What does an empty unit cost?
Rent and days vacant in — the total bleed, per-day cost, and share of a year’s rent out. Add turnover costs if you know them.
The Vacancy
From the day it empties to the day rent starts again
Cleaning, paint, repairs, re-keying, listing
Total Cost of This Vacancy
$3,863
$2,663 rent never collected + $1,200 turnover
Per-Day Bleed
$59.18
Every day it sits costs this much
Share of a Year's Rent
17.9%
Against $21,600 gross per year
Computed from your inputs only. Daily rent is annualized first (× 12 ÷ 365), so the per-day figure is exact rather than a divide-by-30 approximation.
A worked example
Say a unit rents for $1,800 a month. Its true daily rent is $1,800 × 12 ÷ 365 = $59.18 a day. If it sits empty for 45 days between tenants, that is $59.18 × 45 = $2,663 in rent that never existed.
Turnover usually costs money on top of the silence: cleaning, paint, small repairs, listing. Add a $1,200 turn and the vacancy really cost $3,863 — about 18% of the $21,600 that unit grosses in a year, gone between two leases.
How the math works
Daily rent = (monthly rent × 12) ÷ 365
Vacancy cost = daily rent × days vacant + turnover costs
- Daily rent annualizes first, then divides by 365. Dividing one month’s rent by 30 undercounts — five months have 31 days, and the error compounds across a long vacancy.
- Turnover costs are everything the gap makes you spend: cleaning, paint, repairs, re-keying, listing and marketing. They are optional in the calculator because they vary; the rent bleed alone is the floor.
- The per-day number is the one worth remembering. Every day of faster response, faster turnover, and faster leasing is worth exactly that much — no multiplier, no estimate.
Vacancy questions
Every vacant day has a price
This page just put a number on it. Doughy’s Leasing agent is built to respond to rental inquiries in seconds, pre-screen prospects, and book tours around the clock — so listings keep moving while you do other things.