The short let has spent a decade defined by its worst examples. City flats churning through weekend guests, absent hosts, neighbours with a grievance and a councillor’s email address. That version is real, and it has shaped both the regulation coming down the line and the instincts of most people who own the kind of property this magazine covers.
At the upper end, the short let has become something closer to a managed asset: a country house or barn conversion let by the night rather than the month, and run by an operator who handles the design, the marketing, the reservations, the housekeeping and the guests, and hands the owner a return without handing them a job.
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The economics are different from a tenancy in kind, not just degree – nightly rates instead of monthly rent, occupancy risk instead of tenancy risk, and a service business bolted to the asset. The owner keeps the keys and can use the house.
That proposition has become considerably more interesting since 1 May 2026, when the Renters’ Rights Act abolished Section 21 and the fixed-term tenancy. Owners who spent decades letting cottages on long tenancies to fund the upkeep of an estate are re-examining arithmetic that had held for a generation.
We Stay manages around a hundred such homes across the Cotswolds, other parts of rural England and in Prime Central London. Its managing director, Sophie Jones, lays out how the model works, and how it offers landlords at a cross-roads an alternative to diversify.
I spend a good deal of my time telling landlords things they would rather not hear. That is not a complaint. It is the job.
If you have the right property, in the right location, finished to the right standard, it will outperform a long let – I will say that to anyone. But every part of that sentence is reliant on conditions and the conditions are where owners lose money.
Data is crucial, without it you are just a person with another opinion. So let me set out what our data highlights and what it asks of the people who own these homes.
The owners arriving now are not who you would expect
The profile has changed markedly over two years. Some are high-net-worth owners with portfolios focused squarely on yield. Some held long lets and, with the Rent Reform in force, have had to decide whether to sell the asset or use it differently.
We work with overseas owners keeping a UK home available to visit rather than handing it to a tenant, and with people whose work takes them abroad for long stretches.
“We work with overseas owners keeping a UK home they can still visit rather than handing it to a tenant, and with people whose work takes them abroad for long stretches”
And we work with the custodians of country estates, who have let cottages on long tenancies for decades because that is how the upkeep of the main house has always been funded. They are looking at this seriously now and understand what a short let can do when it is professionally managed.
Increasingly owners in this sector are seeking guidance from us in order to maximise their investment.
Design is not decoration. It is the asset
What we do is short-let management, coupled with hospitality and it’s the two together that create the magic. We like to refer to this as private home hospitality.
Guests have their own space and their own hours, which a hotel cannot offer, and a concierge team who will send in a chef for the week or organise the things that turn a stay into something people remember.
But when you advertise a property, all you have is a description and some images. That is the whole shop window, and it’s where we separated ourselves – which is why we built our own Design Studio. From the first impression in a photograph, to a guest’s initial response when they walk through the door, the design determines whether the property books and at what rate.
“What we do is short-let management, coupled with hospitality and it's the two together that create the magic. We like to refer to this as private home hospitality”
Willowberry Barn in Weston Subedge is a fair example. A seven-bedroom barn conversion, previously self-managed and in need of modernisation. We projected gross annual income of £222,000 following a design transformation and the addition of a hot tub. The team completed the work in 28 days.
It took its first booking within five hours of launch, against a market norm that can run to six weeks, and secured £38,000 in its first week at an average nightly rate of £1,188.
Across the properties we have taken through the Design Studio, the average uplift is around 40% more revenue. The caveat matters: design sits alongside location, amenities and the ongoing management. It is this combination that delivers.
The discipline is the product
Not every property is right for this, and we feel obliged to tell owners so.
Ours perform best in rural locations. The one exception is prime central London – we have operated in other cities and the yield was not there. We are not precious about size; we will happily take a beautiful one-bedroom cottage. But if you have ten guests and one bathroom, you have a problem. If the analysis says a property will not reach a certain number, we say so and do not take it on.
Much of the rest is unglamorous. We vet guests – who is staying, how old they are, what the occasion is. We do not take stag or hen parties. On larger houses we install noise monitors and cut things off at eleven, because we are respectful of neighbours.
“Our properties perform best in rural locations. The one exception is Prime Central London. We're not precious about size, either; we'll happily take a beautiful one-bedroom cottage”
And we split the book deliberately between leisure and corporate: leisure carries the peak weeks at peak rates, while corporate – families between houses, insurance placements, film crews – fill the months on either side.
That levelling is why the annual figures hold up. We build every market analysis on 60% occupancy because better to be conservative than over-promise. The actual performance runs ahead of it. Across 2025 we operated at 66% average occupancy against 40% for the market on Key Data’s figures, and at peak season 75% against 55%. Forward-booking revenue confirmed before 1 January was up 97% year on year.
Those numbers are not evenly available. They come back to what I say to every landlord: please be advised by us so that we can achieve the very best results.
This is not the end of the long let
There will be a place for both, and I hope there always is. This is about maximising a property for what it can actually be, given size and location.
What will change is who can compete. Regulation is tightening – a national registration scheme is coming, and planning rules are moving with it. For a professional operation that changes very little, because we already do all of it. For someone running a property themselves from a laptop, it changes a great deal.
I do not regret that. There was a period when it was all about Airbnb, and the sector earned some of the accolades. But when I have a house cleaned, I am employing local cleaners, and we are bringing visitors and their spending into rural locations that want and need them.
Done properly, this not only benefits guests and owners but it as importantly, it supports the local economy. That is what I intend to keep shouting about.
