Investors who run holiday let properties through websites like Airbnb earnt more than buy-to-let landlords in the past year, Hamptons analysis of HMRC data shows.
Holiday let owners made £15,600, compared to £13,400 for investors in the long-term rental sector.
This is the first time holiday let income outstripped buy-to-lets since 2020-21.
David Fell, a senior analyst at Hamptons, said: “While Covid undoubtedly distorted the market, the longer term upward trend in revenue predates Covid, and it’s a trend the government has been increasingly worried about.”
A decade ago, holiday lets generated about £9,600 a year compared with £12,800 for buy-to-let but the gulf has grown wider, pushing holiday let income up by an average of 63% in the past 10 years compared with just 5% for buy-to-let.
Some 63,000 individuals, rather than a company, receive income from 65,000 furnished holiday let properties in the UK — up from 46,000 receiving income from 50,000 properties in 2011-12.
Tim Farron, Liberal Democrat MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, wrote in The Times on Friday: “I’m very sad to say that wonderful and iconic towns and villages… face an existential crisis — a housing catastrophe, which means fewer and fewer homes for people to live in.
“There are three principal causes: a lack of genuinely affordable homes being built; excessive numbers of second homes displacing full-time residential accommodation; and a short-term rented sector that has gobbled up the long-term private rented sector.”