Airbnb or a long-term tenancy? What the calculators leave out
Short-stay almost always wins on gross. The question is what is left after the platform, the cleaning, the empty nights and GST — and that is the part nobody shows you.
Every figure on this page is either published by a source you can check yourself, or measured from our own bookings and labelled as such. Sources are listed in full at the bottom.
In Auckland Central the median long-term rent is $442 a week for a one-bedroom apartment and $550 for a two-bedroom[1] — roughly $23,000 and $28,600 a year, from one tenant, with almost no empty nights. Short-stay charges far more per night but does not fill every night: across a central Auckland portfolio we clean, occupancy ran 78.7% of listed calendar days over the twelve months to August 2026[5]. Before the two are comparable you have to take off the platform’s cut — Airbnb’s published host-only fee is 15.5%, about 17.8% once GST is added[4] — plus cleaning, linen, consumables and management if you use it. And one structural difference outweighs all of them: short-stay is a taxable activity for GST, long-term residential rent is not[2][3].
What a tenancy actually pays
This one is easy, because the government publishes it. These are median weekly rents from real bond lodgements, not asking prices.
| Size | Active bonds | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile | Median, annualised |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 bedroom | 6,361 | $385 | $442 | $500 | $22,984 |
| 2 bedrooms | 4,239 | $465 | $550 | $640 | $28,600 |
| 3 bedrooms | 539 | $483 | $698 | $865 | $36,296 |
Source: Tenancy Services (MBIE) market rent data, Auckland — Auckland Central, apartments[1]. Annualised by us at 52 weeks. Gross, before rates, insurance, body corporate, maintenance, letting fees and any vacancy between tenants. You can look up your own suburb on the same tool.
The number is modest, but notice what comes with it: one tenant, one set of paperwork, and a property that is occupied essentially all year. That is the bar short-stay has to clear.
What short-stay actually fills
Nightly rate is the number everyone quotes. Occupancy is the number that decides it.
Across a central Auckland short-stay portfolio we clean, over the twelve months to 31 August 2026[5]:
78.7%
Occupancy, 5,344 nights sold
81.4%
Occupancy across 8 apartments
77.8%
Occupancy across 8 apartments
Our own booking records, not a published dataset — the method is set out in full in source 5. Nineteen properties, central Auckland, actively managed and well presented. Every property’s nights sold was reconciled against its own booking calendar. It is a real sample, not a national average, and a property that is not actively managed will not reach it.
| Of listed calendar days | Of bookable nights | |
|---|---|---|
| Nights in the sum | 6,793 listed | roughly 6,400 actually available |
| Nights sold | 5,344 | 5,344 |
| Occupancy | 78.7% | 83.5% |
Why those are different numbers — and why you should ask
Some nights in this portfolio were blocked by the owner. They were staying there themselves, or family were, or the place was having work done. Those nights were never for sale. One apartment in the group was blocked for 99 nights of the year — nearly a third of it.
Leave those nights in the bottom of the sum and you get 78.7%. Take them out, because nobody could ever have booked them, and the same bookings become 83.5%. Same properties, same year, same guests. Nearly five points apart.
Both are honest. They answer different questions:
Of listed calendar days answers “how much of the year did this property earn?” That is the owner’s question, and it is the one that matters when you are comparing short-stay against a tenancy that pays 52 weeks a year.
Of bookable nights answers “how well did the manager fill what they were given?” That is the manager’s performance question, and it is the larger of the two numbers.
We quote 78.7% on this page because it is the owner’s question, and because it is the smaller number. When you see an occupancy figure anywhere else — ours included — ask which of these two it is, and over what period. We checked nine New Zealand short-stay management companies in September 2026[6]: several publish an occupancy percentage, and not one of them says which sum it came from. Without that, two occupancy figures cannot be compared at all.
Roughly one night in five is empty, and they are not evenly spread. In this portfolio occupancy peaked at 90% in February and fell to 58% in June, while the average nightly rate was highest in November to January and lowest in August. A tenancy pays the same in June as it does in February.
The costs the income calculators leave out
Most online estimates show gross revenue minus a management fee and stop there. Here is what sits between that number and your bank account.
| Cost | Typical | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Platform service fee | ~17.8% | Airbnb publishes a host-only fee of 15.5% for most hosts, and states its fees are shown inclusive of VAT/GST where it applies[4]. With New Zealand GST that is about 17.8% — which matches the median we measured across 287 real Auckland bookings[5]. The widely quoted 3% is the split-fee structure, where the guest carries most of it[4] |
| Cleaning, linen, consumables | Cost-neutral if priced right | The guest-paid cleaning fee should cover it. If your fee is below your cost you pay the difference on every stay — see what Airbnb cleaning costs |
| Management | 14–20%+ | Rates published on Auckland and New Zealand operators’ own websites, surveyed by us in August 2026[6]. Check what the percentage is charged on — the base matters as much as the rate |
| Empty nights | ~21% | At the 78.7% occupancy above[5]. A tenancy is close to 100% |
| GST | Above $60,000 | Inland Revenue[3] — see the section below |
Also real, and usually missing: your own time if you self-manage, replacement linen and towels, higher power and water use, wear on furnishings, and whatever your body corporate or council rules require.
The GST difference most comparisons miss
This is not a detail. It is a structural difference between the two, and it is worth more than most of the costs above.
Inland Revenue treats the two completely differently. Both quotes below are Inland Revenue’s own words, and both pages are linked so you can read them in full:
Long-term residential renting. “There’s no GST to pay on rental income from long-term residential renting. You also cannot claim GST on your long-term rental expenses.”
— Inland Revenue, GST and renting out residential property[2]
Short-stay accommodation. “Renting out short-stay accommodation is a taxable activity.” And: “If you’re renting out property for short stays and your turnover is over $60,000 from all GST activities, you’ll need to register for and file GST returns.”
— Inland Revenue, GST and your short-stay rental income[3]
In practice that means a short-stay property can cross a threshold a tenancy never approaches, and the consequences reach beyond the income — GST can also apply when a property that has been used for short-stay is later sold. It cuts both ways: registration also lets you claim GST on the expenses.
We are cleaners, not accountants. The quotes above are accurate as at 13 September 2026 and linked so you can check them, but tax rules change and how they apply depends entirely on your own circumstances. This is general information, not financial or tax advice. Read Inland Revenue’s pages yourself and take the decision to your accountant — before you start, not after.
Which one suits which property
There is no general answer. There is usually a clear answer for a particular property.
A tenancy is often the better call when…
- The property is outside the areas guests actually search for
- The body corporate restricts or bans short stays — check before anything else
- It is unfurnished and furnishing it well would cost more than the uplift returns
- You want genuinely passive income and predictable monthly figures
- The numbers only work at occupancy you would need a very good year to hit
Short-stay tends to win when…
- It is central, well presented and photographs well
- You want to use it yourself part of the year — a tenancy cannot do that at all
- The nightly rate is a real multiple of the equivalent daily rent, not a small premium
- You are prepared to treat it as a business — or to pay someone who does
- The property suits longer guest stays, which cut cleaning and vacancy at once
The honest summary: short-stay usually beats a tenancy on gross by a wide margin, and still loses on net often enough that the question is worth taking seriously. It is a business, not passive income. If the numbers for your property are close, the tenancy is the one that does not need managing.
If you want the numbers for your property
We will build you a figure with the costs above netted out, on conservative occupancy rather than the best month the property could theoretically have. If the honest number is worse than a tenancy would give you, we will say so. That conversation has happened before, and it is better at the walkthrough than a year in.
We have cleaned central Auckland short-stay properties since 2012 and run turnovers for a boutique operator’s portfolio continuously since 2018, which is where the occupancy figures on this page come from.
Talk about my propertyHow management works
Related: furnished management across all three lengths of stay · what Airbnb cleaning actually costs in New Zealand — the cleaning and linen side of the numbers above · run your own numbers in our Auckland income calculator.
Sources
Check every one of them. Where a figure is ours rather than somebody else’s, we say so and explain how we got it.
- 1 Tenancy Services (MBIE) — Market rent, Auckland – Auckland Central, apartments, period 1 February to 31 July 2026. tenancy.govt.nz/rent-bond-and-bills/market-rent Official median weekly rents calculated from bond lodgements, not advertised prices. Updated monthly. Search your own suburb on that page. Accessed 13 September 2026.
- 2 Inland Revenue — GST and renting out residential property. ird.govt.nz — GST and renting out residential property Source of the quotation on long-term residential rent and GST. Accessed 13 September 2026.
- 3 Inland Revenue — GST and your short-stay rental income. ird.govt.nz — GST and your short-stay rental income Source of the “taxable activity” quotation and the $60,000 registration threshold. Accessed 13 September 2026.
- 4 Airbnb — Service fees (Help Centre article 1857). airbnb.co.nz/help/article/1857 Airbnb’s own statement of its fee structures: most hosts on the split-fee structure pay 3%; most hosts on the host-only structure pay 15.5%, with the rest typically 14–16%. Airbnb states that VAT applies to these fees where relevant and that the fee shown is inclusive of it. Accessed 13 September 2026.
- 5 Our own booking records — not a published dataset. Occupancy, seasonality and the measured platform fee come from the property management system used on a central Auckland short-stay portfolio we clean. Period: 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026. Nineteen properties with activity; 336 confirmed reservations; 5,344 nights sold against 6,793 listed nights — an occupancy of 78.7% of listed calendar days, or 83.5% once owner-blocked nights are removed from the denominator. Cancelled, denied and expired bookings were excluded, and nights sold were reconciled against each property’s own calendar. The platform-fee figure is the median across the 287 of those reservations booked through Airbnb and HomeAway, calculated on accommodation plus the cleaning fee. These are well-presented, actively managed central Auckland apartments, so treat the occupancy as a realistic ceiling rather than a typical result. We have not published revenue figures from this data, because our records of direct and long-stay bookings are not complete enough to support them.
- 6 Our own survey of published rates and claims, Auckland and New Zealand short-stay operators, August and September 2026. Compiled by reading the public pricing pages of 27 operators. Rates quoted here as a range rather than by company, because published rates change and are quoted on different bases — some on gross booking value, some after platform fees, some including GST and some not. Ask any operator what their percentage is charged on before comparing it with another. In September 2026 we also checked what nine New Zealand short-stay management companies publish about occupancy: several state a percentage, none defines whether it is measured against listed calendar days or bookable nights.
Common questions
Is it better to Airbnb or long-term rent a property in Auckland?
It depends on the property rather than on the strategy. Short-stay almost always produces more gross revenue and costs far more to run: platform fees, cleaning, linen, consumables, empty nights and GST once turnover passes $60,000. A central, well-presented, furnished apartment that fills most of the year usually comes out ahead. A property outside the areas guests search, or one where the body corporate restricts short stays, usually does not. The figures behind this are sourced at the bottom of this page.
What occupancy do Auckland short-stay properties actually get?
Across a central Auckland portfolio we clean, occupancy ran 78.7% of listed calendar days over the twelve months to August 2026 — 81.4% for one-bedroom apartments and 77.8% for two-bedroom. Measured instead against bookable nights, with owner-blocked nights removed, the portfolio figure is 83.5%. Always check which of those two basis any occupancy claim uses, including ours. That is 19 actively managed, well-presented properties and 5,344 nights sold, reconciled against each property's own calendar, so it is a realistic ceiling rather than a typical result. Occupancy peaked near 90% in February and fell to 58% in June. Full method in source 5.
How much does Airbnb take from hosts in New Zealand?
Airbnb publishes two fee structures. Under the split-fee structure most hosts pay 3% and the guest carries the rest. Under the host-only structure most hosts pay 15.5%, with the remainder typically 14–16%, and Airbnb states its fees are shown inclusive of VAT or GST where that applies — which in New Zealand puts it near 17.8%. That matches what we measured across 287 real Auckland bookings. Check which structure your listing uses before building any projection. Sources: 4 and 5.
Do you pay GST on Airbnb income in New Zealand?
Inland Revenue states that renting out short-stay accommodation is a taxable activity, and that if your turnover is over $60,000 from all GST activities you will need to register for and file GST returns. Long-term residential renting is different: IRD states there is no GST to pay on that income, and that you cannot claim GST on long-term rental expenses. GST can also apply when a property used for short-stay is later sold. Both IRD pages are linked in our sources. We are cleaners, not accountants — this is general information, not tax advice, and how it applies depends on your circumstances.
What is the median rent for an apartment in Auckland Central?
Tenancy Services market rent data for 1 February to 31 July 2026 puts the median at $442 a week for a one-bedroom apartment, from 6,361 active bonds, and $550 for a two-bedroom, from 4,239. That annualises to roughly $22,984 and $28,600 before rates, insurance, body corporate, maintenance and vacancy between tenants. These are medians from bond lodgements rather than advertised prices, and you can look up any suburb yourself — see source 1.
Can I switch a rental property to short-stay whenever I like?
Not automatically. Check the body corporate rules or title covenants first, since many Auckland apartment buildings restrict or prohibit short stays, and check your council’s position and your insurer, because a standard landlord policy may not cover short-stay guests. Existing tenancy obligations have to be worked through properly as well. These are the checks worth doing before any of the arithmetic on this page matters.