By the Unity Stays directors, Marcus Chong & Gadir Al-Khatib · Last updated 12 August 2026
In short: Start in the right order: choose your model (letting your own property, rent-to-rent or management), check permissions first — lease, mortgage, council and national licensing — with everything in writing, then model your weakest month rather than the average. Complete compliance, furnishing and professional photography before launching, and hold enough reserve to carry a slow first few months.
Decide which business you are actually starting
Three quite different models get called the same thing, and they have different capital needs and different risks.
Letting your own property. You own it, you take the income, you carry the void risk. Lowest complexity.
Rent-to-rent. You lease a property and pay the owner a fixed amount whether or not it is booked, keeping the difference. Lowest capital, highest operational risk, and it lives or dies on permissions. Our rent-to-rent guide covers it properly.
Management. You run other people's properties for a percentage. No void risk, no capital, but it is a service business with staff and systems rather than a property play.
Permissions before property
This is the step people do last and should do first, because it is free and it kills perhaps half of what is offered.
For any specific address: the lease, if leasehold — subletting, short-term occupation, business use, private dwelling. The mortgage, because buy-to-let products usually permit letting on a tenancy specifically. The council, for licensing, Article 4 directions and the local position on change of use. And the nation, because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each run their own regime.
Get the answers in writing. "The agent said it was fine" is not a permission.
Model the bad month, not the good one
Take a defensible nightly rate and occupancy, then subtract everything: platform commission, cleaning per changeover, linen, consumables, utilities, council tax or business rates, broadband, software, insurance, management, and a replacement provision. Only then finance costs.
Then run the same model on your weakest month. If the weakest month covers the fixed costs, the business survives a bad year. If it only works on the average, you are betting on the average holding.
The two figures people get wrong are occupancy — usually about ten points optimistic — and changeover frequency, usually counted weekly when short stays make it far more often. Our deal assessment guide sets out the full method.
Compliance, then furnishing, then photographs, then launch
In that order, and not overlapping. A written fire risk assessment, alarms, gas and electrical certification, and insurance that actually covers short letting — a standard landlord policy usually does not.
Then furnish, with compliant upholstery, a bed worth the money, three sets of linen per bed and the fastest broadband available. Then photograph, professionally, after staging.
Then launch. Not before. A listing's early reviews set its trajectory and are very hard to correct, so going live half-finished to catch a season is the most expensive corner in this business.
What most people underestimate
The hours. Guest messaging, changeover coordination, pricing and problem-solving are a real job at three or four properties, and the errors get expensive at exactly the point the informal system stops working.
The reserve. Furnishing, compliance, photography and the first month's costs come before any income, and a new listing takes months to find its level. Under-reserving is what turns a workable deal into a distressed one.
And the seasonality. The first winter is when most operators discover their model was built on summer.
General guidance on a process, not legal, tax or investment advice. Take proper advice on structure, consents and finance before committing.