Are mid-term lets worth it for UK landlords?

Mid-term lets of roughly one to six months cut your changeover costs and fill months that nightly bookings cannot. They also move the property out of the legal category that keeps short letting simple. A stay booked for work sits outside the holiday-letting exclusion, and since 1 May 2026 there is no section 21 to fall back on if the arrangement turns out to be an assured tenancy.

The sales pitch is the sweet spot: better rates than a tenancy, less churn than nightly stays, a contact form at the bottom. What the pitch skips is Schedule 1 of the Housing Act 1988. One widely shared argument even recommends moving into short and mid lets because of the Renters’ Rights Act, without mentioning that a mid-term let can put an owner back inside an assured tenancy with no section 21 available.

What counts as a mid-term let

There is no statutory definition. In practice the term covers stays from about a month to about six months, taken by contractors, relocating employees, people between houses and anyone whose work keeps them somewhere for a season.

Two thresholds do real work, and both are about money.

• Twenty-eight nights. A stay longer than this cannot be counted toward the seventy let nights that put an English property on the business rates list. The whole booking counts for nothing. What your property counts as covers that test.
• Day twenty-nine. For a VAT-registered business supplying accommodation in a hotel or similar establishment, the reduced value rule starts here. From the twenty-ninth day of a continuous stay, VAT is due only on the part of the payment that is not for the accommodation itself, and at least twenty per cent of the value has to be treated as facilities and taxed (VAT Notice 709/3). That rule only bites once you are registered, and whether you have to register at all turns on your total taxable turnover.

Neither of those decides the question owners actually need answered, which is what the occupier becomes in law.

The commercial case, and it is a real one

The appeal is genuine, and it is mostly about the cost of turning a property around.

• Changeovers collapse. A ninety-night winter booking is one changeover in place of roughly a dozen. Cleaning, linen, restocking, the wear that comes with every arrival, and the unsellable single nights that cluster around them all go with it.
• The hardest months get filled. Demand for a contractor let does not care that it is February.
• One payer, one date. A calendar you can plan around has value beyond the rent.

The trade is equally real. The nightly rate drops, usually by a lot. Bills are normally included, so you carry the energy cost through the coldest part of the year. Your listing goes quiet for months, and a dormant listing has its own consequences for how the property comes back (see why a listing stops getting bookings).

The sum worth doing is per night, after costs, against what those same specific weeks would realistically earn nightly. Do it for the actual dates on offer. Giving up January in a quiet market costs very little. Giving up September in a strong one can cost a great deal.

What changed on 1 May 2026

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 came into force on 1 May 2026, and it reshaped the ground underneath this decision.

Most private assured shorthold tenancies became fully assured tenancies. Fixed terms became monthly periodic tenancies. Section 21, the notice that let a landlord end a tenancy without giving a reason, was abolished. Landlords who had served a section 21 notice before 1 May had to start possession proceedings by 31 July 2026 at the latest, and after that the notice is unenforceable.

For a short-let owner the significance is narrow and sharp. The exit that used to make an accidental tenancy survivable has gone. If an arrangement turns out to be an assured tenancy, ending it now requires a ground for possession, and the timing stops being yours.

Why “it is only three months” is not the test

Two provisions decide whether an occupier holds an assured tenancy, and neither of them mentions a number of months.

The first is the holiday exclusion. Schedule 1 of the Housing Act 1988 lists the tenancies that cannot be assured, and paragraph 9 is one line:

A tenancy the purpose of which is to confer on the tenant the right to occupy the dwelling-house for a holiday.

The word carrying the weight is purpose. A contractor working on a site for twelve weeks is not on holiday, and calling the booking a holiday let in your own paperwork does not change what the stay is for. That paragraph survived the Renters’ Rights Act unamended, so it still works exactly as it did, and it still only covers holidays.

The second is section 1(1) of the same Act, which sets three conditions for an assured tenancy. The dwelling is let as a separate dwelling, the tenant is an individual, and the tenant occupies it as their only or principal home.

Put those together and the legal outcome turns on two questions.

What actually keeps a mid-term let outside an assured tenancy

Three things do the work in practice, and every one of them is fact-specific.

1. The tenant is not an individual. Section 1(1) requires one. Where an employer takes the property and puts staff in, the contracting party is a company and the condition fails. This is why relocation and contractor bookings are so often written as company lets.
2. It is not their only or principal home. A contractor who keeps a family home in another city and returns at weekends does not occupy your property as a principal home. This turns entirely on the facts, and facts move. Someone who arrives for eight weeks and gives up their old place has changed the answer without telling you.
3. It is a licence and not a tenancy at all. Where you keep genuine control of the property, retain access and actually provide services, the arrangement can be a licence. Writing “licence” at the top of an agreement does very little on its own. A court looks at what happens in practice, above all whether the occupier has exclusive possession.

None of this is decidable from a blog post, including this one. What we do before accepting a mid-term booking is work through the same short list every time: who exactly is the contracting party, where the occupier’s main home is and whether they will confirm it in writing, what the agreement actually grants, what the lender and the insurer say about a stay of that length, and who is named for the bills. Then a solicitor drafts the agreement. The cost of that sits against a booking worth several thousand pounds, which is the right way round.

What a long stay does to your other positions

A mid-term booking is rarely just a booking. It moves several things at once.

Alongside those, two permissions and one policy need checking before you accept.

• Your lender and your lease. Consent to let is usually written for a defined kind of letting. A stay of several months can sit outside what was agreed for a holiday let, and leases on flats often set a minimum or maximum letting length.
• Your insurance. A holiday let policy is priced for a stream of short-staying guests. A single occupier for three months is a different risk, and the schedule may not name it. What a short let needs on its policy goes through the wording.
• Council tax. The Local Government Finance Act sets a hierarchy, with residents ahead of the owner, so a mid-term occupier who has made the property their home is often the one billed. Agree it in writing and confirm the position with the billing authority before the stay starts.

When a mid-term let is the right call, and when it is not

It works well when the weeks on offer are weeks you could not otherwise sell, when the property sits near a hospital, a university, a large employer or a long construction project, and when the booking comes from a company that will sign a proper agreement. Winter in a seasonal market is the obvious case.

It works badly in three situations.

• You need the property back on a fixed date. Your own use, a sale, a peak season you have already taken deposits for. Once an assured tenancy exists the timing is not in your gift, and that is the whole point of the reform.
• You are giving up a month that earns. Test the booking against the nightly alternative for those exact dates before the convenience of a single payer decides it for you.
• The real problem is a quiet calendar. A long booking will hide weak pricing, weak photography or a listing that has drifted, and the problem returns in spring. Fix the reasons a listing stops converting first, then decide whether you still want the mid-term booking.

If you are working out what a mixed year would actually look like for your property, with nightly stays through the season and longer bookings through the quiet months, get a free Airbnb valuation. The nights and the assumptions behind them are stated, so you can test them yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Is a three-month let a holiday let?

Only if its purpose is a holiday. The exclusion in Schedule 1 of the Housing Act 1988 covers a tenancy whose purpose is to give the tenant the right to occupy for a holiday, and it says nothing about length. A twelve-week contractor booking is not a holiday, so the exclusion does not apply, and whether it becomes an assured tenancy then depends on the section 1(1) conditions. A genuine three-month holiday, which is rare, would still be excluded.

Does a company let avoid the tenancy risk?

It addresses one of the three conditions. An assured tenancy requires the tenant to be an individual, so where the contracting party is a company the condition is not met. It has to be genuine: the company takes the property, the company is named in the agreement, and the company pays. An agreement written in a company name while an individual deals with you throughout invites an argument about what the arrangement really is. Have a solicitor draft it. Where the company is an operator taking the property to sublet it, that is a different arrangement with its own risks: whether rent to rent is safe works through them.

Who pays the council tax and bills on a mid-term let?

The Local Government Finance Act sets a hierarchy for council tax in which residents come ahead of the owner, so an occupier who has made the property their home is often the person billed, and you carry it in the gaps between stays. The Act’s definition of owner turns on a material interest, meaning a freehold or a letting granted for six months or more, so short arrangements can produce answers neither side expects. Bills are usually included in the rent for stays of this length, which puts the energy cost on you. Set both out in the agreement and confirm the council tax position with the billing authority.

Does holiday let insurance cover a three-month booking?

Do not assume it does. Holiday let cover is written for short stays by a succession of guests, and policies frequently set a maximum length for any single let, or exclude occupiers who take up residence. Tell your insurer the length and the nature of the stay before you accept it, and get the answer on the schedule. A policy that quietly stops responding is only discovered at a claim.

Sources

• legislation.gov.uk: Housing Act 1988, Schedule 1 (paragraph 9, the holiday letting exclusion; version shown 6 August 2026, checked 2026-08-06)
• legislation.gov.uk: Housing Act 1988, section 1 (the three conditions for an assured tenancy, checked 2026-08-06)
• Shelter England: Renters’ Rights Act 2025 changes in force (commencement 1 May 2026, conversion of assured shortholds, abolition of section 21, transitional deadline of 31 July 2026; checked 2026-08-06)
• legislation.gov.uk: Renters’ Rights Act 2025 (checked 2026-08-06)
• GOV.UK: Hotels and holiday accommodation (VAT Notice 709/3) (the reduced value rule from day 29, checked 2026-08-06)
• legislation.gov.uk: Local Government Finance Act 1992, section 6 (council tax liability hierarchy and the definition of owner, checked 2026-08-06)
• GOV.UK: Apply for business rates for a self-catering property in England (stays over 28 nights cannot be counted, checked 2026-08-06)