KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Surfside Beach is a boutique management market. Public listing data shows the leading operator running roughly 46 listings while typical managers here hold around 14 — this is not a market dominated by national platforms.
- The Village of Surfside Beach requires short-term rental owners to register the property as a hotel with the Village before advertising or renting it, pay a registration fee, and remit 4% hotel occupancy tax to the Village quarterly — separate from state HOT. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake an owner can make here.
- Most managers charge 20–35% of gross booking revenue. Hooray Stays starts at 20% of net — a different number on the identical reservation.
- Hooray Stays owners Matt and Carissa Codd are Gulf Coast operators running their own short-term rentals, not a national brand with a regional contractor list.
- Every reservation includes a $1,500 damage waiver, a Minut noise and smoke monitor, and a signed rental agreement with government-issued ID from every guest. Consumables, quarterly in-person visits and daily human revenue management are included.
Surfside Beach Is a Small Market — and That Changes Everything 🏖️
Surfside Beach is a village of a few hundred permanent residents sitting between the San Luis Pass and the mouth of the Brazos, with Surfside Jetty Park at one end and miles of drive-on sand at the other. It draws a steady, loyal, year-round mix: families in summer, anglers and birders in the shoulder seasons, and Houston day-trippers whenever the weather turns good.
The management landscape reflects that scale. Public short-term rental data indicates the largest operator in Surfside runs in the region of 46 listings, and that top managers here average roughly 14 properties each. Compare that to Houston or Galveston, where national platforms and multi-hundred-door operators set the tone.
That is genuinely good news for owners. In a boutique market, the quality of the individual managing your home matters far more than the size of the brand behind them — and you have a realistic chance of being a meaningful client rather than a row in a spreadsheet.
The Compliance Question Most Owners Underestimate ⚖️
Surfside Beach is more formal about short-term rentals than much of the Texas coast, and this is the single most important thing to establish before you sign with anyone. Under Village ordinance, anyone intending to rent a property on a short-term basis — defined as less than 30 days per renter — must:
- Register the property as a hotel with the Village of Surfside Beach, and do so before the property is advertised or rented
- Pay the Village’s short-term rental registration fee
- Remit hotel occupancy tax to the Village — 4%, due quarterly, with all taxable income reported. This is a Village tax and sits alongside your state hotel occupancy tax obligations, not instead of them.
Two things worth flagging. First, the Village has revised its registration fee — council approved a new annual short-term rental fee, so confirm the current amount directly with the Village rather than relying on any figure you read online, including ours. Second, and more important: these obligations sit with you, the owner — not with your management company — regardless of what your manager does or does not do about them.
A manager who cannot tell you, precisely and in writing, who files what and when is a manager leaving your exposure on the table. The Village can be reached on (979) 233-1531, and the current rules live on the Village’s own Short-Term Rental & Hotel Occupancy Tax page.
Hooray Stays helps owners work out exactly what applies to their address, and can handle the permitting process on their behalf for a fee. It is unglamorous work and it is the reason a lot of Surfside owners sleep better.
The Real Cost of STR Management in Surfside 💰
Fee structures in this market run from roughly 20% to 35%, and national entrants have started advertising far lower headline numbers — Awning from around 10%, and newer AI-driven entrants pitching as low as single digits. Those headline rates are not lies, but they are not comparable either, because the number that matters is what the percentage is charged on.
Gross means everything the guest pays, cleaning fee included. Net means what remains after the direct costs of that stay. The cleaning fee is not income — it is a bill you pay a cleaner. Charging commission on it means charging you a percentage of someone else’s wages.
A Worked Example: A $300/Night Surfside Beach House
Illustrative math, not a market forecast — but the fee mechanics are exactly this.
A four-night summer booking at $300 a night with a $200 cleaning fee:
- Gross booking: $1,200 nightly + $200 cleaning = $1,400
- Manager at 25% of gross: $350 fee — and you still owe the cleaner $200.
- Manager at 30% of gross: $420 fee.
- Hooray Stays at 20% of net: the fee is calculated on the $1,200, not the $1,400 — $240, with the cleaning fee passing straight through and never generating commission.
On this single booking the spread between the 30%-of-gross manager and 20%-of-net is $180. Across a season of summer weekends, that is a real number.
The question to ask every manager you interview: “Twenty-something percent of what, exactly — and is the cleaning fee inside or outside that base?” Get it in writing.
Who Actually Manages Vacation Rentals in Surfside Beach 🔍
An honest map of the field, because you should be comparing us against real alternatives rather than a straw man.
The local market leaders
The 979 Crew is, on public listing data, the largest operator in Surfside Beach — roughly 46 listings and well over a million dollars in tracked gross revenue. They know this beach. 979 Vacation Property Services operates locally out of Freeport with round-the-clock coverage. Coastal Sisters Rentals is Surfside-based with a stated 20-plus years of combined property management and real estate experience. These are serious local operators and any of them belongs on your shortlist.
Franchise and regional operators
PMI Surfside Beach Bay brings the franchise back office — bookings, inspections, maintenance coordination and formal accounting. iTrip Texas Coastal has served this stretch of coast for years as a family-run operation. Home Team Luxury Rentals concentrates on the upper end of the market.
National platforms
Awning, Summer and Guestable all list Surfside Beach coverage, generally with strong technology and distribution and a lighter local footprint. If you want scale and self-service tooling more than you want a relationship, they are worth a look.
Where Hooray Stays fits
We are a small, deliberately local operator. What we offer that is genuinely uncommon in this market is a specific stack: commission on net rather than gross, consumables included rather than marked up, daily human revenue management rather than an algorithm on autopilot, quarterly in-person walk-throughs, and real help with the village’s registration and hotel occupancy tax requirements.
Matt answers the phone himself. That is the operating model, not the marketing — and it works precisely because we do not manage a thousand doors.
What Surfside Properties Need That Software Cannot Provide 🛠️
Pricing software is useful and we use it. But an algorithm does not know that San Luis Pass is fishing well this week, that a red tide advisory just went out, that beach access is restricted after a storm, or that a Brazoria County event is about to fill every house south of the bridge. On a coastline this specific, those judgement calls are where the revenue actually is.
What local management actually looks like here
- Turnovers built for beach traffic — sand management, outdoor rinse areas, cooler and fishing-gear realities, and same-day turns on peak weekends.
- Salt-air preventative maintenance — scheduled HVAC servicing, hardware and hinge checks, exterior inspections before failures become guest complaints.
- Village compliance — hotel registration with the Village, the registration fee, and quarterly 4% hotel occupancy tax reporting tracked properly rather than remembered in a panic.
- Guest vetting proportionate to the market — signed rental agreement and government-issued ID from every guest, plus Minut noise and smoke monitoring on every property.
- Quarterly in-person visits — a human physically inside your property four times a year, documenting condition with photographs.
What you get on day one
- Full photographic, item-level onboarding documentation of contents and condition
- $1,500 damage waiver on every reservation
- Minut noise and smoke monitor installed
- Consumables and guest supplies included — no markup
- Listing built and distributed across Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com, plus direct booking
- Daily human revenue management from the first night
- Annual human-trafficking-prevention certification held by every team member
- One- and two-year agreements, with the setup fee waived entirely on the two-year
- First 30 days of management commission-free
The Practical Timing Argument ⏰
Surfside’s demand is concentrated into summer weekends and holidays, and the booking window for those dates opens months in advance. Pricing, photography and listing quality have to be right before the window opens, not during it. Changing managers mid-season means paying for a transition at the exact moment your calendar matters most; changing in the shoulder season costs almost nothing.
If your current arrangement is not working, the cheapest month to fix it is always the one before you need it.
Frequently Asked Questions ❓
How much do Airbnb management companies charge in Surfside Beach TX?
Most managers in this market charge between 20% and 35% of gross booking revenue, with national platforms advertising reduced-service tiers from around 10%. Hooray Stays starts at 20% of net. Headline percentages are not comparable across companies until you establish the base they are calculated on.
Do I need a permit to run a short-term rental in Surfside Beach?
Yes. Under Village ordinance, anyone intending to rent a property for less than 30 days per renter must register that property as a hotel with the Village of Surfside Beach before advertising or renting it, pay the Village’s registration fee, and remit 4% hotel occupancy tax to the Village quarterly with all taxable income reported. The registration fee has been revised recently, so confirm the current amount with the Village on (979) 233-1531. These obligations sit with the owner, not the management company. Hooray Stays helps owners work out what applies to their property and can handle the process for a fee.
What is the difference between gross and net STR management fees?
Gross includes everything the guest pays, including the cleaning fee. Net is calculated after the direct costs of the stay. Since the cleaning fee is passed straight to a cleaner and never kept by the owner, a commission charged on gross is partly a commission on someone else’s wages. On a $1,400 gross booking the difference between 30% of gross and 20% of net is roughly $180.
Who is the biggest vacation rental manager in Surfside Beach?
On public short-term rental listing data, The 979 Crew is the largest operator in Surfside Beach with roughly 46 listings. Typical managers in the market run closer to 14 properties each, which makes Surfside a boutique market by Texas coastal standards.
Does Hooray Stays charge extra for supplies and consumables?
No. Guest consumables are included at no markup. Owners should always ask whether supplies are passed through at cost, marked up, or billed separately each month — it is one of the most common places margin quietly disappears.
How does Hooray Stays protect a Surfside Beach property from parties and damage?
Every reservation carries a $1,500 damage waiver. Every property gets a Minut noise and smoke monitor. Every guest signs a rental agreement and provides government-issued ID before arrival. Quarterly in-person inspections back that up with documented condition reports.
Talk to an Actual Person
If you own a beach house in Surfside Beach and you want a straight answer about what it should be earning — and whether your permitting is actually in order — see how we manage Surfside properties or request a free rental income estimate. No pitch deck, just the numbers.