How Airbnb revenue actually works in Guatemala

Gross short-term-rental revenue is brutally simple: ADR × occupancy × 365. ADR is the average price a guest pays per night after promotions but before cleaning fees; occupancy is the share of available nights that were booked. In Guatemala, the AirDNA-style typical gross yield band sits at about 6–9% of property value — which means an investor buying for Q 3,900,000 should expect roughly Q 234,000–Q 312,000 of gross rent per year before any costs are subtracted. The cost stack is where most beginner pro-formas fall apart, so the three sections below walk through it line by line.

Three reference scenarios for Guatemala

The table below shows what the same listing produces under three different demand realities. Income tax is applied at 10% — the indicative effective rate for a foreign or top-bracket Guatemala owner — and the net column is what would survive into GTQ before financing, cleaning, management, and depreciation.

These three rows are how seasoned operators stress-test a new market: if even the conservative line covers debt service + a 20% management fee, the deal has a real margin of safety. If only the strong-market line clears it, you're underwriting a perfect storm.

The full Guatemala tax stack

Four taxes hit the typical short-term rental in Guatemala. Owners who only model income tax routinely overstate net yield by 150–300 bps:

• One-time transfer / stamp duty at 3% of purchase price. On a Q 3,900,000 property that's a Q 117,000 cheque at closing, before legal fees and registration.
• Annual property tax at roughly 0.9% of value. Recurring, non-deductible against personal income in most jurisdictions, and the line that quietly compounds against long-term IRR.
• Rental income tax at an indicative effective rate of 10%. This is the headline number the calculator deducts; your real rate depends on residency, deductions and depreciation treatment.
• Capital gains at around 10% on a typical five-year hold. Easy to forget at acquisition, brutal at exit if you didn't plan a 1031-style rollover or treaty relief.

Financing & the foreign-buyer spread

The 30-year fixed convention does not exist in most of the world. In Guatemala, the indicative resident mortgage rate is around 8% APR. Foreign buyers typically pay 50–200 bps more than that, get offered lower LTVs (often 50–60% versus 75–80% for residents), and need to show two years of audited income in the lender's preferred format. Model your debt service against the foreign-buyer rate if you don't hold local residency — the gap between 6% and 8% on a Q 3,120,000 loan is roughly Q 62,400 of net cash flow per year.

Regulatory snapshot — Guatemala

IUSI annual property tax on values >Q70K. No restrictions on foreign ownership outside border zones. Beyond that, the global short-term-rental regulatory baseline applies: most major cities now require a registration number, cap annual let-out nights for non-primary residences, and run active anti-Airbnb compliance teams that scrape listings. Before you underwrite an STR deal in Guatemala, pull the city-level rules for whichever municipality the property sits in — national tax averages are useful for triage, but a single-city ban can take a market from viable to dead overnight.

Who this calculator is built for

Three personas use this Guatemala page heavily: (1) first-time investors deciding whether an STR thesis even pencils before they fly out to view properties; (2) experienced operators expanding from one country to another and wanting a sanity check on the local tax drag; and (3) accountants and bookkeepers pulling a defensible directional number into a client memo. It is not a substitute for a full property-level pro-forma — once a deal looks plausible here, the next step is a city-specific AirDNA pull plus a quote from a local accountant and a local mortgage broker.

Methodology, sources, and caveats

Country tax rates and gross-yield bands are compiled from PwC's Worldwide Tax Summaries, Global Property Guide, and the public statutes of each tax authority, reviewed at the start of 2026. FX conversions are mid-market rates as of the build date and are refreshed on each deployment — do not use these for hedging or wire-transfer planning. Tax overlays are effective not marginal rates, and they assume a non-resident or top-bracket owner; resident owners with a homestead exemption, allowable depreciation, or a beneficial corporate structure will often see materially lower drag. Nothing on this page is tax, legal, or investment advice — confirm every figure with a Guatemala-based accountant before committing capital.