Renting out a holiday home in West Jutland: the full numbers

A holiday home in West Jutland is two things at once: a place to spend your holiday and a business with revenue, fixed costs, tax and legislation. Most articles on the subject only deal with the first. This one deals with the second.

Here is the arithmetic: what the houses cost in the different areas, what they realistically earn, what the agencies and Airbnb take, what the law allows, and what actually makes people book. Every figure comes from a named source and is dated, because they move.

One thing first: we are a cleaning company, not advisers. We work with holiday homes daily and know the operating side, but this is an explanation of how the pieces fit together, not a recommendation about what to do with your money. Talk to your bank and your accountant before signing anything.

Start with the law, not the spreadsheet

The most overlooked part of the whole calculation is that you do not decide how much you may let. Section 40 of the Danish Planning Act says that a dwelling in a holiday home area may not be used for overnight stays from 1 November to the end of February, apart from short holiday visits. And then comes the sentence that decides the winter economics:

A dwelling in a holiday home area may be used for continuous letting to changing users on short holiday stays, provided the total use in the period does not exceed 9 weeks.

Nine weeks. Not nine weeks per guest, but nine weeks in total across the entire winter period. In the summer period from 1 March to 31 October, letting is unrestricted. Added together, the ceiling is around 41 weeks a year.

This means the question is never whether to let all winter. You cannot. The question is which nine weeks you choose, and whether they are worth heating the house for. We will come back to that.

What the houses cost, area by area

There is a lot of loose talk about holiday home prices, so here are actual asking prices. The figures are medians of the holiday properties listed for sale on boligsiden.dk on 26 August 2026, by town.

• Hemmet and the Bork area: median 1.14 million kr, median 62 m2. The range ran from 0.51 to 2.25 million across 40 houses.
• Nørre Nebel and Nymindegab: median 1.55 million kr, median 80 m2, 56 houses, range 0.68 to 6.50 million.
• Oksbøl: median 1.88 million kr, median 95 m2.
• Hvide Sande: median 2.50 million kr, median 95 m2, 79 houses, range 0.70 to 8.80 million.
• Vejers Strand: median 2.85 million kr, median 85 m2.
• Ringkøbing and the Søndervig side: median 3.20 million kr, median 105 m2.
• Blåvand: median 4.15 million kr, median 137 m2, 74 houses, range 1.59 to 16.89 million.

Notice two things. First, the gap between Hemmet and Blåvand is not small: the median is nearly four times higher. Second, the square metres come with it. Blåvand is not merely dearer per house, the houses are larger, because that is where the big letting machines with pools have been built.

So you cannot compare the prices directly. A house at 1.1 million in Hemmet and one at 4.2 million in Blåvand are not the same product in two price brackets. They are two different businesses.

The four classes, and what each is for

Class 1: under 1.2 million kr, 40 to 70 m2

This is the classic older holiday home in Hemmet, Bork, Stauning or behind the dune ridge. Two bedrooms, room for four or six, often from the 1970s, frequently without a dishwasher and with electric heating.

As a rental it is the hard end. The demand exists, but it sits in high season and the school holidays, and the weekly rate is low. In return the entry price is low, and if you intend to use the house yourself part of the time, this is where the arithmetic makes the most sense.

Class 2: 1.2 to 2 million kr, 70 to 100 m2

Nørre Nebel, Nymindegab, Oksbøl, the cheaper end of Hvide Sande. Three bedrooms, room for six or eight, often from the 1980s or 1990s, usually with one bathroom and a wood burner.

This is the workhorse of Danish holiday letting. It is the type most German families book, and it has the steadiest demand across the season.

Class 3: 2 to 4 million kr, 100 to 130 m2

Hvide Sande, the Søndervig side, the better positions in Vejers. Newer or renovated, two bathrooms, often a sauna or spa, room for eight or ten.

Here the house starts competing on facilities rather than only on price and position. The second bathroom is the single step that moves the most for a family with teenagers, or for two families travelling together.

Class 4: above 4 million kr, 130 m2 and up

Blåvand and the best addresses in Søndervig and Hvide Sande. Pool, spa, sauna, activity room with table tennis and a cinema, three or four bathrooms, room for ten to sixteen.

This is a different business from the other three. The house is no longer somewhere to stay, it is a facility people book for its own sake, and it lets in weeks when the small houses stand empty, precisely because there is something to do indoors when it rains.

Two markets, not one

The biggest mistake in most articles about holiday home letting, and in the first version of this one, is treating the coast as a single market. It is not. There are two, and they behave completely differently.

The year-round destinations. Bjerregaard, Blåvand, Henne Strand, Søndervig and Hvide Sande. Guests come all year. The towns are alive in winter, there is something to do when the weather is poor, and the houses with facilities are booked years ahead. It is not unusual to see houses let one, two or three years out.

The seasonal areas. Bork Havn, Bork Hytteby, Hemmet, Skaven Strand and much of the hinterland. The season runs from May to September and then it goes quiet. Many houses shut down for the winter, not because the owner is lazy, but because there is no demand to chase. In winter there is a long way between people.

The difference is not small, and it is not a detail in the calculation. It is the calculation. A house with facilities in Bjerregaard let for thirty-eight weeks is a different business from a house in Bork Hytteby let for sixteen.

The prices say the same thing. The median holiday home in Blåvand is 4.15 million kr against 1.14 million in Hemmet. The market pays nearly four times as much, and not for sentimental reasons. It pays because the houses earn it back.

What the houses actually earn

The industry's general figures look like this:

• Smaller, simpler houses: roughly 35,000 to 75,000 kr a year.
• An ordinary holiday home for six to eight people: roughly 90,000 to 140,000 kr a year.
• A larger house with spa and pool: roughly 180,000 to 320,000 kr a year.

Those figures fit the median house. They do not fit a modern letting house in a year-round destination, and it is worth being precise about that.

A house with many bathrooms and facilities in Bjerregaard or Blåvand sits around 30,000 kr a week in high season and around 12,000 to 15,000 kr in low season. Let for thirty-eight weeks, that is roughly 680,000 kr gross. Twice the top of the industry table most people calculate from.

And thirty-eight weeks is not an optimistic estimate. The law allows about forty-one. At that end of the market the houses are effectively let every week they are available. Owners typically use the house themselves in weeks that would not have sold anyway, and perhaps keep one high-season week for themselves. The rest is booked, often far ahead.

Agency or Airbnb: what the commission actually costs

This is the question owners ask us most often, and in 2026 the answer has changed.

Agency commission typically runs: DanCenter 28 to 35 percent, NOVASOL 25 to 32 percent, Esmark 25 to 30 percent. Sol og Strand and Feriepartner agree individually. Importantly, with NOVASOL, DanCenter and Esmark, insurance and usually cleaning come on top of the commission, while Sol og Strand and Feriepartner include insurance. So compare the whole package, not the percentage.

Airbnb has historically been cheaper for the owner, because the host paid about 3 percent and the guest paid the rest. That changes in 2026. Airbnb is moving to a single host service fee of 15.5 percent of the booking subtotal, with the guest no longer paying a separate service fee. For hosts in the EEA, which includes Denmark, the switch happens on 13 October 2026. In the EU, VAT is added on top of the fee.

With VAT, 15.5 percent works out at just under 19.4 percent in practice. So the picture today is roughly:

• Agency: 25 to 35 percent, plus insurance and cleaning with some of them.
• Airbnb after October 2026: about 19 percent including VAT, plus you handle everything the agency used to do.

The difference is still real, but it is smaller than it was, and it is not free. The agency provides marketing in Germany, German-language customer service, key handling, damage settlement and a payment flow. Take the 10 to 15 percentage points home and you take those jobs home too.

Who pays what: the detail that decides the return

Here is the single most important fact in the article, and the one most often calculated wrongly.

When you let through an agency, cleaning and consumption are generally the guest's cost, not yours.

The final cleaning sits on large houses and pool houses as a compulsory fee inside the price the guest pays. It appears in the accounts, but it does not appear as an expense for you.

Electricity and water are metered. The agencies typically meter water, with the guest paying the ordinary water price plus a supplement per cubic metre, and electricity works the same way. You may choose to include a fixed allowance in the rent, but everything above it is the guest's.

That means the owner's real cost picture is far lighter than most calculations assume. What stays with you is:

• Standing charges and the base load the house uses in the weeks it stands empty.
• A service contract on the spa or pool.
• Insurance.
• Property tax.
• Maintenance.

On a newer house with an outdoor spa that lands around 90,000 kr a year. Not the 200,000 you reach if you wrongly add cleaning and full electricity on top.

The tax, and the myth that an agency is required

Here is the part many people still get wrong. The tax-free allowance on holiday home letting in 2026 is:

• 50,200 kr if the letting goes through an agency or platform that reports the rental income to the Danish tax authority.
• 13,800 kr if you let privately without reporting.

Of the amount above the allowance, 60 percent is taxable as capital income, meaning a marginal rate of about 42 percent.

The widespread misunderstanding is that you need a classic letting agency to get the high allowance. That is not true. Airbnb is a reporting platform and reports automatically to the Danish tax authority, so letting through Airbnb triggers the same high allowance of 50,200 kr.

It is worth doing the arithmetic. The difference between the two allowances is 36,400 kr of deduction, and at 60 percent taxable at 42 percent that is around 9,200 kr a year in tax. That difference disappears if you use a reporting platform, whether it is called DanCenter or Airbnb.

As an alternative you can elect accounts-based deduction of actual costs instead of the standard allowance. That choice is binding and requires ongoing documentation, so it is a conversation with an accountant, not something you click.

Winter: two completely different stories

The law first, because it applies to everyone. Section 40 of the Planning Act allows at most nine weeks of letting between 1 November and the end of February. That is nine weeks in total, not nine per guest. In the summer period from 1 March to 31 October letting is unrestricted.

Notice what that means in practice: nine weeks is more than half of the restricted period, which is only seventeen weeks long. And October and March belong to the free period. Count the whole low season from October to March and twenty-six weeks are in play, of which nineteen may be let.

From there the market splits.

In the year-round destinations such as Bjerregaard, Blåvand, Henne Strand and Søndervig, those weeks actually sell. The towns are alive in winter, there is something to do, and the houses with facilities are booked. Demand in that area holds through the winter.

In the seasonal areas such as Bork Havn and Bork Hytteby they do not sell, whatever you do. The demand is not there, and most owners shut the house for the winter and save the heating. That is a sensible decision, not neglect.

So the question of winter letting cannot be answered in general. It depends entirely on where the house is and whether it has something to offer when the weather does not.

On the channel: where the contribution per week is thin, the commission matters more. An agency at 30 percent against Airbnb at about 19 percent including VAT can be the difference on a single January week. On a house booked all winter anyway it matters less.

What actually drives bookings

In order of weight, as it looks across the market and as the industry itself describes it:

• Number of bedrooms and bathrooms. The second bathroom is the single step that moves the most. It opens the house to two families on one booking, and that is a different weekly rate altogether.
• Pool and spa. This is what lifts a house from seasonal letting to year-round letting, and it is why the figures for pool houses are three times those for ordinary houses.
• Activity room. Table tennis, table football, a small cinema room. West Jutland weather sells indoor entertainment better than most places in the country.
• Distance to the water. Important, but overrated. Most people drive anyway. A view matters more than distance.
• The age and condition of the house. A newer house books better than an older one of the same size, and it costs less to run.
• Dogs allowed. See below, because this is the cheapest of them all.

Does the pool pay?

Yes, in a year-round destination. No, in a seasonal area. That is the whole answer, and it follows directly from the two markets.

A pool or spa costs money to own. A large pool house uses around 31,000 kWh a year. But when consumption is metered, most of that is carried by the guests actually using the house. What stays with the owner is the base load in the empty weeks and a service contract for the water treatment.

In return it is precisely the facilities that sell the weeks outside high season. A house with an indoor pool, spa, sauna and an activity room can be let in November and January, because there is something to do when it is blowing twelve metres a second outside. A house without cannot.

So the pool is not a luxury you pay for. It is what makes the difference between sixteen rental weeks and thirty-eight. On a house that genuinely fills the shoulder season it pays for itself several times over.

The same pool in an area with no winter guests is pure cost. There is nobody to let it to, however good the pool is.

Dogs allowed: the cheapest decision on the list

You are right that this one is underrated. Germans are the Danish holiday home market. German guests account for about two out of three overnight stays in agency-let holiday homes, and in 2024, 15.6 million of the 21.2 million German overnight stays in Denmark were spent in holiday homes.

German guests arrive by car, often after a long drive, and the dog comes along. A house that allows dogs opens up a large part of the market at no cost beyond a decision. No conversion, no investment.

The price is real but manageable: hair in textiles and under furniture, smell if the house is not aired properly, and a bigger cleaning job at the changeover. Our experience is that three things handle it: hard floors rather than carpet in living areas, removable and washable covers, and a thorough pass under beds and sofas at every changeover, which is exactly where hair collects.

Put plainly: for a class 1 or class 2 house, allowing dogs is probably the most profitable change you could make tomorrow.

Financing, and a detail that surprises many

The rules for borrowing against a holiday home are not the same as for a year-round home.

You can generally mortgage up to 75 percent of an ordinary holiday home, against 80 percent for a year-round home. The rest must come from a deposit or a bank loan.

But here is the detail: holiday homes classified as commercially let have a separate limit of 60 percent. Buy the house with letting as the purpose and your loan-to-value can be markedly lower than you expected, which changes the whole deposit.

On top of that, the contribution rate is higher than on a year-round home. At Totalkredit, for example, the contribution rate in the 40 to 60 percent loan-to-value band has been 1.15 percent for holiday home loans against 0.85 percent for year-round home loans in the same band.

This is exactly the kind of thing to settle with your bank before you bid, not after. Ask directly how they will classify the house if you let it through an agency.

A newer mid-range house or a smaller one in an expensive area?

That is one of the best questions to ask, and the answer has two parts, because it depends which of the two markets the house sits in.

Within a year-round destination the larger, newer house wins almost every time. A guest books on the number of beds, the number of bathrooms, the facilities and the photographs. The postcode rarely decides between two houses both twenty minutes from the North Sea. A 150 m2 house with four bathrooms in Bjerregaard beats a 65 m2 house with one bathroom in Blåvand, because it can take two families on one booking.

Across the two markets the opposite holds. A large, new house with many bathrooms in an area with no winter guests cannot sell the weeks the facilities were built for. Then you are paying for square metres and bathrooms that stand empty from October to April.

So the order is: market first, then facilities, then price. Choose an area with demand all year. Then buy as many bathrooms and as much facility as the budget allows. Let the price per square metre be the last thing you look at, not the first.

The opposite point still holds for resale: expensive areas have historically held value best, and a small house in Blåvand is easier to sell again than a large house inland. Fortunately that consideration points the same way as the letting this time.

Where should you buy if you want to let?

We live in Nørre Bork ourselves, so what follows is not local patriotism. It is what the figures and the demand show.

Bjerregaard, Blåvand, Henne Strand and Søndervig are the strongest letting markets. There are guests all year, the towns live in winter, and the houses with facilities are booked far ahead. Entry is expensive: the median in Blåvand is 4.15 million kr. In return this is where thirty-eight rental weeks is realistic rather than optimistic.

Hvide Sande is strong for a reason many overlook. The town has a harbour, a sluice, a fishing industry and a surf scene, meaning something to do when the weather is bad. That gives a longer season than a pure holiday home area. The median is 2.50 million kr.

Bork Havn, Bork Hytteby and Hemmet are cheap to enter, median 1.14 million kr, and they are good places to own a holiday home you use yourself. As a pure letting investment they are weaker, and it should be said plainly: the season is May to September. In winter it is very quiet, and many houses are shut down because there is no demand to chase.

None of which stops the area being a lovely place to holiday. It just means the calculation for a letting house looks different, and you should buy with open eyes.

The conclusion, briefly: if the purpose is letting, the cheap house in the quiet area is not the bargain it appears to be. You save on the purchase price and pay in the number of weeks. The dearer house in a year-round destination costs more to enter and earns all year.

A real house, with real numbers

Rather than an invented example, here is a house actually for sale.

Dortheasvej 54, Bjerregaard near Hvide Sande. Listed at 4,888,000 kr. 180 m2 on a 1,244 m2 plot. Seven rooms, six bathrooms, built in 2023, heat pump, outdoor spa and no indoor pool. The agent's headline is "newly built holiday home with outstanding rental income".

With thirty-eight rental weeks, twelve in high season at around 30,000 kr and twenty-six in low season at around 12,500 kr, the calculation through an agency at 30 percent looks like this:

• Gross booking value: 684,000 kr.
• Commission: minus 205,000 kr.
• Your payout: 479,000 kr.
• Owner costs, meaning standing charges and base load, a spa service contract, insurance, property tax and maintenance: minus about 90,000 kr.
• Tax under the allowance method: minus about 108,000 kr.
• Net: about 280,000 kr, or around 5.7 percent of the purchase price.

Negotiate the commission down to 25 percent and it becomes about 306,000 kr and 6.3 percent.

Three things make that house good, and none of them is the price:

• Six bathrooms. That is what lets two or three families book together, and it is why 30,000 kr a week is possible.
• Built in 2023 with a heat pump. Low consumption and little maintenance, so the weeks outside high season actually carry.
• An outdoor spa rather than an indoor pool. Most of the booking effect, a fraction of the running cost.

For comparison, the best rental flat we calculated in the cities returned 0.77 percent. That is not a small difference, and it is worth understanding before concluding that property in general is a poor business.

The cleaning: the guest's cost, your review

We are a cleaning company, so let us be precise about our own role in the calculation.

On a letting house of this type the final cleaning is usually the guest's cost, not yours. It sits inside the price the guest pays and therefore does not appear as an expense on your side. That is one reason the return on a well-run letting house is higher than people think.

But the cleaning is still your risk, and that is an important distinction. The guest pays for it. You carry the consequence if it does not hold up.

A house that books years ahead does so on reviews. Reviews, in our experience, are rarely about the house and almost always about the details: hair in the drain, crumbs in the bed, dust on top of a cupboard, an oven nobody opened. Those details decide whether next year's calendar fills just as fast.

For reference, our starting prices are 800 kr up to 70 m2 and 1,200 kr up to 100 m2. Above 100 m2 the price is agreed, because a 110 m2 house and a 200 m2 house with six bathrooms are not the same job. A large house of the type described above typically takes six to eight person hours.

That figure matters to you for two reasons: it is what the guest pays, and it is what determines whether there is enough time to do it properly on a Saturday between ten and three.

What we see from the cleaning side

Finally, a few things that appear in no brochure but decide whether a letting house works.

The changeover is the bottleneck. Almost every house changes over on a Saturday, and the whole area's cleaning has to happen between ten and three. Capacity is fixed. Book the cleaning when you open for bookings, not when the first booking arrives.

Two sets of bedding per bed. Without it, the washing machine is the bottleneck every single Saturday.

A house with a local contact works. Whether it is let through an agency or Airbnb. A house where the owner is three hours away and nobody holds a key does not.

Salt and sand cost more time here than elsewhere. A house in the front dune row needs its windows cleaned more often than a house behind the plantation, and that is a running cost rarely included in the budget.

Sources

All figures were gathered in August 2026. Rules and rates change, so check them before building on them.

• Planning Act section 40 on winter letting: danskelove.dk
• Allowance and taxation 2026: BDO
• Agency commission: Nybyggethus
• Airbnb's new host fee in 2026: Smoobu
• Loan-to-value for holiday homes: Skøde Centret
• Electricity consumption in holiday homes: Nettopower
• Rental income by house type: Compada
• German overnight stays in holiday homes: Statistics Denmark
• Asking prices: boligsiden.dk, medians taken 26 August 2026.

Shall we take the cleaning?

We are a local cleaning company based in Nørre Bork, and we do holiday home cleaning and changeovers in Bork Havn, Hemmet, Hvide Sande, Søndervig, Nymindegab, Henne Strand, Blåvand, Skjern, Tarm and Ringkøbing. A fixed price agreed in advance and the same team every time.

If you are considering buying to let and want to know what the cleaning realistically costs per changeover for the type of house you are looking at, write to us with the address and the size. You will get a number you can put into your own spreadsheet.