Does short letting create more wear and tear than long letting?

One of the assumptions that people have is that a higher turnover of guests causes an apartment or house to suffer from more wear and tear, and for the property to suffer greater deterioration over the medium to long term. But why do people think that and is it really true? 

The basis for this assumption is often the pre-conceived notion that a property is more intensively used in short-term stays and/or is not looked after as carefully by those guests as it is by tenants who live there longer term.

On the first point, that a property is more intensively used in short-term stays, we have analysed hundreds of stays booked and overseen by Fairway Hosting and have found it is actually the opposite. 

Part of our 5* service is to communicate with the guests to understand and assist where we can with their itineraries and travel arrangements. We also look closely at the feedback after every stay. This gives us a very good insight into the purpose of their stay, how they use the property, and how often. From that research, we understand that the vast majority of the time a property is used very little by a guest. 

Ultimately, short-term guests are not visiting, say, London to sit in an apartment for a large proportion of the day. They are out making the most of their trip: visiting tourist attractions, meeting family they have come to see or heading to meetings or the office on their business trip. 

We found that short-stay guests were significantly less likely to use appliances like cooking facilities, washing machines, and electronic items than medium to longer-term guests. As a result of both spending less time in the property and also using its appliances less often, short terms guests are arguably far less likely to cause as much wear and tear as longer-term tenants.

When things do inevitably go wrong and there is a maintenance issue that needs rectifying it can often go unreported by a long-term tenant for some time. What a higher turnover of guests does enable is more regular checking of a property between those stays by cleaners and Fairway Hosting staff.

Finding any maintenance issues as early as possible prevents it developing into a greater problem later down the line and requiring a higher repair cost, while regular cleaning between stays has a similar maintaining effect.

Listing properties on both holiday letting booking platforms as well as traditional estate agent portals, we maximise your income from a unique mix of short and medium-term lettings all year round.