What your home in India can really earn

Owners abroad usually ask one question first: how much will it bring in? The honest answer is a range, built from your location, your season and how the home is run. Here is how that range is made.

A short-stay rental earns from two numbers multiplied together: how many nights are booked, and at what price. Everything else — fees, cleaning, repairs — comes off that total. Owners who understand these three parts read their statements calmly; owners who only look at the final figure worry every month.

Nights booked: occupancy

Occupancy follows the calendar of the place, not yours. Goa fills from November to February and empties in the monsoon; Bengaluru and Hyderabad follow the working week and conference season; hill stations such as Manali or Mussoorie peak in summer and at Christmas. A well-run listing fills its strong months early and uses price, minimum stays and longer-stay discounts to hold on to the weak ones.

Price per night

Nightly rates move with demand: festivals, weddings, long weekends and school holidays push them up, a wet Tuesday in July pulls them down. Our sister site pricing.hexuvium.com shows how rates move by season in the main Indian destinations. A manager who never changes the price is leaving money on the table on busy dates and losing bookings on quiet ones.

What comes off the top

• Platform fees, taken by the booking site before it pays out.
• Cleaning and linen after each stay, usually charged to the guest as a cleaning fee.
• Consumables: toiletries, tea, coffee, kitchen basics.
• Utilities and upkeep: electricity, water, internet, society maintenance, small repairs.
• The manager's commission — at Hexuvium, 5% of income actually received, plus applicable local taxes.

Reading your monthly statement

Ask for one line per stay: dates, guest nights, gross amount, platform fee, cleaning, and the net. Below that, the month's costs with receipts attached, then the amount paid to you. If a month is weak, the statement should already say why — the season, a blocked week for your own visit, a repair — so you are not left guessing from another time zone.

What we will and will not promise

Before you sign, we send an estimate built on comparable homes in your area and your own photos. We never guarantee an annual figure: income depends on the home, the season and the way it is run, and anyone quoting a fixed return before seeing the property is guessing.