How a projection for a desert home is actually built.

Step one: the legal calendar

Before any number, establish how many nights the address can actually sell and in what blocks. In Indian Wells a new licence carries a 29-night minimum for most of the year, with a 7-night window around the tennis tournament; that alone reshapes the entire model. In Palm Desert the permit depends on zone and owner presence. In La Quinta the question is whether a new permit is available at all. A projection built on a stay length the city does not allow is not conservative or aggressive — it is simply wrong.

The same step covers the association. If the CC&Rs prohibit the use, or cap the guest count below what the house sleeps, the legal calendar shrinks again. Get both answers in writing before modelling anything.

Step two: the home’s honest capacity

Bedrooms that meet the building code, not rooms with beds in them. Palm Desert states that a bedroom must have a properly sized window or door opening directly to a street, alley, yard or court, that rooms adjacent to enclosed atriums are dens, and that it monitors listings for inaccurate counts. Then the pool and its condition, the cooling capacity, on-site parking against the permitted occupancy, outdoor space and shade, and the arrival experience. These set the guest the home can serve, which sets the rate band it can sit in.

Step three: the seasonal shape

Demand here is seasonal and event-shaped rather than flat. The official destination calendar describes winter as peak desert season, spring as the period carrying the BNP Paribas Open, the April music weekends at Empire Polo Club and Fashion Week El Paseo, summer as a shift toward pools and evenings, and fall as the return to the outdoors. A projection should allocate very differently across those four, and should treat the dated weekends separately from ordinary weeks rather than smearing them into a monthly average.

Step four: the cost of running it

Pool and spa service, energy and water, HVAC preventative maintenance, landscaping and irrigation, housekeeping and linen, exterior wear, the permit and its renewal, the local tax and any TBID assessment. In this climate the utility and pool lines are large and non-optional, and a projection that treats them as a rounding error will be wrong in exactly the season that matters.

What a projection cannot do

It cannot promise a booking outcome, guarantee a rate, predict a regulatory change, or approve your address. It cannot substitute for the city’s own determination or your association’s written approval. And it should never be presented as a single number: a range with visible assumptions is more useful and more honest than a point estimate that nobody can defend line by line.

Where the numbers actually live

This site does not calculate property-specific results. The Owner Portal handles individual projections under its own permissions, using your address, your permit position and your own records. The tools section publishes the two worksheets that sit underneath — owner-use calendar capacity and amenity break-even — with every input labelled as yours or illustrative.