Buying to rent: the numbers that actually work

When someone asks what property management costs here, the answer is almost always a percentage. And the percentage is the easy part.

What decides whether a property pays you or costs you are the lines underneath: the ones you pay every month whether it is booked or empty. Here is the whole list, with the numbers we pay ourselves.

1. The management commission

On the north coast it runs between 15% and 25% of what the property earns. That covers bookings, guests, problems at 2am and coordinating everything else.

One thing to check in the small print: always ask what that percentage is calculated on. What the guest pays and what lands in your account after the platform takes its cut are two different numbers, and the gap between them is in the double digits.

2. What the platform takes, before anyone else

Airbnb, Vrbo and the rest take their share before that money exists for you. Vrbo takes 8% of the booking. Your manager does not charge that, and it still comes out of your pocket.

3. Cleaning between guests

Charged per stay, not per month, so it goes up when the villa rents well. On a two to five bedroom villa it runs around US$100 per booking. On a six bedroom, about US$150.

4. Pool and garden

This is the fixed cost nobody has in mind when they buy, and the one you cannot skip for even a month. An unmaintained pool turns green in a week, and a tropical garden stops looking like the brochure photo in about fifteen days.

5. The booking system

Syncing calendars across platforms, taking payments and invoicing is not done by hand. That software is a separate cost, and it is what stops two guests booking the same week.

6. 🏝️ The community HOA, and here there is good news

At Casa Linda the HOA is not one of those fees that only covers the shared lawn. It includes electricity, water, internet, television, fumigation, 24-hour security and villa administration.

That changes the whole calculation, because a buyer arriving from the United States or Canada is adding power and water on top, the way it works back home, and here they are already inside. In July 2026 we paid US$3,479 in HOA across three villas, roughly US$1,160 per villa per month, with all of that included.

7. Things that break

An air conditioner, a water pump, a toilet. Not a monthly cost, but definitely a yearly one. For scale: replacing a complete toilet, labour included, cost us US$353 in July 2026.

8. Household supplies

Paper, detergent, pool chlorine, light bulbs, propane. Small amounts that become a permanent line on the statement.

9. What the guest finds on arrival

The welcome kit is not decoration: it is the difference between a five-star review and a four-star one, and on this island reviews are the price you get to charge next year.

So what is left?

Here is the part almost nobody writes down. Between 40% and 60% of what a villa earns goes to costs, counting everything above. That is not a pessimistic number: it is what comes out when you add up real invoices.

And you have to cross it with the other number nobody publishes: real occupancy in Sosúa is 28.4%, not the 75% the brochures project. We measured it against independent market data, and it is in our article on what actually rents.

None of this is meant to put anyone off. It is so the villa you buy is the one that survives the maths, not the one that photographs best.