Search Results for: Holiday lets

Airbnb makes a step closer to lettings market

The US-based home sharing website Airbnb, which enables its users to search through a database of over a million homes worldwide and 25,000 in the UK, has this week launched a professional property management software suite called Guesty aimed at professional landlords. At first glance the move would seem to contain little to worry the UK’s letting agents. Airbnb markets itself as a way for holiday makers to find affordable accommodation and avoid paying the high night rates that hotels and B&Bs charge. Described as part of the ‘sharing’ economy and using a model that’s compared with taxi service Uber, Airbnb recently claimed to have so far generated over half a billion pounds of economic activity in the UK. But what Airbnb is really muscling in on – in a way that might alarm some lettings agents – is the peripheries of the private lettings market as the service becomes a new and low-cost alternative income stream for landlords. The Guardian newspaper recently analysed more than 13,000 Airbnb listings in London – by far its largest UK market – and discovered that 6,600 of them offered an entire home or flat, rather than a spare room – a clear sign…