York Street two-bedroom: $62,400 a year on a lease to about $94,500 to the owner
Sydney CBD — York Street · Two-bedroom apartment, Sydney CBD · Twelve months, rounded figures
Before
Long-term lease, per year
$62,400
→
With MetaWise
Owner payout on short-stay, per year
≈ $94,500
From about $150,000 collected from guests, after channel commission and the management fee.
Living area of the York Street two-bedroom apartment, sofa and balcony with the city outside.
The situation
The apartment was on a long-term lease at $1,200 a week — $62,400 a year. Reliable, low-effort, and the same number it had been for a while.
The question was whether the CBD short-stay market would beat it once the costs of running a short-stay property were taken out rather than left in. Most comparisons an owner is shown skip that second half.
What we did
Checked the building's by-laws and its position on short-term letting before anything was spent, and confirmed how the 180-day cap would apply.
Set the calendar around what actually moves CBD rates — convention weeks at the ICC, the theatre season, the summer run — rather than pricing every week the same.
Ran it across the full channel mix, with corporate and mid-term stays filling the mid-week nights a leisure calendar leaves empty.
The outcome
The apartment collected around $150,000 from guests across the year, against $62,400 of rent under the lease. Those two figures are not comparable, and the table below is the reason this page shows the whole subtraction rather than the headline.
After channel commission and the management fee, an owner on full management would have received roughly $94,500 — about half as much again as the lease, before the running costs a short-stay property carries and a tenant used to.
That is a materially worse number than $150,000 and a much better one to be shown, because every line of it can be checked.
Collected from guests
$150,000
Gross across all channels for the year, before any deduction. NOT owner income.
Less channel commission at 15%
− $22,500
What the OTAs took. Leaves $127,500.
Less management fee, 20% + GST
− $33,000
MetaWise's published full-management fee, applied to the gross revenue figure. Applied instead to revenue after channel commission it would be $28,050, and the owner figure $99,450 — the more flattering of the two. The lower one is shown.
Owner payout
≈ $94,500
What a third-party owner on full management would have received. Before the running costs the owner carries on a short-stay property and a tenant carried on the lease — utilities, internet, consumables and linen — which are not quantified here.
Previous lease, same twelve months
$62,400
$1,200 a week over 52 weeks, gross rent before the owner's own letting fees. Neither figure accounts for strata, rates, insurance or land tax, which the owner carries either way.
Comparison basis: Owner payout against gross rent, over the same twelve months. The short-stay side is shown net of channel commission and the management fee; the lease side is shown gross of the owner's letting fees, so if anything the comparison flatters the lease. Costs common to both — strata, rates, insurance, land tax, mortgage interest — are excluded from both.
Evidence: The $150,000 collected, the $1,200-a-week lease and the 15% channel rate are as reported by the owner, rounded, for twelve months of short-stay management; the management fee is MetaWise's published rate; every other line is subtraction from those. Not reconciled by a third party.
Published with approval: Leo Wei, owner, 6 September 2026; publication confirmed 9 September 2026
Disclosure: this is one of the founder's own properties. It is managed on the same terms, priced by the same system and reported on the same statements as any client's — and the management fee is shown as a deduction above precisely because a client pays it, where here it stayed in the business.
