x
By using this website, you agree to our use of cookies to enhance your experience.

A city in the United States has made it legal to let property for short periods, as is proposed for London, but includes a bid to stop professional letting agents and landlords swamping the market and using online sites like Airbnb.

San Francisco will, from early next year, allow people to let homes through Airbnb-style sites if they are San Francisco residents living in the same properties for at least nine months of the year. They also have to register with the city council as hosts, promising under penalty of perjury that they meet those conditions.

Could such a rule work in the UK

The government is currently using the Deregulation Bill to include a measure allowing London owners to rent out their homes for less than three months without having to pay for a council permit; however, this does not stop the property being let longer-term for the rest of the year, a situation which the San Francisco authorities want to avoid.

"We have already reformed rules on renting unused parking spaces, now we want to do the same regarding renting your home for a short period. It's time to change the outdated, impractical and restrictive laws from the 1970s, open up London's homes to visitors and allow Londoners to make some extra cash" says Community Secretary Eric Pickles about the move to liberalise short lets in the capital.

Letting agents have been mixed in their response.

Hamptons International has become one of the first agents to cash in, setting up its own short lets department with a specialist focus on London which is where short term rentals are predicted to expand in the near future.

However, central London agent Martin Bikhit of Kay & Co warns: It will cause a severe lack of longer term permanent residential accommodation. The number of people prepared to pay very high rents for short term lets will tend to push out would-be long term tenants and owner occupiers. Permitting short term rents will effectively blight properties, turning blocks into badly managed hotels.

Westminster council has written to the government saying that it wants local planning controls over this issue to be retained.

Comments

  • icon

    Yawn, this has been going on for ages. I'm sure this will only benefit those in zone 1, but from memory Westminster council has banned short term lettings. Oops. I remain sceptical of those landlords who claim to earn megabucks with short lets, only to forget they are paying all the bills, doing a million check ins and outs, lots of cleaning, washing of bedsheets, and generally doing lots more work than if a normal agent were to find normal tenants for a normal length of time. Oh, and it's empty 20 weeks were year at least. Surely better off with a "normal" long let

    • 24 October 2014 08:23 AM
MovePal MovePal MovePal