By the Unity Stays directors, Marcus Chong & Gadir Al-Khatib · Last updated 12 August 2026
In short: Short letting beats a standard tenancy only where a property has genuine year-round visitor demand — hospitals, employers, transport — and where income after platform commission, management, cleaning and empty nights still exceeds the rent. In areas with thin or seasonal demand a tenancy is simpler and often pays better, and short letting no longer carries a tax advantage.
The comparison people usually get wrong
The common mistake is comparing short-let gross income against long-let rent. Those are not comparable numbers. Rent is close to net; short-let gross is not.
Between short-let gross and what actually reaches you sit platform commission, management, cleaning, linen, consumables, software, and the nights the property sits empty. Compare after those, or the comparison is meaningless.
What makes a property suit short letting
Some characteristics genuinely predict it:
- Demand that is not purely seasonal. A city with hospitals, universities or industry fills midweek nights that a leisure market leaves empty.
- Proximity to a reason to visit. A station, a hospital, a stadium, a large employer, a national park entrance.
- Parking, or genuinely good transport. For contractor guests, parking moves booking decisions more than the interior does.
- A layout that suits the market. Families book larger properties for full weeks; contractors book one-beds for months.
When the long let wins
Plenty of the time, and it is worth saying so plainly. If the property is in an area with thin visitor demand, if the achievable nightly rate is low relative to local rent, or if occupancy would realistically sit well below the local average, a standard tenancy is simpler and often pays better.
It also wins on effort even when short letting is managed — a tenancy has one relationship a year rather than fifty.
Work it out on your own numbers
The income calculator takes your nightly rate, your occupancy and your current rent and shows both sides. It will tell you when the long let is better, because that is a real outcome rather than a failure.
If you do not know your achievable rate or occupancy yet, that is what a projection is for. We look at the actual address and the comparable properties around it, and we include the quiet months.
The honest summary
Short letting suits properties in places with genuine, non-seasonal visitor demand, and owners who either enjoy the work or are happy to pay someone to take it away. It does not suit every property and it is no longer more tax-efficient than a tenancy.
Anyone who tells you it always wins is selling something.