Thousands of people are making Airbnb money from their homes, which is not surprising. The average annual income for someone renting out a spare room on the site generates £3,000 a year, Airbnb figures show.

The trouble is, for tenants it's highly unlikely to be a serious choice - even though it can be tempting.

After all, if you’ve got a spare room or the property is frequently empty at the weekends, why not let someone else use it, for a fee?

Tax free

Even better, the government allows anyone renting out a spare room to earn up to £7,500 a year without paying any tax on the cash, although anyone doing it must sign up to the scheme first.

But making money from short-stay rental websites like Airbnb will land you in hot water, and in most cases it’s not worth the hassle.

Subletting

Most landlords consider it to be subletting and generally they don’t like - or allow it - whether it’s via Airbnb or just to mates, so tenants need to get their landlord’s permission first. Most rental contracts prevents tenant subletting.

Landlords aren’t being mean, they are just concerned that allowing tenants to sublet on Airbnb would breach the T&Cs of their buy-to-let mortgage, leave them unaware of who is living in the property, and potentially render their landlord insurance policy null and void.

Risk of eviction

If a tenant does decide to chance it and is found out, then in most cases they will be in breach of their tenancy agreement and may face eviction.

One eviction specialist, Landlord Action, says the number of landlords evicting tenants for subletting on Airbnb trebled last year when compared to the year before.

Freehold

The other complication is the building’s freeholder. While a landlord might agree it to it, many apartment block freeholders add a clause in the building's leaseholds preventing short lets.

Local laws

And then there’s the local regulations. In most of London, for example, the number of days a property can be rented out on Airbnb is limited to 90 days a year and, if someone exceeds this, they can be prosecuted and may be fined.

A similar rule is to be introduced in Edinburgh soon, and the rest of the UK’s main cities are expected to follow suit in the coming months and years.

Renting out via Airbnb, it would seem, is likely to get more not less tricky for tenants.

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If you want to improve your credit position by reporting your rent payments, CreditLadder is the only way to improve your credit score and position across all four of the main Credit Reference Agencies in the UK, namely Experian, Equifax, TransUnion and Crediva. Building up a high credit score has a lot of benefits, including helping you access finance at better rates - this can also help save you money.

CreditLadder also runs a free mortgage application service in partnership with Tembo which will tell you how much you could borrow.

Remember the information provided in this article is for information purposes only and should not be considered as advice.