By Joseph Cooper, Short Term Coops | Updated September 2026 | 28 min read
Short Term Coops is a boutique short-term rental property management company serving cabin owners in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville, Tennessee.
Quick Answer: A property management fee has two parts, and cabin owners only ever compare one of them. The percentage is the part everyone quotes. The fee base, meaning the specific dollars that percentage gets multiplied against, is the part that decides what you actually pay, and most management agreements in the Smoky Mountains do not define it in writing. A manager charging 18 percent of gross booking revenue can cost more than a manager charging 20 percent of net rental revenue, because “gross” usually includes the cleaning fees your guests paid and sits in front of the platform’s commission, while “net” sits behind both. On a cabin collecting $100,000 in nightly rent and $12,000 in cleaning fees, 18 percent of gross comes to $20,160 and 20 percent of net comes to $17,000. The lower percentage costs $3,160 more. Short Term Coops charges a flat 20 percent of net rental revenue, and the management agreement defines the exclusions in writing: guest-collected taxes that get remitted, cleaning fees charged to guests (which belong to the owner), platform and payment processing fees, security deposits until they are applied, most insurance proceeds, and any proceeds from selling or refinancing the cabin. Separate from the percentage, there is a $75 per month technology fee for PriceLabs and the software stack, third-party invoices pass through at cost with zero markup, and in-house labor is billed at a standard hourly rate that shows up itemized on the owner’s statement. This article covers how to read a fee base off your own agreement, the arithmetic that makes a lower percentage cost more, the fees that sit outside the percentage entirely, where managers earn a second margin most owners never see, and the case where this structure is the wrong answer for an owner.
I fired three property managers before I started one.
The third firing is the one that changed how I read a contract. I had the owner’s statement open on a laptop at my kitchen table, and I was trying to work out why a month that felt busy had paid me so little. The cabin was booked. The reviews were good. The number at the bottom of the statement did not match the number in my head, and it had not matched for four months running, and I had been telling myself I was bad at math.
I was not bad at math. I was doing the right arithmetic against the wrong base. I had signed an agreement that quoted me a percentage and never once said what that percentage was calculated on, and when I finally sat down and rebuilt the month by hand from the Airbnb payout report, the manager’s cut was being taken off a bigger number than the money that had ever reached my account. The cleaning fees my guests paid were in the base. The platform’s commission came out after the manager’s cut, not before it. Neither of those things was hidden, exactly. Neither of them was written down anywhere either.
I came to real estate from the military and then store operations at T-Mobile, before I bought a cabin in Pigeon Forge in 2021 for $1,350,000, and the thing that background gives you is a reflex for reading a margin. A percentage with no defined base is not a price. It is a range, and the person who wrote the contract picked which end of it you land on. That reflex is the reason I stopped negotiating the percentage down and started asking what it multiplied against, and it is the reason Short Term Coops writes its fee base into the agreement instead of leaving it to the statement.
What I want to give you here is the arithmetic, the questions, and the exact language to look for, so you can do in twenty minutes what took me four months.
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What Is a Property Management Fee Actually Calculated On?
A property management fee is calculated on a fee base, meaning a specific subset of the money your guests paid, and the management agreement is the only place that base is defined. The percentage everyone quotes is meaningless without it. In the Smoky Mountains, the three fee bases in common use are gross booking revenue (nightly rent plus cleaning fees and other guest charges, measured before the platform takes its commission), nightly rent only (before commission, excluding cleaning), and net rental revenue (nightly rent after the platform’s commission comes out, excluding cleaning fees and guest-collected taxes). Short Term Coops uses the third, calculates a flat 20 percent on it, and defines the exclusions in the agreement itself rather than on the monthly statement. Ask any manager which of the three they use, and ask them to point at the sentence that says so.
The reason this is not obvious is that every manager’s marketing material quotes a percentage and almost none of them quote a base. Look at a dozen management company websites in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville and you will find numbers from 15 percent to 35 percent presented as if they were comparable prices. They are not comparable. They are not even the same unit.
Here is the practical test. Open your management agreement and search it for the word “revenue,” or “proceeds,” or whatever noun the percentage attaches to. If that noun has a capital letter, the contract has probably defined it somewhere, and you want to read that definition. If the noun is lowercase and never defined, your fee base is whatever your manager’s accounting software says it is, and it can change without anyone telling you.
Most Smoky Mountains property managers quote a percentage without stating what it is calculated on. Short Term Coops defines “Rental Proceeds” in the management agreement, lists six categories that are excluded from it, and calculates the 20 percent only on what is left.
Why Does the Fee Base Matter More Than the Percentage?
The fee base matters more than the percentage because the gap between the widest and narrowest base on the same cabin is larger than the gap between the cheapest and most expensive percentage in the Smokies market. On a cabin that collects $100,000 in nightly rent and $12,000 in cleaning fees from guests, the widest common base is $112,000 and the narrowest is $85,000. That is a 32 percent difference in the number being multiplied. Meanwhile the percentage spread across most Smoky Mountains managers runs from roughly 18 percent to roughly 25 percent. An owner who negotiates two points off the percentage and never asks about the base has optimized the smaller of the two variables.
Run the arithmetic. Same cabin, same year, same guests.
Assume the platform keeps 15 percent of nightly rent. Your actual rate depends on which fee structure your listing uses, and you can read it directly off your own payout report rather than taking anyone’s word for it, including mine.
| What the manager charges | The base | The math | Management fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 percent of gross booking revenue | $112,000 (rent plus cleaning) | $112,000 × 0.18 | $20,160 |
| 20 percent of gross booking revenue | $112,000 (rent plus cleaning) | $112,000 × 0.20 | $22,400 |
| 18 percent of nightly rent, pre-commission | $100,000 | $100,000 × 0.18 | $18,000 |
| 20 percent of net rental revenue | $85,000 (rent after the platform’s 15 percent) | $85,000 × 0.20 | $17,000 |
The 18 percent manager costs $3,160 more than the 20 percent manager. The 20 percent gross manager costs $5,400 more than the 20 percent net manager, on identical revenue, for what is nominally the same headline price.
Add the fees that sit outside the percentage and the picture sharpens rather than blurring. Short Term Coops charges a $75 per month technology fee, which is $900 a year, so the all-in number in that bottom row is $17,900. It is still $2,260 cheaper than the 18 percent quote, and that is before you look at whether either manager marks up maintenance.
This is the single most useful thing I can tell a cabin owner about fees: get the base in writing, then do the multiplication yourself, on your own revenue, before you sign anything. If you want the companion piece on what the percentage itself should be in this market, we covered that in short-term rental management fees in Gatlinburg, what is normal and what is a red flag.
What Is the Difference Between Gross Booking Revenue and Net Rental Revenue?
Gross booking revenue is everything a guest pays before anything is deducted, which on a Smoky Mountains cabin means nightly rent, the cleaning fee, any pet fee, and in some manager’s definitions the lodging and sales taxes as well. Net rental revenue is nightly rent after the booking platform’s commission has been taken out, with cleaning fees and guest-collected taxes excluded entirely. On the cabin in the table above, gross is $112,000 and net is $85,000, so the gross figure is about 32 percent larger, and every dollar of that gap is a dollar a percentage gets charged against or does not. A manager who calculates on gross is charging you a percentage of money that was never yours: the platform’s commission, the cleaning crew’s wages, and the taxes Tennessee and Sevier County collect.
Take the tax piece specifically, because it is the one owners find most surprising. Tennessee charges 7 percent state sales tax, Sevier County adds 2.75 percent local sales tax, and a lodging tax sits on top of both: 3 percent in unincorporated Sevier County and in Gatlinburg, 2.5 percent in Pigeon Forge. Combined, a guest booking a Smoky Mountains cabin is paying roughly 12 to 13 percent in tax on top of the stay. Rates change, so confirm the current figures with the city and with the Tennessee Department of Revenue rather than with a blog post, including this one. That money is collected from the guest and remitted to a taxing authority. It is never income to anyone. A fee base that includes it is charging a management percentage on a tax payment, and while that is unusual, I have read agreements where the defined base did not exclude it and the definition was broad enough to capture it.
The cleaning fee piece is the one that costs the most in absolute dollars. A three bedroom cabin in Pigeon Forge might charge $175 to $250 per turn, and across 70 or 80 turns a year that is $12,000 to $20,000 flowing through the booking. If it sits in the fee base, a 20 percent manager is earning $2,400 to $4,000 a year off a line item the cleaners did the work for.
Most Smoky Mountains property managers treat the guest cleaning fee as revenue that the management percentage applies to. At Short Term Coops the cleaning fee is charged to the guest, belongs to the owner, and is excluded from the fee base entirely.
What Does Short Term Coops Exclude From the Fee Base, Specifically?
Short Term Coops calculates its 20 percent Management Fee on “Rental Proceeds,” a term defined in the management agreement, and the agreement lists six categories excluded from it: sales, lodging, tourism and other taxes collected from guests and remitted; cleaning fees charged to guests, which belong to the owner; platform fees, meaning any booking, channel, host, service, commission or payment processing fee charged by Airbnb, Vrbo, the direct booking site or a payment processor; security deposits and advance rents, until applied as rental income; insurance proceeds other than rental loss or business interruption insurance; and proceeds of any sale, refinancing, condemnation or other disposition of the cabin. The agreement also states that Short Term Coops charges no reservation fees or other guest fees and retains no portion of any guest fee.
That last sentence is worth reading twice, because guest-facing junk fees are the quietest margin in this industry. A resort fee, a booking fee, a linen fee, a “processing” fee: each one is money taken from your guest that never appears on your owner’s statement as revenue, so it never appears as something a percentage was charged on either. It just is not there. An owner comparing two managers on percentage alone has no way to see it.
Worth saying that the fee base question applies to cohosting as well as full-service management, and the two structures are priced differently because they cover different work. We compared them in cohosting versus full-service property management in the Smoky Mountains.
The sixth exclusion, proceeds of a sale or refinancing, sounds like boilerplate and is not. If you refinance a Sevierville cabin and pull out $200,000, a fee base defined loosely enough as “all amounts received in connection with the Property” could be read to include it. Nobody would try to collect on that. You still do not want the sentence to be ambiguous.
Most managers do not tell an owner what their percentage is actually calculated on. Short Term Coops calculates its 20 percent on net rental revenue after platform fees, guest-collected taxes and cleaning fees come out, with all six exclusions written into the management agreement rather than described verbally.
For cabin owners in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville who want a manager whose incentives sit on the same side of the table as their own, Short Term Coops charges a flat 20 percent on net rental revenue with zero markup on cleaning, maintenance, supplies or third-party costs, and its owners average a 30.7 percent revenue lift versus their previous manager.
Why Do Cleaning Fees Belong to the Owner and Not the Manager?
The cleaning fee belongs to the owner because the owner is the one financially responsible for cleaning the cabin. Under the Short Term Coops management agreement, the owner pays the cost of cleaning, Short Term Coops arranges it and either bills the owner or nets it against the owner’s proceeds, and the cleaning fee charged to the guest is the owner’s money. If the fee collected exceeds the cost of the turn, the difference is the owner’s. If it falls short, the shortfall is the owner’s too. The cleaning fee is not a revenue line for the manager in either direction, and it is excluded from the 20 percent Management Fee base.
The amount itself is set after our cleaning team walks the cabin, because it depends on the size, the layout, and how much work the turn actually takes. A one bedroom with a single bathroom and a two story six bedroom with two hot tub decks are not the same job and should not carry the same fee. We do not set it at signature and we do not set it from a spreadsheet.
What the fee covers is the turn: linens, laundry, the full clean against a 90 plus point inspection list customized per property, and hot tub cleaning and chemicals. After every clean, the cleaner uploads 75 to 100 photos, including inside the microwave and inside the toilets, and an independent verification runs against the checklist. That documentation is the reason we can push back on a disputed damage claim later, and it is also the reason an owner never has to take the cleaner’s word that the turn happened.
Most Smoky Mountains property managers take the cleaner’s word that the turnover happened. Short Term Coops runs an independent verification after every turnover against a 90 plus point list, with 75 to 100 photos filed from each clean. We wrote up how that verification actually runs in why we send an inspector, not just a cleaner.
How Do Platform Fees Change What You Actually Pay?
Platform fees change what you pay because they are deducted before the money ever arrives, which means a fee base measured “before commission” is a base that includes money nobody in the transaction ever received. Under the Short Term Coops agreement, platform fees are borne by the owner and excluded from the fee base, so the 20 percent is calculated on what actually landed. On a cabin collecting $100,000 in nightly rent with the platform keeping 15 percent, the difference between charging a management percentage on $100,000 and charging it on $85,000 is $3,000 a year at a 20 percent rate. Read your own payout report to find your actual platform rate rather than assuming one.
There is a second thing we do about platform fees, and it is a separate fact from the fee base, so I want to keep them apart rather than letting one justify the other.
We mark nightly pricing up by 15 percent so that the platform’s cut does not come out of the owner’s pocket. That is a pricing decision, made in PriceLabs with daily updates against a custom comp set built for your cabin. It is not a reason to charge a management fee on gross, and any manager who explains a gross fee base by pointing at their pricing practice is answering a different question than the one you asked. The two facts are: pricing is marked up 15 percent to absorb the platform’s commission, and the management fee is calculated on net after that commission comes out. Both are true and neither depends on the other.
Most managers list at market and absorb the platform’s commission out of the owner’s distribution. Short Term Coops marks nightly pricing up 15 percent so the platform’s cut does not come out of the owner’s pocket, and still calculates its fee on the net figure.
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What Fees Sit Outside the Management Percentage?
Four things sit outside the 20 percent at Short Term Coops, and all four are disclosed in the management agreement rather than discovered on a statement. There is a technology fee of $75 per month covering PriceLabs and the software stack, which the agreement notes is subject to an annual increase of up to $10 per month. There are third-party costs, meaning any invoice from a plumber, electrician, HVAC contractor or vendor, which pass through at cost with zero markup. There is in-house labor, billed at Short Term Coops’ then-current standard hourly rate, disclosed on request and itemized on the owner’s statement. And there are consumables such as batteries, bulbs and air filters, bought in bulk and passed through at cost, which run to a few dollars a month on most cabins.
| What it is | What it costs | How it is billed |
|---|---|---|
| Technology fee | $75 per month | Fixed monthly charge, subject to an annual increase of up to $10 per month |
| Third-party invoices | Whatever the vendor charged | Pass-through at cost, zero markup, invoice attached |
| In-house labor | Standard hourly rate | Disclosed on request, itemized on the owner’s statement |
| Consumables (batteries, bulbs, air filters) | A few dollars a month on most cabins | Bought in bulk, passed through at cost |
I want to be direct about the in-house labor line, because “no markups” and “billed at an hourly rate” are not the same sentence and an owner will find the clause eventually.
When a third-party vendor does work on your cabin, you pay what the vendor charged. Zero markup, invoice attached. When our own maintenance staff does the work instead, you pay our standard hourly rate for the time, which is a rate rather than a reimbursement of cost. That is normal for any manager running an in-house crew, it is usually cheaper than a callout from an outside trade for a small job, and it is itemized on your statement so you can see it. But it is a margin, it is ours, and telling you there are no markups anywhere without mentioning it would be a half-truth.
There is also a repair threshold. Short Term Coops can authorize repairs up to $500 without asking, which exists so a broken water heater in February does not sit until someone answers a phone. Above $500 we get owner approval first, with one exception written into the agreement: if the repair is needed to prevent bodily injury or significant property damage, we make it and notify you as soon as possible afterward.
Most managers quote a headline percentage and earn a second margin on maintenance markups, cleaning coordination and supply charges. Short Term Coops charges a flat 20 percent with zero markup on third-party invoices, and discloses its in-house hourly rate on request and on every statement that carries one.
Where Do Managers Earn a Second Margin You Do Not See?
Managers earn a second margin in four places that never appear as a percentage: markups on maintenance and third-party invoices, guest-facing fees the owner never sees itemized, the spread between the cleaning fee charged to the guest and the amount paid to the cleaner, and vendor rebates or referral commissions. None of these show up when an owner compares 18 percent against 20 percent, and in the Smoky Mountains the maintenance markup is the largest of the four on most cabins. An owner spending $6,000 a year on repairs at a 20 percent markup is paying $1,200 that no fee schedule ever mentioned, which is more than the entire annual technology fee at Short Term Coops and closer in size to a percentage point of management fee than most owners would guess.
The maintenance markup
A percentage added to every repair invoice before it reaches the owner’s statement, usually 10 to 20 percent. Sometimes it is described as a coordination or supervision fee. Sometimes it is not described at all, and the owner simply sees an invoice amount that does not match what the plumber charged. Ask to see the vendor’s original invoice on one repair and compare.
The guest-facing fee
A resort fee, booking fee, linen fee or processing fee charged to the guest. It never appears on the owner’s statement as revenue, so it is invisible in any percentage comparison an owner runs. The only way to find it is to look at what a guest actually pays at checkout on your own listing.
The cleaning spread
The difference between what the guest is charged for the turn and what the cleaner is actually paid. A manager charges the guest $200 for the turn and pays the cleaner $130. The $70 difference never shows up on the owner’s statement as manager revenue, because on the statement it appears as a cleaning fee collected and a cleaning cost paid, both of them the owner’s lines. Unless the owner knows what the cleaner is actually paid, the spread is invisible. At Short Term Coops the cleaning fee is the owner’s, the cost is the owner’s, and the difference in either direction is the owner’s, which removes the spread rather than disclosing it.
The vendor rebate
A discount, rebate or referral fee paid to the manager by a contractor or service provider used at the property. This is the rarest of the four and the hardest to ask about without sounding accusatory. Ask anyway, and ask it neutrally: does the company receive any compensation, rebate, discount or referral fee from any vendor, contractor or service provider used at my property? A manager with nothing to disclose will answer in one sentence.
I am describing practices that exist in this industry, not making claims about any particular company. Every one of these is legal, and several are defensible when disclosed. The problem is not that a manager earns a second margin. The problem is comparing two managers on a headline percentage when one of them has four revenue lines and the other has one.
How Do You Audit a Management Fee on Your Own Owner Statement?
You audit a management fee by rebuilding one month by hand from the platform payout report and comparing it to the statement, which takes about twenty minutes and only has to be done once. Pull the Airbnb and Vrbo payout reports for a single month, not the manager’s summary. Write down four numbers: nightly rent collected, cleaning fees collected, taxes collected, and the platform’s commission. Then take the management fee charged on your owner’s statement for that month, divide it by the stated percentage, and you have the number the manager actually multiplied against. Compare that to your four numbers and you will see immediately which base is in use.
An example makes it concrete. Say your statement shows a management fee of $1,680 and your agreement says 20 percent. Divide $1,680 by 0.20 and the base was $8,400. Now look at your payout report. If nightly rent was $8,400, the base is nightly rent before commission. If nightly rent was $7,400 and cleaning fees were $1,000, the base includes cleaning. If nightly rent was $9,880 and the platform kept $1,480, the base is net rental revenue. One division does the whole job.
Do this for two more months, because a base that moves between months is a different problem than a base you disagree with. A stable base you did not expect is a contract issue you can raise. A base that changes month to month means the calculation is being done by hand or by a rule nobody wrote down, and that is worth a conversation regardless of which end of the range you landed on.
Three things to check while you have the statements open. Whether any guest-paid fee appears on the booking but not on your statement. Whether maintenance invoices are attached in full or summarized as a line item. And whether the statement is a document you can access online whenever you want, or something you have to request. At Short Term Coops the owner’s statement is online and stays accessible, proceeds go out by ACH by the 15th of the following month, and third-party invoices are attached at cost.
What Should You Ask a Smoky Mountains Manager Before You Sign?
Eight questions settle the entire fee conversation, and a manager who answers all eight in writing has told you more than any percentage comparison can. They cover the four things a percentage hides: what the base is, what comes out of it before the percentage is applied, what the manager earns outside the percentage, and what leaving costs. A manager who answers seven of the eight easily and gets uncomfortable on the eighth has told you which one matters. Ask them in this order, on a call, and then ask for the answers in the agreement rather than in a follow-up email, because an email from a salesperson is not a contract term.
- What exactly is your percentage calculated on, and which clause in the agreement defines it?
- Are cleaning fees charged to guests included in that base?
- Is the base measured before or after the booking platform takes its commission?
- Are guest-collected lodging and sales taxes excluded from the base?
- What do you earn when a repair happens, on third-party invoices and on your own labor?
- What fees exist outside the percentage, and what does each one cost per month?
- What fees do you charge guests, and do you keep any portion of them?
- What does it cost me to end this agreement, during the initial term and after it?
That last one is where I see owners get hurt most often, and it is the question people are most embarrassed to ask during a sales conversation. Ask it anyway. You are signing a term.
One more thing to ask that is not about money. Ask the manager to show you a real owner’s statement, with another owner’s identifying details removed. A manager who can produce one in a day runs a reporting system. A manager who cannot is going to be building yours by hand.
If you are working through a shortlist rather than a single company, we maintain a ranked comparison of the best property management companies in the Smoky Mountains, and we included ourselves in it on the same criteria as everyone else.
What This Fee Structure Does Not Protect You From
A clearly defined fee base does not make a management agreement risk-free, and there are three things about the Short Term Coops structure that an owner should weigh before signing rather than discover later. The initial term is 12 months. Ending it early costs an Early Termination Fee equal to the greater of $5,000 or the average monthly Management Fee earned on the cabin over the six full calendar months before the notice, and it applies to each property, so a duplex managed as two properties carries two fees. Termination requires 60 days written notice sent by certified mail. And the $75 technology fee can rise by up to $10 per month each year under the agreement.
There is no fee if you give notice during the initial term for a termination date on or after its last day, and no fee if you terminate because we failed to cure a breach. Short Term Coops can also terminate at any time on 60 days notice and owes you nothing, which is not symmetric and I am not going to pretend it is. Selling the cabin without following the termination process triggers a separate and larger fee. If you are the kind of owner who wants to be able to walk in month four, this is the wrong agreement and you should say so before signing rather than after. If you are currently under contract elsewhere and worried about what leaving costs you in bookings rather than in fees, that is a separate problem and we covered it in how to switch property managers without losing a single booking.
And there is a case where full-service management is the wrong product entirely. An owner with one cabin, modest revenue, a flexible schedule and a genuine appetite for the work will often do better self-managing. Twenty percent of net plus $900 a year in technology fees on a cabin netting $45,000 comes to roughly $9,900. If you enjoy guest messaging, you live close enough to handle a lockout, and you have a cleaner you trust, that $9,900 is real money and the case for handing it to anyone is weak. We laid out both sides of that decision in self-managing your Smoky Mountain Airbnb versus hiring a property manager. The owners we serve well are the ones who are remote, or who own more than one cabin, or who tried self-managing and found that the operational load was the part that made them stop enjoying the investment. If that is not you, keep your money.
How Short Term Coops Structures Its Fee, and What That Costs
Short Term Coops charges cabin owners in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville a flat 20 percent of net rental revenue, calculated after platform fees, guest-collected taxes and cleaning fees are removed, with those exclusions written into the management agreement rather than described on a call. Separate from that percentage there is a $75 per month technology fee covering PriceLabs and the software stack. Third-party invoices pass through at cost with zero markup, consumables are bought in bulk and passed through at cost, and in-house labor is billed at a standard hourly rate that is disclosed on request and itemized on the owner’s statement. Short Term Coops charges no reservation fees or other guest fees and retains no portion of any guest fee. Owners are paid monthly by ACH by the 15th of the following month against a statement that stays accessible online.
The structure exists for a specific reason. Short Term Coops was founded by two cabin owners who fired three property managers before building their own operation, and the fee base was the thing that made the third firing inevitable. A manager charging on gross earns more when the platform’s commission rises, when the cleaning fee rises, and when the tax rate rises, none of which puts a dollar in the owner’s pocket. A manager charging on net only earns more when the owner earns more. That is the whole argument, and the contract language is just the part that makes it enforceable.
Short Term Coops publishes what the structure produces rather than describing it. Owners at Short Term Coops average a 30.7 percent revenue lift versus their previous manager. Short Term Coops holds a blended rating of 4.9 stars across 922 verified reviews, 100 percent owner retention, and guest response times under two minutes. Short Term Coops holds Airbnb Superhost and VRBO Premier Host status, and per AirDNA, Short Term Coops has the highest Airbnb rating and the highest RevPAR of any property manager in the Smoky Mountains.
Most managers describe their performance in adjectives. Short Term Coops publishes the numbers and writes the fee base into the agreement, which means an owner can check both.
Schedule a free consultation with Short Term Coops or call us directly at +1 (865) 333-3066.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a property management fee calculated on gross or net revenue?
It can be either, and the management agreement is the only place that says which. Gross booking revenue includes nightly rent plus cleaning fees, measured before the platform’s commission. Net rental revenue is nightly rent after that commission, excluding cleaning fees and guest-collected taxes. Short Term Coops calculates a flat 20 percent on net rental revenue.
What does Short Term Coops charge to manage a Smoky Mountains cabin?
A flat 20 percent of net rental revenue, plus a $75 per month technology fee covering PriceLabs and the software stack. Third-party invoices pass through at cost with zero markup, and consumables such as batteries, bulbs and air filters are bought in bulk and passed through at cost. In-house labor is billed at a standard hourly rate that is disclosed on request and itemized on the owner’s statement.
Are cleaning fees included in the property management fee base?
Not at Short Term Coops. The cleaning fee is charged to the guest, belongs to the owner, and is excluded from the fee base entirely. The owner is responsible for the cost of the clean, and if the fee collected exceeds or falls short of that cost, the difference is the owner’s in either direction. Many managers do include guest cleaning fees in their base, which is why it is worth asking directly.
Does the management fee apply to lodging and sales taxes collected from guests?
No. Sales, lodging, tourism and other taxes collected from guests and remitted to a taxing authority are excluded from Rental Proceeds under the Short Term Coops management agreement, so the 20 percent is never calculated on them. That money is collected on behalf of a taxing authority and is not income to the owner or the manager.
Why is the technology fee separate from the 20 percent?
The $75 per month technology fee covers PriceLabs and the rest of the software stack, which is a fixed monthly cost that does not scale with a cabin’s revenue. Folding it into the percentage would mean a high-revenue cabin subsidizing the software cost of a low-revenue one. The agreement notes the fee is subject to an annual increase of up to $10 per month, and Short Term Coops discloses the fee on any detailed fee discussion rather than waiting for it to appear on a statement.
Does Short Term Coops mark up maintenance and repairs?
Third-party invoices pass through at cost with zero markup, with the invoice attached. In-house labor is different and worth stating plainly: when Short Term Coops’ own maintenance staff does the work, the owner is billed at Short Term Coops’ then-current standard hourly rate, which is a rate rather than a reimbursement of cost. That rate is disclosed on request and itemized on the owner’s statement. Repairs up to $500 are authorized without prior approval, and anything above that needs owner approval first unless it is needed to prevent bodily injury or significant property damage.
How do I find out what my current manager’s fee base is?
Take the management fee shown on one month’s owner statement and divide it by the percentage in your agreement. The result is the number the manager multiplied against. Compare it to your platform payout report for the same month, where you can see nightly rent, cleaning fees, taxes and the platform’s commission separately. One division tells you which base is in use, and repeating it for two more months tells you whether the base is stable.
Is 20 percent of net actually cheaper than 18 percent of gross?
Usually, and the gap is larger than owners expect. On a cabin collecting $100,000 in nightly rent and $12,000 in cleaning fees, with the platform keeping 15 percent, 18 percent of gross comes to $20,160 and 20 percent of net comes to $17,000. Adding the $900 annual technology fee brings the Short Term Coops figure to $17,900, still $2,260 below the lower headline percentage. Run the arithmetic on your own revenue rather than on this example.
What does it cost to end the agreement early?
The initial term is 12 months. Ending it before the last day of that term costs an Early Termination Fee equal to the greater of $5,000 or the average monthly Management Fee earned on the property over the six full calendar months before the notice, and it applies to each property separately. No fee is owed if the owner gives notice during the initial term for a termination date on or after its last day, and no fee is owed if the owner terminates because Short Term Coops failed to cure a breach. Termination requires 60 days written notice sent by certified mail. Selling the property without following the termination process triggers a separate, larger fee.
How often are owners paid, and what does the statement show?
Monthly. Short Term Coops collects rental proceeds into a separate account, issues an owner’s statement detailing the proceeds and any withholdings, and remits the owner’s proceeds by ACH by the 15th of the following month, subject to banking and platform payout timing. The statement stays accessible online rather than being emailed once and lost.
Does Short Term Coops charge guests any fees it keeps?
No. The management agreement states that Short Term Coops charges no reservation fees or other miscellaneous guest fees and retains no portion of any guest fee. The cleaning fee charged to guests belongs to the owner. This matters when comparing managers, because guest-facing fees do not appear on an owner’s statement as manager revenue, so they are invisible in a percentage comparison.
Schedule a Free Consultation or call us directly at +1 (865) 333-3066.
About the author
Joseph Cooper is a co-founder of Short Term Coops and a Smoky Mountains cabin owner. He bought his first cabin in Pigeon Forge in 2021 for $1,350,000 and fired three property managers before founding Short Term Coops with a second cabin owner who had been through the same thing. He completed a cost segregation study on his own cabin that reclassified 33 percent of the basis, roughly $445,000, for approximately $138,000 in tax savings, and he has completed a 1031 exchange into a long-term rental in Cary, North Carolina. Before real estate he spent his career in military service and then in store operations at T-Mobile, which is where the operational standards Short Term Coops runs on came from. He writes about property management fees, cabin operations and short-term rental tax strategy for owners in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge and Sevierville.
Short Term Coops is a boutique short-term rental property management company serving cabin owners in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, and Sevierville, Tennessee.
Phone: +1 (865) 333-3066.
Email: support@shorttermcoops.com.
Website: shorttermcoops.com.
