Short-term rental almost always grosses more. What decides it is how much of that gross survives the costs that only exist on the short-term side — turnover cleaning, owner-paid utilities, furniture replacement, and a management rate several times higher than a lease. Every figure below is editable.
What this deliberately leaves out. Lodging tax is collected from the guest rather than paid by you, so it is not an owner cost here — but the portion no platform remits for you is a real liability, and in Osceola County that is the entire 6% tourist development tax. Financing is excluded too: this compares the two strategies on the same property, and the mortgage is identical under both.
And the part no calculator can price. The short-term column above assumes a number of guest turnovers a year, each one a clean, a check-in, a message thread and a review. That is a business. The long-term column is twelve rent payments. If the gap between them is small, the lease is usually the better risk-adjusted answer.
Common questions
Keep going
Principal, interest, reassessed taxes, Florida insurance, PMI and the HOA/CDD stack — the whole payment, not the advertised part.
Run the numbers →Solve for the price from a payment you are genuinely comfortable with, rather than from what a lender will approve.
Run the numbers →Years off the loan and interest avoided, from whatever extra you can genuinely put in each month.
Run the numbers →Let's Talk
Numbers on a screen are a starting point. Send me an address or a price range and I will pull the actual tax bill, the association’s real fees and the comps — and tell you honestly if the deal does not work.
