part that determines your outcome is not which company you pick but what you ask them before signing. We keep a full interview script and the contract clauses worth arguing over in how to hire a vacation rental property manager.

How this industry changed in 2025 and 2026

If you researched managers three years ago and are picking the thread back up, the map has been redrawn. Four things happened that matter to an owner.

Vacasa became a franchise network

Vacasa was the category's giant: public in 2021 at a $4.4 billion valuation, roughly 32,000 units, a decade of roll-up acquisitions. Casago bought it for about $130 million in April 2025 — and then did the opposite of what everyone expected, selling nearly all of those units to local franchisees and regional operators, a process that completed in August 2026 with all but roughly 600 units divested. Casago is now asset-light and collecting royalties; vacasa.com is being repositioned as a consumer booking brand carrying third-party supply.

What this means practically: the entity you would sign with in most markets is an independent franchisee, setting its own price and its own terms, staffed largely by the same local people (Casago reports rehiring 89% of former Vacasa field staff). That can be a better outcome than a distant corporate operator, or a worse one. It is not the company whose reviews you have been reading either way. Ask who the counterparty on the agreement is, and get the answer in writing.

Franchising is now the dominant shape of the industry

Vacasa's conversion did not create this pattern, it completed it. iTrip runs roughly 100 to 110 destinations through more than 100 locally owned offices. Grand Welcome runs 70+ locations across around 22 states. SkyRun is a network of locally owned businesses in ski and resort markets. Casago is a franchise system by design.

The consequence is a research problem rather than a quality problem. iTrip's aggregate third-party review scores are poor — Trustpilot around 1.3 out of 5 and BBB at 1.0 — while individual offices carry good owner testimonials. Both facts are true, and neither one tells you about the office in your town. When the brand is a franchise, national reviews are noise. Go and find the local operator's own reviews, and ask for the phone numbers of two owners in your market.

The "alternatives" consolidated too

RedAwning acquired Awning in April 2024, so the two brands with identical 10/15/18% tiers are one company — a shortlist with both on it is not the comparison it looks like. Portoro absorbed Summer's property-management book when Summer pivoted to software. VTrips grew through more than 20 acquisitions, which is why owner experience varies by which company was absorbed. The practical lesson: before you treat two names as two options, check whether they share a parent.

Software got cheap enough to change the maths

The last change is the quiet one. Hospitable now has a genuinely free forever tier and a $29 plan. Guesty publishes a $9 per listing entry price. TIDY prices at 3.9% of bookings with no setup fee. Automated messaging, dynamic pricing and turnover scheduling used to be the things you were buying a manager for; a meaningful part of that is now a subscription. That does not make managers obsolete — see the water-heater paragraph above — but it does mean a 25% fee has to justify itself against a much better do-it-yourself baseline than it did in 2019. We work through where each option fits in alternatives to hiring a property manager.

Questions owners ask

What does vacation rental property management actually cost?

Full-service managers are commonly reported at 20–35% of the accommodation revenue your guests pay, with 25–30% the usual middle. Half-service and hybrid companies run roughly 10–18%, but they do less: Evolve's published 10% Core tier buys marketing and booking only, and you keep the cleaning, maintenance and guest access. Software you run yourself ranges from a free tier to a few percent of bookings. The headline percentage is never the whole cost — onboarding fees, maintenance markups and what happens to the guest cleaning fee all move the real number.

Do I keep my own Airbnb listing if I hire a property manager?

Almost certainly not. Every full-service, half-service and hybrid manager in our data set becomes the account holder and lists your property under its own platform accounts, and that includes Evolve at 10% and RedAwning, which appends 'by RedAwning' to listing titles. Only software products leave you as the host of record: TIDY, Hostaway, Guesty, Hospitable and Turno. If keeping your listing, your reviews and your Superhost status matters to you, that is a decision you make before you shortlist, not after.

Is Vacasa still a national property management company?

Not in the way it was. Casago bought Vacasa for about $130 million in April 2025, then sold nearly all of the roughly 32,000 units to local franchisees and regional operators, completing in August 2026 — all but roughly 600 units. Signing 'with Vacasa' in 2026 generally means signing with an independent franchisee on that franchisee's own terms and pricing. Vacasa's own site still presents a single unified national brand and does not disclose this, so ask directly who the counterparty on your agreement is.

Is a 10% manager half the price of a 20% manager?

No, and treating it that way is the most expensive mistake owners make. A 10% fee usually buys listing creation, distribution and guest messaging. A 25% fee usually buys those plus local staff who handle turnovers, guest access, restocking and the 11pm broken-air-conditioning call. Compare scope line by line before you compare rates — the gap between the two numbers is work that will land on you or on vendors you hire and pay yourself.

Do managers charge separately for cleaning?

Usually the guest pays a cleaning fee at booking, and the manager pays the cleaner out of it — but who keeps any difference, and whether linens, consumables and deep cleans are extra, varies enormously and is rarely written down on the website. Maintenance is the bigger surprise: 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. Ask for a sample owner statement from a real property before you sign.

How long is a vacation rental management contract?

It ranges from month-to-month to a year, and the published terms are a genuine differentiator. Grand Welcome states month-to-month with 30 days' notice. Vacasa's terms allow cancellation with 90 days' written notice, honouring bookings that check out before termination. Evolve has no long-term contract and refunds management fees inside the first six months under its Risk-Free Guarantee. AvantStay is typically a 12-month term, and Air Concierge's 12% remote tier is explicitly a one-year contract. Several companies publish nothing at all.

How long does it take to get a property live with a manager?

Most companies do not publish a timeline. The ones that do: Grand Welcome describes about two to three weeks through onboarding, walk-through, photography and owner approval; AvantStay says two to four weeks from signing with a first booking in about six days; Houst claims under ten days, though Houst has no current US coverage. Software is faster by an order of magnitude because there is no walk-through and no photographer — TIDY claims go-live in about 90 minutes.

What is the difference between a property manager and a co-host?

A co-host is a person you add to your own Airbnb listing, usually paid 10–20% of bookings, who works inside your account while you stay the host of record. A property manager is a company that takes the property onto its own platform accounts and often its own trust accounting, and in many states holds a real-estate or property-management licence to do so. The practical difference is control and reversibility: firing a co-host takes an afternoon, exiting a management agreement takes a notice period and a listing rebuild.

Can I keep my reviews if I switch managers?

Generally no on Airbnb. Grand Welcome's own homeowner FAQ makes the honest admission that VRBO reviews can sometimes transfer but Airbnb offers no review-transfer process. That is the hidden cost of the account-holder arrangement: the reputation you build over three years belongs to the listing, and the listing belongs to the manager. Ask about it in writing before signing, not while you are leaving.

Is a property manager worth it for a single rental?

It depends almost entirely on whether you are near the property and whether you want to make decisions. On a home grossing $60,000 a year, a 25% manager costs $15,000 — for many absentee owners with a demanding day job, that is a fair price for never thinking about the house again. For an owner who lives 20 minutes away, already has a cleaner they trust and enjoys the guest side, that same $15,000 is the single largest line item in the P&L and very hard to justify.