The Two-Cottage Case Study

Five seasons. No outliers.

The data projected $80,000 a year for two never-rented cottages in Sturgeon Bay. Here is what a complete hospitality system produced instead — season by season, straight from our booking software.

$80,000
What the data projected, per year
$190,417
What they actually average, per year
$110,000
The annual cost of "average"
~$537K
Earned above projection, 5 seasons
The test

Two ordinary cottages

If we'd done this with a $2M waterfront trophy home, you could dismiss the result — great properties forgive average management. So note what these actually are: modest 3-bedroom, ~1,300-square-foot cottages on the quiet side of Sturgeon Bay, neither of which had ever hosted a paying guest. Whatever they earned, the management earned.

Rocky Shores Retreat brand and booking site

Rocky Shores Retreat

3 BR · 1 BA · Sleeps 10 · 1,320 sq ft · Launched Aug 2021

First full calendar year: $101,185 — 2.5× its projection. Every season since has held between $85,000 and $101,000. One bathroom. Read that spec line again. See its brand and booking site →

Sawyer Harbor Retreat brand and booking site

Sawyer Harbor Retreat

3 BR · 2 BA · Sleeps 10 · 1,336 sq ft · Launched June 2022

Grossed $72,514 in its partial first year — launched mid-season. First three full seasons: $96,182 · $104,841 · $89,155. A 2.4× average against projection. See its brand and booking site →

What the smart money said

Two cottages × $40,000 projected = $80,000 a year, combined. That projection wasn't careless — it accurately prices what average management earns in this market. Hold onto that number. The table below is about the $110,000 a year it leaves out.

The numbers

Season by season, from our booking software

Gross revenue20222023202420252026*
Rocky Shores Retreat$101,185$88,672$98,278$94,124$85,411
Sawyer Harbor Retreat$72,514†$96,182$104,841$89,155$89,774
Combined$173,699$184,854$203,118$183,279$175,185
vs. $80,000 projection2.2×2.3×2.5×2.3×2.2×

*2026 = confirmed bookings as of July 26, 2026 — with fall color and holiday seasons still to book. †Partial first year (launched June 2022). Figures are gross booking revenue from our OwnerRez records, including cleaning fees and guest charges. AirDNA projections from pre-launch market analysis; 5-season projection baseline ≈ $383,000 vs. ≈ $920,000 actually booked.

Read the bottom row, not the big numbers. The multiple never dips below 2.2× — through a market peak (2024), a market cooldown (2025), and a 2026 that's already at 2.2× before the best remaining weeks sell. Average nightly booking values run $457–$556 against a ~$346 market average, on ~200 booked nights a season in a 48%-occupancy market. Luck produces an outlier year. Systems produce a floor.

★★★★★

"[Guest review placeholder — best cleanliness / 'better than the photos' quote from Airbnb]"

Guest review · Airbnb
★★★★★

"[Guest review placeholder — best communication / easy check-in quote from Vrbo]"

Guest review · Vrbo
Transferability

Why this repeats on your property

None of the four disciplines depends on these two cottages. Every mechanism that produced the table above is documented, repeatable, and property-agnostic:

The pricing engine doesn't care whose comp set it watches

Weekly repricing against your competitive set works identically whether the property is ours or yours — the discipline is the cadence, not the address.

The listing playbook was built to be reused

Story-first copy, seasonal hero rotation, and photography direction are written procedures. They produced two different brands from two similar cottages — that divergence is the proof they adapt.

The 200-point inspection is the same clipboard everywhere

Review-friction problems — the grill igniter, the slow drain — are found the same way on any property. The maintenance layer travels whole.

The guest journey is a system, not a personality

Smart locks, guidebooks, automated messaging, 24/7 response: the digital layer installs in days on any home and runs the same everywhere.

Which is exactly the point. If these results required our two specific cottages, they'd be a story. Because they come from documented systems pointed at ordinary properties, they're a forecast — one we're confident enough to underwrite with a guarantee.
A note from Dana

These are our homes

Nothing on this page is a projection, a model, or a hand-picked client win. It's what the system produces when we point it at a property — run with our own money at stake, through every kind of season the last five years offered.

We ran this exact analysis on both cottages before we bought them. The data said $40,000 each. We only publish numbers we'd bet our own money on — because we did.

Baylake exists to point the same system at your property. The first step is finding out what your number is.

Adirondack chairs around the fire pit at the water's edge

Disclaimer: figures are gross booking revenue for properties we own and operate, from our OwnerRez records, including cleaning fees and guest charges; they are not net income and are not a promise of results for any other property. Market projections are pre-launch AirDNA estimates for these specific properties. Your property's potential is estimated individually in the Revenue Opportunity Analysis, stated as a range, for a normal demand year achieved over a first full season under active management. The 2026 column reflects confirmed bookings as of July 26, 2026 and will be updated after the season closes.

Your property has a number too

The same analysis we ran before buying these two cottages — run free on your property, yours to keep.

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