TL;DR: London has a ’90-day rule’, designed to cap letting any single property as a 'short-term rent' for more than 90 days in any 180 period.
But this rule is uniformly unenforced and flagrantly flaunted.
So opportunistic ‘property management agencies’ are still gobbling up housing for Airbnb operations.
I know because I (accidentally) interned for an agency clearing £20k p/m (profit) across 15 properties.
There are dozens of agencies doing this across the city (full write up in my newsletter, btw).
So how are they evading the 90-day rule?
In a move of unrivalled genius, they run MULTIPLE listings for the SAME properties.
– They give the property a new name
– Set the address to next-door
– Take different pictures from different angles
And voila! Another 90 days to rent at Airbnb prices.
It's incredibly easy to spot if you care to look.
So I struggle to see any plausible deniability for AirBnb letting this slide in the age of advanced AI image detection and pattern-spotting technologies
My boss would misleadingly pitch multi-listing to prospective clients as a ‘tactical listing strategy’ rather than a knowing abuse of the rules.
And blind eyes get turned when you’re enjoying £4k a month from a property they’d otherwise rent to Londoners for £2k.
Neither landlord, agency, nor AirBnb have any incentive to comply with a toothless law. Too many people are getting rich to be idealistic here.
So, what to do?
The people of Barcelona fought against short-term lets and implemented an outright ban.
Which put 10,000 properties back into the ecosystem.
For context, there are 117k short-term rentals operating across London (1 in every 32 residential properties).
So… let's see haha
by joejarred
8 comments
Petition? Any suggestions on writing to your MP about this or how we would support such a direction?
If I were you I’d be trying to get in touch with journalists
We have several houses close to us that have been converted into 7-9 bedsits each and they use exactly the strategy you describe.
They also list on Booking.com and a couple of other sites and rotate advertising on the different platforms continuously throughout the year to ensure maximum occupancy.
Islington Council has had multiple complaints about them and links to the live adverts.
There’s a lot of antisocial behaviour ranging from prostitution to heroin and crack parties. It’s not uncommon to see discarded catering boxes of NOS canisters by the bins on the property.
The police and fire brigade have attended multiple times and yet it’s business as usual.
Short term rentals are very handy, they’re often cheaper than hotels and better than hotels. The sector should be allowed to operate – I suspect the margins are so tight that it can’t really grow much beyond where it’s at today anyway.
I was wondering why there were multiple listings around my area from different people on Airbnb for what looked like the exact same flats. I thought they were simply trying to get more visibility. It’s against our leasehold, but like you said, they took photos from different angles.
What’s the penalty if caught? If it’s a monetary fine then I guess it’s worth the risk to them. If the council can seize property for themselves then this type of business would stop pretty quick.
When I first moved to London I booked an Airbnb for 3months as a temporary accommodation.
On the day of check in I was shown a completely different property from the one I booked.
Even though it felt shady, since I had nowhere else to go, I accepted the last minute change at the time. Really shitty of them to basically force my hand l, knowing it would be basically impossible for me to find a last minute accommodation, if I rejected the change in property.
Looking back now Im wondering if this was somehow another way to circumvent the 90 days rule.
Are all these rules really helping? There’s clearly a demand for this. Why regulate it out of existence? More building is the only answer to this. Demand side regulations end up hitting the poorest hardest.
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