"How much can I earn?" is the first question every landlord asks us. Answers you find online tend to fall in two categories: aspirational figures from Airbnb's own marketing, or vague ranges from third-party statistics sites. Neither is useful when you are trying to decide whether to short-let your specific property.
This piece is our honest answer, using an illustrative worked example based on the kind of one-bed we run in North Greenwich. The numbers are indicative, not audited actuals. They will vary meaningfully from property to property. But they are a more grounded frame than the alternatives.
The illustrative property
A one-bedroom serviced apartment in South East London. Modern build, professionally cleaned, decent WiFi, blackout blinds, lift access to the flat. The apartment sleeps two comfortably or four with the sofa bed. It sits in the mid-tier of the local short-let market: above budget hotels, below premium aparthotels.
This is our reference example. Actual performance for a specific property depends on the fixed inputs (property quality, exact location, amenities) and the variable inputs (event calendar, season, day-of-week pricing discipline). If your property looks broadly like this, the numbers below are roughly what you would expect.
What a comparable property could gross in a year
A well-run one-bed in this bracket typically generates gross booking revenue in the range of 42,000 to 50,000 pounds a year. For the purposes of the example, let us use £45,000.
Broken into a typical monthly rhythm, rounded:
- Peak summer months (July, August): £4,800 - £5,300 each
- Shoulder months (May, June, September): £4,500 - £4,900 each
- Autumn (October, November): £3,800 - £4,400 each
- Christmas and New Year: around £4,000 with a lift over the 27 December to 2 January window
- January and February (softest months): £2,700 - £3,000 each
- Early spring (March, April): £3,300 - 3,900 each
Peak months earn roughly double the trough months. Occupancy runs at 75 to 80% across the year, with peak months hitting 90% plus. Bookings average around 20 to 22 per month at an average stay length of 3 to 4 nights. If you want the details on how we set the nightly rate that produces these numbers, our earlier piece on how we price a short let covers it.
The cost stack, illustrative
Gross booking revenue is not what the owner earns. Costs come out first. Rounded, indicative figures for a comparable one-bed:
- Airbnb service fee (3% of Airbnb bookings): ~£1,400
- Booking.com commission (15% on their bookings): ~£3,200
- Cleaning (typically £45 - £50 per turnaround, around 250 turnarounds a year): ~£11,250
- Cleaning supplies and consumables: ~£700
- Utilities (electricity, gas, water, internet): ~£2,100
- Insurance (specialist short-let cover): ~ £680
- Repairs and maintenance: ~£1,100
- Toiletries, linen replacement, kitchen restocks: ~ £1,400
- Council tax proportional: ~£1,800
- Property management commission at 15% (if using a manager): ~£6,750
Total illustrative costs, without a management commission: about £23,600.
Total illustrative costs, with a 15% management commission: about £30,350.
What lands with the owner
Working from £45,000 gross:
If the owner runs the property themselves (self-managed, no management company), net income after all costs and platform fees is roughly £21,400 for the year. About £1,780 a month on average, with strong months earning £3,000-plus and weak months around £800.
If the owner engages a management company at 15% commission (our rate), net income lands around £14,650 for the year, or £1,220 a month.
The 15% commission buys approximately 8 to 12 hours per month of the owner's time back: no guest communication, no cleaner coordination, no calendar management, no pricing decisions, no maintenance calls. For most owners, that trade sits somewhere between "worth it" and "obviously worth it".
How this compares to a long-let
A comparable one-bedroom flat typically lets long-term for around £1,800 pounds per month, or £21,600 pounds gross per year. After the 5-10% long-let management fee, void periods, arrears risk, and periodic maintenance, most owners net around £18,500 to £19,500 pounds.
The honest comparison, per year on the same property:
- Short-let self-managed: about £21,400 net
- Short-let via management company: about £14,650 pounds net
- Long-let: about £18,500 to £19,500 pounds net
Short-let self-managed narrowly wins on cash, but the owner is putting in close to eight hours a week to earn it. Short-let via management loses to long-let on cash by around £4,000 pounds a year but wins on flexibility, control, and optionality: you can use the flat yourself, block dates, or terminate with 30 days' notice. If the trade-offs are still unclear, our piece on rent-to-rent vs management covers the choice in more detail.
The wear-and-tear advantage most landlords miss
Cash is one dimension. The other, which almost never shows up in these comparisons but genuinely matters over five to ten years, is what happens to the physical condition of the property.
A long-let tenant lives in the property 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for one or several years. Carpets wear. Walls scuff. Appliances get daily heavy use. Furniture ages. Kitchens accumulate the gentle grease that no monthly clean fully removes. When the tenant moves out, most of that wear is not chargeable damage. It is just the cost of the property being lived in.
A short-let property does not have anyone living in it in the same sense. Guests stay for an average of three to four nights. Between every stay the property is professionally cleaned, aired, checked, and reset. The property is intensively occupied for perhaps 250 to 300 nights a year, but each occupation is short and each transition is a full reset.
The compound effect over five years is real:
- Carpets and soft furnishings age slower because they see less continuous foot traffic and are cleaned more frequently.
- Kitchen appliances see moderate use rather than daily heavy use. Ovens, hobs, and dishwashers last longer.
- Damage is spotted the day it happens (by the cleaner or the operator) and either fixed or claimed through the platform's guarantee scheme. A long-let landlord often only sees damage at the end of the tenancy, when the deposit does not cover it.
- Structural issues (damp, boiler, leaks) are noticed immediately because someone is checking the property every few days. Long-let issues often accumulate quietly until they become large.
The commercial impact is straightforward. A well-run short-let property retains resale value materially better than a hard-used long-let property, and it costs less to refresh between guest cycles than to redecorate between tenancies. A landlord who plans to sell in five years may find the short-let property is worth 5 to 10 percent more at exit than the long-let equivalent, simply because it presents better.
This is not a headline-earning line item, and it does not show up in any monthly statement. But over the life of an investment, it is real money.
What could your property earn?
The rough rule we use when quoting a comparable one-bedroom in one of our patches (SE10, E14, E20, E16, E1W, SE16): expect gross booking revenue in the range of £38,000 to £52,000 a year, depending on the property's specific location, size, finish, and amenities.
A property with private outdoor space, a view, or a proximity advantage (Wharf, riverside, park, station) can push toward the upper end. A property without those features tends to sit in the middle. Studios earn 20-30% less. Two-bedroom apartments earn 25-40% more.
We can quote a specific number for a specific property. If you want us to look at yours, our list-your-property page has the next step.