Short-let management across Surrey and Sussex

87% occupancy. £3,588 a month.
One three-bed near Gatwick.

Twelve nights empty across an entire quarter. A tenancy ending costs you a month; twelve nights spread over three months costs you twelve nights. That gap is most of the argument, and it is the part landlords tend not to price in.

Run your numbers See the figures
A standard tenancy, with one void between tenants —

One tenancy ending and a three-week gap before the next starts. Not every year has one — but most do, and it costs roughly a month's rent each time it happens.

My house in Crawley — managed short let —

Actual occupancy, 1 May to 31 July 2026: 80 nights booked out of 92. Contractors, crews, families flying early, people over for events at K2.

Occupied and earning Empty
Every figure here is from our own bookings Surrey, Sussex and Manchester Costs at cost — no margin on cleaning or repairs Four weeks' notice, both ways

Our three-bed in Crawley, ten minutes from Gatwick — May to July 2026

Three months. Real figures.
No projections.

MonthOccupancyAverage nightly rateGross revenue
May 202677.4%£112.61£2,702.60
June 202690.0%£122.67£3,312.01
July 202693.5%£163.76£4,749.00
Three-month average86.9%—£3,588 a month

These are gross figures, before operating costs — cleaning, linen, consumables, utilities, insurance and platform fees come out of them. They are three months, in the strongest part of the year for an airport location. We won't multiply them by four and call it an annual figure.

And a full seasonal cycle — our two-bed in Old Trafford, April 2025 to March 2026

231
Nights let out of 337 available
69%
Occupancy across eleven months
£133
Average nightly rate
£30,671
Gross revenue over the period

Peak to trough runs a little over two to one — a £4,117 October against a £1,962 January. That is what a real year looks like, and it is the reason we won't quote you a summer month as an average. Those figures were produced under the property's previous manager. The full month-by-month breakdown is here.

The same house, let two ways

£1,535 a month, or £3,588.

Before it was a short let, the Crawley house was on an assured shorthold tenancy at £1,750 a month — £1,535 after the letting agent. For a higher-rate taxpayer after Section 24, that is a margin thin enough to disappear entirely.

Standard tenancy, net of agent fees
£1,535
Per month, before tax. Section 24 takes a further bite out of this that most landlords only see in January.
Managed short let, gross
£3,588
Per month, averaged over May to July 2026. Before operating costs, which are real and itemised below.

One figure is net of an agent and the other is gross of operating costs, so it is not a clean like-for-like and we won't present it as one. After everything, on this house, in these months, short letting was substantially ahead — and the gap was wide enough that the comparison was never close. Your property is not this property, which is what the call is for.

If you're weighing up doing it yourself

The market sells itself. The operations don't.

Demand near Gatwick is constant, and getting bookings is the easy part. The work is everything underneath: pricing that moves with demand instead of sitting where it was set in March, changeovers that hold up at 90% occupancy, messages answered fast enough to protect the rating, and the problem at eleven on a Sunday night.

The discipline that matters most is reading the market rather than pricing to your own idea of what the property is worth. What you would personally pay to stay somewhere is irrelevant. What the market pays is the number, and it changes weekly.

That is the difference between a property that runs at 60% and the same property at 87%.

Your property

Start with what you're actually keeping.

Most calculators show you a short-let income estimate. I won't, because I don't have verified market data for your street and I'm not going to invent it. What I can do is more useful anyway: show you what your current tenancy leaves you after the agent, the lender, the upkeep and the tax.

It handles both ownership models, because they are not a small difference. Held personally, Section 24 taxes you on rent before mortgage interest. Held in a company, interest is still fully deductible and the tax is corporation tax. Same property, same rent, very different number at the bottom.

Your standard tenancy —

Now the half I can't calculate.

What your property would do as a short let depends on the street, the parking, the layout and the condition — not on a postcode average. Send me the details and I'll build the comparison properly from local listing data and my own trading history, and tell you honestly if short lets don't suit it. Some properties don't, and I'd rather say so now.

I reply personally, usually within a working day. No mailing list and no follow-up sequence — your details are used to answer this enquiry and nothing else.

What's included

Everything between your property and the guest.

Listings, pricing, messages, cleaning, maintenance, compliance and reporting. The parts that need doing at eleven on a Sunday night are the parts you're paying for.

Listing and pricing

Photography, copy and listings on Airbnb, Booking.com and direct. Rates move daily against local demand, events and the season rather than being set once and forgotten.

Guests, start to finish

Vetting, messaging, check-in and the problem at eleven at night. You never get that call. Communication is rated 5.00 across every Airbnb review I have.

Cleaning and linen

Professional turnover between every stay, proper linen, consumables restocked. Charged at cost and itemised — I don't mark them up.

Compliance

Gas, electrical, fire risk assessment and insurance tracked with renewal reminders. If something is missing, you hear about it before it becomes a problem.

Reporting you can audit

A monthly statement showing every booking and every cost. No bundled fees and no line item you have to ring up and ask about.

Your property stays yours

Block dates whenever you want it. Selling, moving family in, or simply changing your mind takes weeks — not a possession notice and six months of waiting.

The standard

The things guests actually mention.

Not my taste — theirs. These are the details that come up unprompted in reviews, which makes them the ones worth spending money on. If your property already has most of them, it will do well. If it doesn't, this is the list.

Beds and bedding

Mentioned more often than any other single feature, by a distance. Genuinely comfortable mattresses, and towels and bedding a step above what people expect. This is where the money goes first.

Blackout curtains

Named repeatedly. A large share of guests near an airport are sleeping at odd hours, and a bedroom that doesn't go properly dark shows up in the ratings.

Self check-in that works

Clear instructions, a lock that behaves, and no phone call at one in the morning. Delayed flights are the normal case here, not the exception.

Parking, and somewhere to sit outside

Both change what people will pay. The garden gets mentioned by anyone travelling with a dog, and dog owners book longer stays.

A kitchen that's genuinely clean

Not tidy — clean. It's the room reviews are hardest on, and the one where a good cleaner earns their fee twice over.

Quiet, and neighbours who stay happy

House rules that are enforced, and stays long enough that the street barely notices. Nothing about this works if the neighbours start objecting.

Properties get assessed against what the market is paying for, not against my preferences. If yours needs work to reach the rates in your report, I'll tell you exactly which parts and roughly what they cost, and you can decide whether it's worth doing.

What it costs

The whole fee structure, on the page.

I left my own previous managing agent because costs kept appearing that nobody could explain. So here is all of it, before you ask.

15%

Twelve-month agreement

Of gross revenue, before platform fees. Four weeks' notice, both ways.

17.5%

Rolling monthly

Of gross revenue, before platform fees. Same notice period. If you'd rather not commit to anything, take this one.

Setup and launch — £250

Getting the property live.

This is several days of work, not an admin fee. It covers:

  • Listings built across Airbnb, Booking.com and direct
  • Copywriting, and the photography brief and coordination
  • Dynamic pricing configured, with a rate strategy for your property
  • Automated guest messaging sequences
  • Compliance review and document check
  • Channel calendars synced and rate plans set up
  • Guest welcome pack and house information

Priced at the start of a relationship rather than as a revenue line. It is deliberately below what the same work costs bought separately.

What else month one costs

Photography is about £250 and charged at cost. On top of that there's a first deep clean, linen and consumables to stock, and usually a smart lock. These are real costs and they land in the first month, so you should hear the number before you sign anything, not after.

I'll give you the actual figure for your property on the call. I'd rather do that than publish a range I've rounded in my own favour.

Everything else at cost

Cleaning, linen, maintenance, consumables and photography are passed through at what they cost me. No margin added, itemised on the statement. And because the management fee is a percentage of what the property earns, a month where it earns nothing costs you nothing.

How it works

Four steps, and you can stop at any of them.

Nothing is committed until the agreement is signed, and there's no cost to finding out whether this suits your property.

1

You send the details

Postcode, bedrooms, mortgage position and what it's doing now. The form above, or an email if you'd rather.

Two minutes
2

I build the figures for your address

Comparable local listings, the seasonal curve including the January trough, and a straight view on whether your property suits short lets. If it doesn't, this is where you find out.

Usually one working day
3

Twenty minutes on the phone

We go through the numbers, the mortgage and lease position, and what the property would need to hit those rates. Evenings and lunchtimes suit most people.

Twenty minutes
4

If it's a yes, we go live

Agreement signed, photography booked, listings built, pricing configured, compliance checked. Then the first bookings start landing.

Two to three weeks

One property a month, and we turn work away

We onboard around one property a month. That is a deliberate limit: we take on properties we'd put our own name to, in markets we know, and say no to the rest — including properties needing significant work, and anything where the mortgage or lease prohibits short letting. If the timing doesn't line up, we'll tell you when it would.

Before you ask

The awkward questions.

The ones that decide whether this works, answered before you spend an afternoon on it.

My property is in a limited company. Does any of this change?
The tax does, substantially — a company still deducts mortgage interest in full, so Section 24 doesn't reach you, and you pay corporation tax instead of income tax. The calculator above handles both, so set it to company ownership and you'll get the right figure. What doesn't change is my side of it: same fee, same terms, and the management agreement is with the company rather than with you personally. One of my own properties is held that way.
Isn't a short let riskier than a long tenancy?
Different risk, not more risk. You trade void months for void nights, and you lose the six-month eviction process entirely. The risk people forget to count is the one I was carrying: under an assured shorthold tenancy, a higher-rate taxpayer can be making a loss on a fully occupied property. Mine was.
My mortgage is buy-to-let. Does that rule it out?
Often, yes. Most buy-to-let products prohibit short letting, and doing it anyway breaches your terms. Some lenders grant consent and some products allow it outright, so it's worth asking — but ask before we go any further. I'll raise this once, clearly, in writing, and then the decision is yours. It's the single most common reason a property doesn't work.
It's a flat. Does the lease matter?
A great deal. Most flat leases restrict sub-letting, holiday letting or business use, and some require the freeholder's written consent. The managing agent may object, and it can affect the building insurance. Dig out the lease and search it for "holiday", "sub-let" and "business use" before we talk.
15% is more than my letting agent charges.
It's a percentage of a materially larger number, and it covers work a letting agent doesn't do — every guest message, every changeover, every 11pm problem. Compare net to net rather than percentage to percentage. If net to net doesn't stack up for your property, I'll be the one telling you.
How do I know you won't hide costs in it?
Everything except the management fee is passed through at cost and itemised. I'm this specific about it because I've been on the other side: my Manchester flat was under third-party management, the margin fell year on year, and costs appeared that nobody could explain when I queried them. I took it in-house on 1 August 2026. That experience is most of the reason this business exists.
You've only got two properties.
Correct, and both are ours — which is the point. Every process, price and cleaner has been tested with our own money at risk before it goes near anyone else's property, and the trading figures on this page are ours rather than a case study borrowed from a franchise pack. We take on a small number of properties deliberately, and we'd rather run a handful properly than a hundred badly.
Can I still use the property myself?
Yes. The calendar is yours — block whatever dates you want, whenever you want. That's one of the genuine advantages over a tenancy, where getting your own property back is a legal process.
What about short-let registration and licensing?
A national registration scheme for England has been announced, with a planning use class expected alongside it, but the detail is still moving. I track it and I'll handle registration when it lands. If restrictions do arrive, the pressure is far more likely to sit in London and the major tourist hotspots than across Surrey and Sussex — but nobody can promise you what a future government does.
What if it doesn't work out?
Four weeks' notice, both ways, on the rolling agreement. No exit fee. And if I think your property isn't suited to this, you'll hear it on the call rather than after you've signed.
Photo of Andy — to come

Who you'd be dealing with

Just me, actually.

I'm Andy. There's no account manager, no call centre and no regional office in another county. If you ring, I answer.

I own and run both properties whose figures are on this page — a three-bed near Gatwick and a two-bed in Old Trafford. Every system I'd put your property on is one I use on my own, with my own money at risk. That is a different proposition from an agency running a playbook it has never had to live with.

It also means I take on a small number of properties on purpose. If short letting isn't right for yours — wrong street, restrictive lease, a mortgage that won't allow it — you'll hear that on the call rather than after you've signed.

Cahill Property Ltd holds no industry accreditations and I'm not going to imply otherwise. The properties are fully compliant — gas, electrical, fire and EPC — which is a different and more useful claim.

Twenty minutes, and you'll know.

Run your numbers above and send the details, or email me and we'll find a time. Evenings and lunchtimes are usually easiest.

Run your numbers Email me to arrange a call