A Kos-Kosan Advertised at 10% Rental Yield Rarely Delivers 10% Once You Count Everything Else
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A listing says: 20 rooms, Rp 1.000.000 a room, priced at Rp 2,4 billion. "10% rental yield a year."
The math checks out. 20 rooms times Rp 1.000.000 times 12 months is Rp 240 juta. That is 10% of Rp 2,4 miliar.
But that number assumes every room is full, every single month, and that nothing ever breaks. Real kos-kosan (boarding house) rental yield is lower. This post shows by how much, using one clearly labelled example.
Rental yield is the rent you collect in a year, shown as a percentage of what the property is worth.
Gross yield is that number before any costs. Net yield is what is left after the costs of running the place. Net yield is the one that pays you.
Indonesian property guides describe the same split: gross yield is rent divided by property price, while net yield also subtracts costs such as maintenance and tax (see the rental yield explainer from Jendela360).
A whole apartment has one tenant and one rent cheque. A kos is different. It is a small business with many rooms and many small bills.
If you rent out a house, one tenant usually pays the electricity and water. The landlord waits for the rent.
In a kos, the owner often pays for much more. That can include shared electricity, water, internet, cleaning, and someone to watch the gate or collect payments. And when a room empties, that room earns nothing until the next person moves in.
We covered the apartment version of this in Jakarta rental yield vs IDX dividend yield. Here we look at the room-by-room version.
These are NetWort's own illustrative assumptions, not market averages. Your numbers will differ. Swap in your own.
The setup: a kos worth Rp 2,4 miliar, 20 rooms, Rp 1.000.000 per room per month.
| Line | Assumption | Rp per year |
|---|---|---|
| Advertised rent (all rooms full) | 20 x 1.000.000 x 12 | 240.000.000 |
| Empty rooms | 85% occupancy, so 15% lost | -36.000.000 |
| Rent actually collected | 204.000.000 | |
| Manager or caretaker | Rp 3.000.000 a month | -36.000.000 |
| Electricity, water, internet | Rp 200.000 per occupied room a month, 17 rooms | -40.800.000 |
| Repairs, repainting, replacing beds and AC | Rp 2.000.000 a month | -24.000.000 |
| Annual land and building tax (PBB) | Rp 8.000.000 | -8.000.000 |
| Net income | 95.200.000 | |
| Net yield | 95.200.000 / 2.400.000.000 | about 4.0% |
The ad said 10%. Same building, same rooms. The result is about 4%.
Nothing here is dramatic. No flood, no fire, no tenant who stops paying. It is just ordinary running costs.
In this example, the biggest drops are empty rooms and the running costs, not one huge expense.
Occupancy is the one to watch. In our example, every 5 percentage points of occupancy is worth Rp 12.000.000 a year, which is 0,5 points of yield. A kos that sits at 70% instead of 85% loses about 1,5 points more.
Occupancy also moves with things you do not control. A new competing kos next door, a campus that relocates, or an office that moves away can all change how many rooms fill.
Many owners assume the standard 10% final income tax on rent applies to a kos. It does not.
According to the Directorate General of Taxes (pajak.go.id), Article 2 paragraph 3 of Government Regulation 34/2017 excludes lodging services such as boarding houses and dormitories from that 10% final tax on land and building rent. The same source notes that this does not mean kos income is free of income tax.
Regional rules also differ. Press coverage reports that Jakarta's Regional Regulation 1/2024 still covers private residences that work as lodging, with a 10% hospitality tax rate. We did not read the regulation text ourselves, and your city may differ.
So we left tax out of the table above. Ask a tax consultant or your local tax office what applies to your kos. Whatever the answer is, it comes off the 4%, not the 10%.
Ask five questions of any listing:
If the seller cannot answer, treat the 10% as a sales line, not a measurement.
If you already own a kos or a share in one, write down what you actually collect and what you actually spend for a few months. Then compare your real net yield with the BI rate and bond yields on our macro page.
Open Holdings and add the property as a Real Estate asset, so your portfolio shows what it is worth, not just what the ad promised.