How to ask a Nairobi landlord for permission to short-let

Almost every operator we deal with asked their first landlord badly, and most were refused for reasons that had nothing to do with money. The pitch was about upside the owner does not get a share of, and it skipped every question the owner was actually asking.

Start from the owner’s position. A landlord with a tenanted unit has an income they mostly do not think about. You are proposing to replace one occupant they vetted with a stream of strangers they will never meet, in exchange for nothing additional. Framed that way it is an obviously bad trade, and it is how most proposals land.

How to convince a landlord to allow Airbnb

The short version, before the detail. You convince an owner by making their position better than it is now, not by explaining how good yours will be. That means offering rent above the long-let market rate, offering it on a longer term than a tenant would sign, putting the deposit higher, taking the maintenance and cleaning burden off them entirely, and naming yourself as the single accountable person for anything that happens in the unit.

Every one of those costs you margin, which is the point. An operator whose pitch costs them nothing is asking the owner to take all of the new risk for none of the new return, and owners are quite good at spotting that. The rest of this piece is what they are weighing when they decide.

What an owner is actually weighing

Not the nightly rate. Five things, roughly in this order.

• Wear. Short-stay turnover puts more traffic through a unit in a year than a tenant does in three. Owners know this even if they cannot quantify it.
• The neighbours and the committee. The owner still has to exist in that building after you have moved on. A complaint about noise or strangers in the lift is a problem that lands on them, and a management committee that objects can make their life difficult for years.
• Insurance and liability. A residential policy generally does not cover commercial short-stay occupation. If a guest floods the flat below, the owner wants to know whose insurer answers.
• Getting the unit back. Their real fear, usually unspoken, is a furnished unit full of confirmed bookings that they cannot recover when they want it.
• Whether you will still be there. Owners have watched people try this and stop in month five. They are assessing whether you are a business or an experiment.

Do this before you ask

Read the whole lease

Know which clause you are asking to be released from, because it changes the conversation. An absolute prohibition needs a waiver. A qualified covenant needs consent the owner may be obliged not to withhold unreasonably. A use covenant or incorporated house rules may be the real obstacle even where the subletting clause is silent. Whether you need permission at all goes through the four clause types.

Check the building first

Ask the caretaker or the committee whether short-stay letting happens in the block and whether anybody has been stopped. Doing this before you approach the owner can save the whole exercise, and turning up already knowing the answer makes you look like an operator rather than a chancer.

Ask before you sign, not after

This is the single biggest error. An operator who has already committed to twelve months of rent has no leverage and every incentive to proceed regardless, and owners can sense it. Asking as a condition of taking the unit is a normal commercial negotiation. Asking afterwards is a confession.

Ask as a condition of taking the unit and you are negotiating. Ask once you have signed and you are confessing.

What to put on the table

You are asking for something worth money, so expect to pay for it in one currency or another. The options, cheapest first:

• A longer term. Two or three years rather than one. Costs you flexibility, gives the owner exactly what they want, and you needed the length anyway to earn back the furnishing.
• A larger deposit. Two or three months rather than one, explicitly as security against the extra wear. Cheap, since you get it back.
• A managing agent named in the consent. Costs you nothing and is often the thing that closes it, because it converts a proposal from one person into an arrangement with a firm standing behind it.
• Insurance evidence. A policy covering short-stay occupation with the owner’s interest noted, produced before the first guest.
• A break in their favour. A right for the owner to end the consent on, say, ninety days for cause. Feels frightening and is worth more than any money you could offer, because it answers the fear about getting the unit back.
• Rent above asking. The last resort, not the first. Paying a premium turns your margin into their margin, and an owner who says yes only for the premium will renegotiate it upwards at every renewal.

A letter you can adapt

Send something written. A conversation at the gate produces a permission nobody can evidence later, which is the same as no permission when it matters.

Draft: request for consent to short-stay letting

Dear [Owner],

I am interested in taking [unit, building, road] on a [two] year lease at the asking rent of KES [x] per month. Before committing I want to be straightforward about how I intend to use it, and to ask for your written consent.

I let furnished apartments on a short-stay basis to business travellers and visiting families. I would furnish the unit to a standard well above ordinary rental condition, at my own cost of roughly KES [x], and I would appoint [managing agent] to run it. They would handle guest screening, cleaning between every stay, maintenance and compliance, and they would be accountable to you as well as to me for the condition of the unit.

I recognise this asks more of you than a conventional tenancy, so I would propose the following:

• A [two] year term, giving you certainty of income
• A deposit of [three] months rather than one, as security against the additional wear
• Insurance covering short-stay occupation, with your interest noted and evidenced before the first guest
• That I meet the building management and comply with the house rules, including any visitor register
• A right for you to withdraw this consent on ninety days written notice if the arrangement causes you difficulty, with the tenancy then continuing on ordinary residential terms or ending as you prefer

I would rather have this agreed in writing at the outset than discover later that we had different expectations. I am happy to meet, and happy for you to speak to [managing agent] directly.

Kind regards, [Name, phone, email]

If they say no

Ask what would change the answer. Often it is one thing: the committee, a nervous co-owner, a bad experience two years ago. Sometimes it is genuinely nothing, and where the covenant is absolute the owner is entitled to refuse without giving a reason at all. When a refusal can be challenged sets out how narrow that is.

What you should not do is proceed anyway. The downside is not a warning letter, it is losing a furnished unit mid-calendar.

How Goldstay handles it

We are the managing agent in that letter, and being able to name one is often what turns a no into a yes. We manage long-term property for owners across the same Nairobi neighbourhoods, so we know which buildings and which owners will consider short-letting, and an owner hearing the proposal hears it from a firm that already acts for people like them.

We will speak to your prospective landlord directly if that helps, and we will tell you honestly when a building is not worth approaching. What we will not do is manage a unit without the owner’s written consent. Management for operators sets out the service and the fee. This article is general information rather than legal advice, and the draft above is a starting point rather than a document to send unread.

Related reading: whether Airbnb arbitrage is legal in Kenya and what the paperwork has to contain.

If you have the owner’s written permission in hand and would rather somebody else ran the unit day to day, that is management for operators. We ask to see the permission before taking a unit on, for the reason set out above.