Every owner weighing short-term letting has heard that Airbnb earns twice what a conventional tenancy does. On gross revenue that is often true. On what reaches your account it almost never is. And since the gap between those two numbers is the entire decision, it is worth walking the calculation line by line rather than skipping to the conclusion.
The short answer, before the numbers: short-term letting wins after costs only in strong central and coastal areas, and only where occupancy sits consistently above 70%. Even then the net difference runs at around 25% to 40%, not double. Outside those conditions, long-term letting usually comes out ahead, and with considerably less work.
What we are actually comparing
With a long tenancy, the rent you agree is close to the money you keep. The tenant pays the utilities and building charges; you pay property tax, maintenance and income tax. Twelve payments a year, with the risk sitting mainly in arrears and in the gaps between tenants.
With short-term letting, the figure you see on the platform never arrives whole. Between gross and pocket sit channel commission, cleaning, linen, consumables, utilities, a management fee, and the empty nights nobody puts in the January spreadsheet.
Operating costs absorb a little over half of gross
The long-term market has not been standing still either. Average asking rents in central Athens reached €12.3 per square metre in the second quarter of 2026, up from €11.3 a year earlier, and the southern suburbs are above €13. Those figures are for unfurnished stock; a renovated, fully furnished apartment asks appreciably more.
A worked example
Take a renovated 60 square metre apartment in Pagrati. The figures below are illustrative and exist to show the shape of the calculation. They are not portfolio data, and your apartment will produce different ones.
Let long-term, fully furnished, run at around €1,050 a month. Twelve months is €12,600, less a vacant month between tenants and the year’s maintenance. Call it €11,000 before tax, for very little work on your part.
Short-term, at an average €110 a night and 80% annual occupancy, grosses close to €32,000. Striking, next to €12,600. Then the deductions start.
- Channel commission, around 15% of gross.
- Cleaning and linen, across sixty-odd arrivals a year.
- Utilities, internet, building charges, welcome consumables.
- Management fee, as a percentage of revenue.
- Insurance, certificates, equipment servicing, accountancy.
- Writing down furniture and equipment, because wear runs several times faster.
Together those absorb a little over half of gross. In the same illustrative example, somewhere between €13,800 and €15,400 remains: 25% to 40% above the long tenancy. A real difference, one that justifies the effort in the right apartment, but a long way from the doubling that circulates at dinner parties. And notice how much of it rests on just two variables.
Where the balance tips
The decisive number is neither the nightly rate alone nor occupancy alone. It is the two multiplied, and the turning point sits somewhere specific: occupancy of 80% or better, at an average of €100 to €120 a night. An apartment that clears both earns considerably more than the arithmetic of either one suggests.
The reverse holds just as sharply. Below 70% annual occupancy, operating costs eat the difference and short-term letting stops making sense, however good the rate looks. It is the first thing we test before recommending a model, and the reason some apartments get a recommendation for a long tenancy instead.
Short-term letting does not pay for the apartment. It pays for the address.
One configuration outperforms all the others consistently: two bedrooms with two bathrooms. It serves families, two couples travelling together and colleagues on a corporate move, which is three separate demand pools rather than one, and it fills out of season as well as in it. In the Athens market it is genuinely rare, because most apartment blocks were built with a single bathroom. If you own one, or if a renovation could add a second bathroom, that is the largest single improvement you can make to the return.
Beyond configuration, occupancy is a question of location. The same apartment, with the same furniture and the same management, produces an entirely different result in Koukaki than in an area with neither tourist nor corporate demand. Which areas clear the line is mapped out in our neighbourhood guide.
What the spreadsheet leaves out
Three things escape every comparison and matter more than they appear. The first is time: short-term letting is a business rather than passive income, and if you run it yourself you pay the difference in hours. The second is wear, which across sixty arrivals a year runs several times what one tenant produces.
The third is regulatory risk, and in 2026 that is not theoretical. In the 1st, 2nd and 3rd municipal districts of Athens, new entries to the short-term registry remain suspended, while the standards under law 5170/2025 add fixed compliance costs. With a long tenancy none of it touches you. We go through the detail in our piece on Airbnb management in Athens.
Then there is tax, which lands on top of everything above. From the third short-let property onward the activity becomes a business, with 13% VAT across the whole of it, social security contributions and the trade fee, and the net gap narrows further still. No such threshold exists in long-term letting, and owners converting a property from short-term to a long residential tenancy can currently claim a three-year income tax exemption on leases signed up to 31 December 2026, capped at 120 square metres and requiring a three-year contract. It applies only to letting to a private individual as their home.
So the question is not which model earns more in general, but which earns more at your address, given your tolerance for the swing. Send us the address and a few photographs and we will run the calculation on real numbers instead of illustrative ones. If it comes out in favour of a long tenancy, we will tell you.
Find out what your apartment could earn
Send us the details and we will come back with both scenarios costed.
