Renting - what constitutes short term?

Your usual contract is an AST (I think... too many gins) and it's six months standard short-term, difficult to arrange anything less. Try www.landlordzone.co.uk for beter advice..... HTH (that's in England BTW!)

I would have said 6 months too - so clearly no help ?

I think it depends where you are, in Edinburgh a normal term was 6 months but where I am in Northern Ireland, a year seems to be standard.

I work in Housing Benefits and from the tenancies we get short term is generally 6months

I'll have a look at that site properly tomorrow and see if I can find anything that makes sense ?

Thanks all

If its scotland then the minimum you can rent for is 6 months, its called a short assured tenancy, your tied in for the 6 months and then month by month thereafter.

Agents will say 6 months is the shortest as under the AST rules but you can agree to less - there is a thing called flexi lets and they are basically serviced properties and can be as short as you need them to be

And also about 50% more expensive per month

Probably not much help but from experience here in Belfast it's next to impossible to rent for less than a year. Even where shorter term contracts are advertised landlords are unwilling to actually rent the property for any less.

When we lived in Cambridge we had a three month let that we had to ask for, it wasn't a flexi let though and didn't cost us any more than the normal rent. I got the impression though that six months would be a more usual "short" term let.

6 months is the norm - we got our rent discounted for signing a 12 months tenancy agreement! I'd rather be tied in for longer, for stability and peace of mind.