An empty apartment feels like a small problem — until you do the maths. For a property company, vacancy is one of the largest and most underestimated costs, precisely because it doesn't show up as an invoice but as missing income. This article shows how to calculate what a vacancy actually costs and why every saved week is worth more than you'd think.
A vacancy costs more than the lost rent
When a unit sits empty you don't just lose the rent. You also keep paying running costs (heating, property management, insurance, interest), marketing and admin for the next let, and in some cases the cost of long idle time before the next move-in. The simplest direct cost is still the lost rent — and it's easy to quantify.
The formula
Lost income: Monthly rent ÷ 30 × number of empty days = lost rent
At portfolio level, use the vacancy rate: (Empty units ÷ total units) × 100 = vacancy rate in %
Worked example
Say a unit rents for SEK 9,000/month and sits empty for two months between tenants:
- Lost rent: 9,000 × 2 = SEK 18,000
- Running costs, say SEK 2,500/month: 2,500 × 2 = SEK 5,000
- Total cost of the vacancy: ~SEK 23,000 for a single unit.
Scale it up: a 50-unit portfolio at just a 4% vacancy rate averages two empty units year-round — over SEK 270,000 per year in lost income and running costs in this example.
