Short Term Lets Licensing Statistics Scotland to 30 June 2025

Key points

Applications received

Note: [ ] indicate the excel tab where the data is located in the supporting document.

• The focus of this publication is on validated short term let applications. There are applications where authorities do not have the information required to validate an application and are working with applicants to obtain this information. This means the statistics in this publication are provisional and subject to upward revision in future releases. The scale of revisions have reduced steadily in each publication. [Revisions are reported in the publication text and in the Revision Table in the supporting excel document]
• There were at least 38,040 applications for a short-term licence received by local authorities as of end June 2025, of which 36,594 were validated applications. The new short term let licensing scheme introduced in Scotland in October 2022 required both existing and new short term lets to apply for licences before October 2023. [Table 1, 2 and 17]
• Overall, in Scotland there were 134 short term lets applications per 10,000 dwellings. The highest rate was in Highlands (699) and the lowest rate in East Renfrewshire (10). [Table 3]
• The majority (28,012 or 77%) of validated applications relate to secondary letting (i.e. where a non-primary residence is let out), with 3,667 (10%) being for home sharing, 2,969 (8%) for home letting, and 1,946 (5%) for a mixture of home sharing and letting. Similar proportions are reported for licences granted. [Table 4]

Applications status

• As of 30 June 2025, over 89% of all validated applications were granted a licence (including lapsed and superseded licences), and 6% of the applications were pending determination. A small minority of applications were withdrawn, refused, or suspended (5%). [Table 1 and 8]

Licences or exemptions in operation

• 31,774 licences or exemptions were in operation as of 30 June 2025. Full licences and renewals accounted for over 97% (30,730) of this number and 2% (591) were provisional licences pending a final decision. There were 453 temporary licences and exemptions. [Table 10 and 11]
• At least 85,483 bedrooms and a total maximum occupancy of 167,456 people were reported in the licences or exemptions in operation granted. [Table 16]