Short-term lettings in London

The rise in no fault evictions of long term tenants is deeply troubling. Landlords can often make more money through short-term lets. Short term lets need better regulation alongside improved protections for long term tenants. Enforcement of any regulation is key.

I also found it hard to add the nuance I’d like around my answers to the survey: short term lets off whole units are definitely not helping Londoners find audible places to rent on buy, but I’d bet that under-production of family-oriented units and over-production of unaffordable studios and 1-bed flats is a much bigger driver. So this is the ‘icing on the cake’. Lack of enforcement of existing regulations is (at a guess) the thing that is impacting areas the most because it’s easy to evade the rules by, for instance, listing across multiple sites. There does need to be an additional regulation around nuisance lets: this would need careful management to make sure it’s legitimate nuisance and not just a neighbourly vendetta, but it seems like some STLs contribute inordinately to problems and there should be a mechanism to ban those lets where they occur. Whole units need careful attention but ensuring someone strange just let every individual room in a unit to bypass this needs enforcement too.

I agree with Jenny (below). The flat next to mine is let on a short-term basis (though the leaseholder denies this as it is forbidden by the lease). It is a tiny studio flat so we haven't had many of the noise, etc., problems some have mentioned (touch wood) but we never who, if anyone, is there and who might therefore have keys to the garden gate and the block front door. The situation also compromises the premises' buildings insurance as this is based on there not being this sort of short let. The residents' management committee keeps a close eye on this sort of thing and has managed to get rid of this problem in some other flats, thereby making them available for longer-term tenants or resident leaseholders.

I support the lettings by Londoners of spare rooms in their homes to earn extra money (one question in the survey was unhelpful as it lumped together the ability of Londoners to earn by letting a spare room and a second property which is a very different thing). My observation in Pimlico is that many properties are made available on short term lets. I suspect it is the same in many areas of London. This dramatically reduces the availability of flats to rent by those who wish to live and work in London - young people at present are facing ever increasing rents and decreasing availability of property to rent due to it being more profitable for Property owners to do short lets. My suspicion is that is is quite easy to evade the 90 day rule with opaque listings or listings across multiple sites and the rule is not enforced. Councils should take strong action on this if they want to make it easier for young people to find places to rent to live in at an affordable price. Clearly it is necessary for there to be some short term lets of whole properties available BUT not so that every block of flats becomes a quasi hotel which is unpleasant for the remaining long term occupants in that block - so I support much greater regulation of the short term let market so that the short term letting market is managed, standards enforced, and more flats are freed up for rental by people who need to live in London to work. It also seems many flats are sublet by tenants on short term lets in breach of lease terms - not enforced by the building management - this causes annoyance to the other occupants. Much of the issue though is down to enforcement as well as having the right regulations in place. Other continental cities have, or are looking at, banning short lets of private properties - not sure that is the right route, but greater management of the issue would free up flats for people to live in.

My main beef with short term lets is how they contribute to the housing crisis by making flats unavailable to tenants and first time buyers. It just doesn't feel fair that older wealthier people.are profiting from property in our city. Flats should be homes, not investments for those who are already homeowners. Simple as that.

The main benefits in London and elsewhere is keeping short term accommodation cost effective while hotels have decided to charge massive increases in room hire. We need a competitive base of accommodation in London and the country as a whole for people to have holidays. I have no experience in London only overseas but generally always worked well.
There might always be the issue of noise and safety but I would have thought on the whole most visitors are good and well behaved

A neighbour rents her flat through Airbnb. There are constantly people, tourists and cleaners, coming and going and we never know who is in the flat or if it is empty. They frequently party loudly, leave the security gate open and put rubbish in the recycling bins so the recycling men do not collect and we have to phone the council.
I would not mind if she rented out a spare room and was there to oversee things and make visitors welcome - the original aim of Airbnb - but this is let as a whole flat.

However, my main concern is that this flat is not available as a home for someone who can't afford to buy (yet).

Airbnb and similar, must also have a negative effect on hotels which are being undercut (though this probably applies more outside London).

Ridiculously high hotel costs make visiting London impossible to anyone apart from rich people. This is unacceptable. short term property rentals help bring in younger, or less rich visitors to visit our wonderful city and its museums, theatres, restaurants, bars, night life etc.

I do not think that house owners should ask permission to be able to rent them, or a room, out to visitors. It's their property they should be free to do as they wish, as long as visitors do not disturb neighbours with noise or damage common parts. Government regulations will not solve these issues.

This I feel REALLY strongly about. I really do not want London to become a miserable Dubai-style playground for only the super rich. Short term home rentals will allow students to access the culture London offers. If we cannot do this, then I believe we should close our museums and hand back the artefacts to countries that might allow them to be seen by ordinary people. Oh, I trained in art history and works in the arts so this is not a flippant remark.

I think it’s important to retain some of the original ethos - people taking visitors in to their own homes making visitors feel welcome in London. More commercial lettings short or long term should be very carefully monitored to avoid exploitation and having the opposite of a good Input to London’s culture.

The biggest impact is taken by the neighbours. If a block is decent and quiet, and a private let flat sits amongst that ideal situation, then it can, in this case, been rented solely to make vast amounts of money from social housing with little come back. The Housing Association did nothing when shown proof this was happening, i was solely monitoring this alone. The AirBnB renter had an entire industry set up: Cleaners, laundry collection & redelivery, ‘hosts’ to facilitate the fast turnover of people. Often 3-4 times a week the tenants would change, sometimes more. The footfall was huge, sometimes big parties of people, the lift used more often, the blocks facilities used by people that were not vunerable or unwell like many of them are. The guy was like a wolf amongst sheep. The system worked where the Airbnb tenants & domestics would get the access key from a safe deposit box nearby. As a single woman on my own it made me extremely vunerable, i now had a home which did not feel unsafe, and exceedingly stressful. There was no help from the HA landlord.. instructed to monitor the daily activity as they did not want to evict him for reasons i could not understand. When they at last acted, over 6 months on, counting his team 200 + people had used that flat. I was never told what happened or if he was prosecuted, nothing. For this reason, to prevent people like him creating havoc & wealth, is why im against Airbnb.

you survey does not ask and therefore lacks in us letting you know the full scope of problems. Council leases prohibit short term lets, yet the council does not stop them, we have supplied plenty of evidence. We must restrict homes for permanent occupiers.

What not mentioned in the survey was that a number of the short-let properties rented out, have been expressly bought for that purpose, although often not registered as such, even with just a normal mortgage. The landlord then is running a business, but hiding the income from any taxation as a business would have to pay. Often properties are advertised on different sites to hide this fact.
Also some social housing is even let out or rather sublet, and private rentals with no subletting clauses.
And since it is very few people who go away for 90 days, it is excessively generous, 30 days would be more realistic.

Spare room is used an awful lot by landlords and tenants for finding long term accommodation successfully. It is misleading to have it cited as an example of a provider of short term accommodation only. By having a question of its use with no further question about whether short or long term will lead to erroneous results.

There was a question about whether helping Londoners earn money by renting out spare rooms and second homes. This needs to be separated into two questions.

For people who own second homes, and have excessively large houses, it’s the opposite of important.

However, lots of people who are struggling financially because of precarious employment and ridiculous rent levels in London rent our spare rooms to pay the bills.

The root cause of this goes beyond the short-term letting problem.

There are 3 flats on my council estate of 96 flats which are constantly let out on Air BnB for at most a couple weeks at a time, plus several others let out for longer periods. Three years ago one was used as a brothel. There is constant noise of wheelie suitcases going through our courtyard, and there is little effort made by the landlords to make sure rubbish and recycling is put in the right bins. The leaseholders of these flats I'm sure never report what they're doing, much less registering it. What with the housing crisis in London it is disgusting that they can get away with running a business in flats which were built to house working Londoners. They should be taken back by the Council and let out to people who need them to live and work here.
I don't have a problem with people letting spare rooms out or whole flats when they go away on holiday themselves, it's the fact that some people are running illegal businesses with multiple short lets around central London which really sticks in my craw.

Short term lets are of Zero help to those wanting to permanently work in that area. Good for the tourist but nobody else.
Single room lets on a long term, benifit those on a limited income generally the OAP.