Short-Term Rental
Management Fees in Los Angeles
Most owners ask who charges less. The smarter question is who leaves you with more money. Our standard fee is 20% of nightly rental income, and at LA's real performance spread, we usually do.
Standard management fee
of nightly rental income
Two exceptions
When we charge less
Not every booking is the same kind of work. In two specific cases, the operational load is genuinely lighter, so the fee is lower. These are the only times we drop below 20%.
18% for luxury properties
Properties with an expected consistent nightly rate of $800 or more may qualify for our Luxury Select rate. On homes where the average booking generates substantially more income, we pass a portion of that efficiency back to the owner.
12–18% on 30+ night stays
Long stays mean fewer turnovers, fewer cleanings, and far fewer guest interactions per night. On bookings of 30 nights or more, we reduce the management fee to a range from 12% to 18% depending on length and property.
The math owners miss
Fee percentage is only half the math
Short-term rental management in LA runs between roughly 15% and 30% of nightly income. Our 20% sits in the middle of that range. If you line us up against a manager at the bottom of it, the natural assumption is that a 5% lower fee leaves more money in your pocket. It rarely works out that way. Small differences in pricing, occupancy, and review quality can close or reverse a 5% fee gap fast. Here is what happens at three different performance spreads, on a $10,000-a-month baseline.
Same performance
$10,000 baseline, identical revenue
15% manager
$8,500
LALuxuryBnB 20%
$8,000
$500 less
with us / month
6% better with us
$10,600 revenue, modest lift
15% manager
$8,500
LALuxuryBnB 20%
$8,480
Break even
roughly identical
15% better with us
$11,500 revenue, real performance gap
15% manager
$8,500
LALuxuryBnB 20%
$9,200
$700 more
with us / month
To erase a 5% fee difference, we only need to outperform by about 6 to 7%. In LA short-term rentals, that is a small gap, and usually the one we win.
And we often outperform by 25% or more. Imagine what happens then.
Try the full calculator
Our Los Angeles Airbnb income calculator is live. Plug in your own nightly rate and occupancy and compare self-managing, a 15% competitor, and our 20% specialized management side by side. Below is a sample calculation to show how the math works.
Sample calculation
Self-managed vs professionally managed
Self-managed
- $400 nightly rate
- 20 nights booked
Owner take-home
$8,000
LALuxuryBnB managed
- $460 nightly rate
- 23 nights booked
- Gross $10,580, less 20% fee ($2,116)
Owner take-home
$8,464
Even after the 20% fee, the owner keeps $464 more per month when the property is professionally managed. Small differences in rate and occupancy compound quickly.
Where the 20% goes
What your Airbnb management fee actually pays for
A standard long-term property manager charges around 10% to collect rent and field the occasional maintenance call. Short-term rental management is a totally different category of work. Every turnover is a new guest, every booking is a new price, every inquiry is a decision, and the City of LA is watching.
Enterprise-grade revenue management
Most rental managers set a generic dynamic pricing plugin to “auto” and walk away. We run a proprietary, in-house revenue system built on the same disciplines major hotel brands spend millions to operate: booking pace tracking, 12-week forward pace with year-over-year benchmarks, occupancy curves, RevPAR scorecards, and a ranked daily action list that tells our revenue team which rates to review first every morning. Every pricing decision is logged with the reasoning behind it, so we can tell you why your rate was what it was on any given night. That discipline is measurable. Across our portfolio, revenue grew 31% from 2023 to 2025 while booking count grew only 10%. We are capturing more per stay, not working harder for lower returns.
Industrial-grade guest screening
The wrong guest in a short-term rental does not just cost you a bad review. In Los Angeles, it can cost you your permit. The city revokes short-term rental registrations when properties generate repeat noise complaints or neighborhood disruption, and one bad party guest who was never properly screened can end your ability to operate the home as an STR entirely. We treat every inquiry as a permit-protection decision. Our team reviews each booking against a structured risk-flagging system that remembers problem guests across the entire portfolio. If a guest was a problem at one property, they are flagged the next time they try to book anywhere in our network, on any platform. Acceptance is a human judgment call here, not auto-accept on instant book.
See our Los Angeles Airbnb rules guideEarly-warning guest experience monitoring
Most unhappy guests never complain during the stay. They smile at check-in, go quiet mid-trip, and save everything for the review page, where it is too late to fix. We built an early-warning system called Silent Detractor Detection that reads communication patterns on every active stay against our own historical review outcomes. When a stay is trending toward a bad review, our team is alerted while the guest is still at the property and while the problem is still solvable. That is how we protect a 4.92-star average across 5,000+ reviews.
Proactive property care
We do not wait for guests to report problems. Every cleaning and maintenance visit produces a structured field report and a photo-verified turnover. Observations from cleaners flow into the same issue-tracking system as guest complaints, so a wobbly chair flagged by a cleaner and a wobbly chair mentioned in a guest message become one tracked item, not two missed signals. Each property carries a Property Health score that trends over time, so wear patterns surface before they become failures. Small issues get fixed between stays, not discovered by the next guest.
Listing, operations, permits — and the work you never see
- Professional listing creation and optimization across Airbnb, VRBO, and direct channels
- 24/7 guest communication from a team that works in relay, so a message received at 11pm is briefed to the morning shift
- Coordination of cleaning, turnover, laundry, and restocking between every stay
- Permit handling and Home Sharing Program compliance, kept current on your behalf
- Institutional-level owner reporting and dashboards, built from years of historical data
- Full monthly owner statements with transparent line items
A property manager calls the plumber. We run a hospitality operation.
A residential property manager collects rent and maybe fields one maintenance call a month. On a single short-term stay we screen the guest, set the rate, process the booking, answer 70 to 100 guest messages, run check-in, monitor the experience, coordinate turnover, handle issues in real time, collect the review, and pay out the owner. It is not the same job in a larger quantity. It is a different job entirely, and pricing has to match.
Side by side
How our fees compare to a 10% long-term manager
The sticker price on a long-term property manager looks cheaper until you compare what each fee actually covers.
| What's included | Long-term PM~10% | LALuxuryBnB20% |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency of engagement | Once a month, maybe | Every property, every day |
| Guest communication | Not included | 24/7 relay team across time zones |
| Revenue management | Fixed rent, re-quoted yearly | Daily dynamic pricing, booking pace tracking, RevPAR scorecards |
| Guest screening | Credit and background check once | AI-assisted + manual review on every booking request |
| Cleaning and turnover | Not handled | Coordinated and photo-verified between every stay |
| LA permit compliance | Not applicable | Full Home-Sharing Program handling |
| Owner reporting | Monthly rent statement | Institutional dashboards with bookings, revenue, expenses, and performance |
A percentage fee on nightly income is the only honest way to price this category of work, because the work itself scales directly with the booking.
Common questions
Pricing FAQs
How are short-term rental management fees structured?
Our standard management fee is 20% of nightly rental income. Luxury properties with an expected consistent nightly rate of $800 or more may qualify for our Luxury Select rate of 18%. Extended stays of 30 nights or longer can range from 12% to 18% depending on the length and property. We do not believe all bookings are the same, so we reduce our fee where the work genuinely scales differently.
Do you charge on cleaning fees?
No. Our fees are based on nightly rental income only. Cleaning-fee income collected from guests is not part of the management fee calculation.
How much does Airbnb management cost compared to self-managing?
Owners who self-manage pay 0% in management fees and, in our experience, leave substantially more than 20% on the table through under-pricing, unfilled nights, weak screening, and the raw time cost of running a hospitality operation themselves. The real question is not what Airbnb management costs. It is what self-managing costs once you count everything honestly.
Am I locked into a long contract?
No. We require a 3-month initial commitment so we have time to onboard the property, optimize the listing, and build booking momentum. After that, cancellation is available with 30 days notice.
Do I pay if there are no bookings?
No. You only pay management fees on bookings you actually receive. If the property is empty, you owe us nothing.
Are there setup fees or hidden costs?
No setup fees. No hidden line items. Owners cover property-specific costs like supplies, utilities, and repairs, all reported transparently on your monthly statement.
Find out what your property can earn
Every property in LA is different. Location, size, design, and target guest profile all change what your short-term rental management fees look like in real dollars, and what the home can realistically earn. The fastest way to get a real number for your specific property is to talk to us.