← Alice Guyot Scodeller · Personal work · September 2026 · Français
A model you can move yourself, and the table that shows at what price operations stop covering the debt. Old town of Antibes, September 2026.
One assumption to flag before anything else. There is no acceptable public source on occupancy or nightly rates for furnished lets in Antibes. The starting point — €220 a night — is derived from Côte d'Azur hotels: €145 RevPAR at 66% occupancy. That is a hotel benchmark, not a measurement of the short-let market. It is there to be moved.
Price-per-m² benchmarks: 5,566 town median (DVF 2025) · 7,223 old-town median (PAP) · 10,000 renovated · 15,000 renovated with sea view — the last two are expert opinion. Operating costs bundle the platform commission with running costs: in short lets they routinely absorb half the revenue.
Only the purchase price varies. Everything else is held constant: 60 m², 20% equity, 3.27% over 20 years, €220 a night at 66% occupancy.
| Price per m² | Purchase price | Debt service | Gross op. surplus | DSCR | Cash flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| €5,566 town median | €333,960 | €19,583 | €26,499 | 1.35 | +€6,916 |
| €7,223 old-town median | €433,380 | €25,413 | €26,499 | 1.04 | +€1,086 |
| €10,000 renovated | €600,000 | €35,184 | €26,499 | 0.75 | −€8,685 |
| €15,000 renovated, sea view | €900,000 | €52,775 | €26,499 | 0.50 | −€26,276 |
The gross operating surplus column does not move. Operations do not depend on the price paid — buying more expensively adds no nights. Only the debt depends on it. The numerator stays fixed, the denominator swells, the ratio collapses.
On the renovated segment, short lets do not finance the acquisition at standard leverage. At €10,000/m², €8,685 a year is missing. Two ways out, and only two: raise the nightly rate or the equity share.
Two formulas, and nothing else in the whole page.
| Monthly instalment | m = K × i / (1 − (1+i)−n) | K amount borrowed, i monthly rate, n number of instalments. |
| Annual debt service | m × 12 | What the bank expects over the year. |
| Revenue | 365 × occupancy × nightly rate | Accommodation revenue, before any cost. |
| Gross operating surplus | revenue − operating costs | Cleaning, laundry, energy, guest handling and platform commission. Before interest, tax and depreciation. |
| DSCR | surplus / annual debt service | At 1, operations cover the instalments exactly. |
| Cash flow | surplus − annual debt service | What is left, or what has to be put in. |
| RevPAR | revenue / 365 | Revenue per available night, occupied or not. |
| Break-even occupancy | service / ((1 − costs %) × 365 × nightly rate) | The rate below which the structure tips. |
What the model does not do: it ignores taxation, which changes everything depending on the regime — micro-BIC, actual-cost, or para-hotel activity subject to VAT. It treats costs as proportional to revenue, whereas cleaning depends on the number of stays. It models neither seasonality, nor capital works, nor resale. A model claiming to cover all of that in seven sliders would be lying about its own precision.