Short Let vs Long Let: What London Property Owners Need to Know

A furnished one-bedroom flat in Kensington earns its owner roughly £3,500 a month on a long let. That same flat, managed as a premium short let during peak season, can command £350–£800 a night.

The arithmetic is not complicated. But the decision is.

Every London property owner eventually runs this calculation (or some version of it) and most stop at the headline numbers. The real picture involves void periods, regulatory ceilings, management costs, and a level of operational complexity that doesn't show up in a nightly rate comparison. This guide walks through both models honestly, with worked examples for two real-world Prime Central London scenarios, so you can make the decision that suits your property and your circumstances.

How Long-Let Income Works

Long let is what most London landlords default to. An Assured Shorthold Tenancy, typically twelve months, a standing order that arrives on the first of the month, and a managing agent who handles the occasional boiler callout.

Monthly rents in London vary enormously by borough and bedroom count. As of early 2026, ONS data puts the average private rent across Greater London at around £2,253 per month. But that average masks a wide spread. In Kensington and Chelsea (the borough covering both Kensington proper and parts of Knightsbridge) the borough-wide average sits at approximately £3,640, though this figure is pulled down by ex-council stock and smaller units at the lower end. For Prime Central London properties in concierge buildings, actual achieved rents sit considerably higher.

For a well-presented one-bedroom flat in Kensington, a landlord can realistically expect £3,200–£3,800 per month on a long let, depending on specification and micro-location. A two-bedroom apartment in a portered Knightsbridge building with a lift, concierge, and proximity to Harrods or Hyde Park will typically achieve £6,000–£7,000 per month.

Those are gross figures. The net picture requires deductions: management fees (typically 10–17% of rent, depending on service level), maintenance, insurance, void periods between tenancies, and the occasional inventory dispute that eats into the deposit.

Void periods are the silent cost. The industry average across London sits at two to four weeks per tenancy cycle — longer in winter, shorter in summer. For a property earning £5,000 a month, a three-week void costs roughly £3,750 in lost income, plus re-letting fees. Over a year, even a single tenancy changeover can reduce effective annual income by 5–8%.

The advantage of a long let is predictability. Income is stable, management is relatively passive, and wear on the property is gradual. But stability comes at a price: rental growth in prime central London has been sluggish. ONS data shows Kensington and Chelsea rents grew by just 0.4% in the year to January 2026, which is essentially flat in real terms.

How Short-Let Income Works

Short letting is a fundamentally different proposition. You're running a hospitality operation, not a tenancy.

Nightly rates for a professionally managed one-bedroom in Kensington typically sit in the range of £350–£800, depending on season, specification, and booking channel. For a two-bedroom in Knightsbridge with concierge-level management rates of £750–£1,200 per night are achievable. This kind of property is priced against operators like onefinestay, Mayfair House, and Plum Guide rather than the borough median. That rate premium is not about the property. It is about how the property is managed.

Those rates sound transformative and over a 90-night high-season window, they can be. A one-bedroom in Kensington achieving an average of £400 per night at 95% occupancy across its 90-day short-let allocation would generate approximately £34,400 in gross income from fewer than three months of the year.

But London's 90-day rule is the defining constraint. Under the Deregulation Act 2015, residential properties in Greater London can only be used as temporary sleeping accommodation for a maximum of 90 nights per calendar year without planning permission. Platforms like Airbnb enforce this automatically by blocking bookings once the cap is reached. Breaching the rule can result in council enforcement notices and fines of up to £20,000.

That 90-night ceiling means short letting alone cannot fill a calendar year. It creates a seasonal income spike followed by roughly nine months of either vacancy or an alternative letting strategy.

Seasonality is the other variable. London's short-let market peaks between April and September, with a secondary spike around November–December. January and February are consistently the softest months. Occupancy rates across Kensington and Chelsea average around 77% on an annualised basis, though properties exclusively targeting sub-seven-night stays will see greater volatility.

Side-by-Side: Two Worked Examples

These are illustrative estimates based on current market data. Actual figures will depend on property specification, management structure, and occupancy achieved.

Example A: One-Bedroom Flat, Kensington

On a pure 90-night short let, the property earns less annually than a long let but that comparison is misleading, because nobody serious about short letting leaves a property empty for nine months.

Example B: Two-Bedroom Apartment, Knightsbridge (Portered Building)

Again, the 90-night window alone doesn't compete with a full-year tenancy. The real question is what happens when you fill the remaining 275 nights intelligently, which is where the hybrid model comes in.

The Hidden Costs of Each Model

Cost lines that rarely appear in headline comparisons but consistently erode returns:

Long-let costs that accumulate quietly. Deposit protection administration. End-of-tenancy cleaning and check-out disputes. Periodic redecoration between tenancies, typically every three to five years, but accelerated in properties with high tenant turnover. Section 21 reform under the Renters' Rights Act has also shifted the balance of flexibility away from landlords, making it harder to recover possession when needed. And comprehensive management fees at the upper end of the market can reach 17%. This figure includes tenant-find, rent collection, maintenance coordination, and periodic inspections, but still leaves the owner exposed to void periods and reinstatement costs between tenancies.

Short-let costs that compound quickly. Professional cleaning after every guest £80–£150 per turnover for a one-bedroom, higher for larger properties. Linen laundering and replenishment. Utility bills that remain the owner's responsibility rather than the tenant's. Guest supplies and consumables. Higher-grade insurance (standard landlord policies typically exclude short-let use). Furnishing to a hotel-equivalent standard which is a materially higher capital outlay than a basic long-let specification. And wear and tear that accumulates faster when a property turns over every three to seven days rather than every twelve months.

Management fees differ substantially. Long-let management typically runs 10–17% of rent, depending on service scope. Short-let management is more operationally intensive and includes guest communication, dynamic pricing, cleaning coordination, check-in logistics, listing management, and daily housekeeping on longer stays with fees reflecting that: 18–25% is standard for full-service operators.

The critical distinction: under a professional concierge management model, many of the short-let costs that would otherwise fall to the owner (housekeeping, linen, compliance, guest vetting, photography) are absorbed within the management fee. The question is whether the fee structure is genuinely all-inclusive or whether add-ons accumulate. Not all operators structure it the same way.

The Hybrid Model — Maximum Annual Yield

The most effective London operators don't choose between short and long letting. They blend them.

The hybrid structure uses the 90-night short-let allocation for the highest-demand period of the year (typically late spring through early autumn) and fills the remaining calendar with medium-term lets of one to six months. These mid-term tenancies are not subject to the 90-day rule, because they constitute residential occupation rather than temporary sleeping accommodation. Corporate relocations, project-based professionals, visiting academics, embassy secondees, and international families between permanent homes all drive consistent demand for furnished lets of this duration particularly in Knightsbridge, Mayfair, and Belgravia, where the corporate and diplomatic pipeline runs year-round.

Returning to Example B — the two-bedroom in Knightsbridge:

After commissions, management fees, and operating costs, the modelled net to the owner on this hybrid is roughly 75% above the fully-costed long-let net for the same property — £87,508 against £49,989 once owner-borne costs (maintenance, insurance, certificates) are counted on both sides. The realistic range runs from around +56% at softer occupancy to +88% at the top of the band. For properties that subsequently receive planning permission for full year-round short letting, the uplift can be significantly higher again.

The operational complexity is real. This isn't a set-and-forget model. It requires dynamic pricing, professional guest management, seamless turnover logistics, and compliance monitoring across both the 90-day STR cap and the mid-term tenancy framework. That complexity is precisely why professional management exists and why the management fee is higher than a long-let agent's.

Summary

The right model depends on your property, your appetite for involvement, and whether you have the operational infrastructure (or a management partner like us) to execute the more complex strategies.

For most prime London properties, the hybrid approach represents the highest-returning use of a residential asset. The gap between what a property earns on a long let and what it could earn under professional concierge management is, in many cases, the difference between a satisfactory return and an exceptional one.

The Belmont Collection is a premium concierge short-let management company operating exclusively in Prime Central London — Knightsbridge, Mayfair, Belgravia, and Kensington & Chelsea. All income estimates are illustrative and based on publicly available market data as of early 2026. Individual property performance will vary. A full financial proposal with property-specific projections is available on request.