Guide ·
Cheap large group accommodation: the per-head maths
A house for 12 at £1,500 a week is £125 each for seven nights, less than two nights in a budget hotel. The trick is knowing where the cheap weeks are and what you give up to get them.
Nobody searching for cheap group accommodation wants a bunkhouse with a shared shower block. They want a house with bedrooms and a kitchen, and a bill that stops being frightening once it is divided by the number of people in it. This guide is about that second part.
Start with the per-head number
Every house on this site shows a from-price for a week. Divide it by the number of people and the picture changes. Across the 423 houses we list, the median low-season week works out at about £150 per person for seven nights, and 36 houses come in under £100 a head. The cheapest are £55 to £65 a head for a full week, in Pembrokeshire and Lancashire, sleeping 10 to 16.
Bigger does not always mean cheaper per person. Houses that sleep 20 or more have a median of about £190 a head because they tend to be the grander places with pools and staff-sized kitchens. The sweet spot for price per head is usually a plain farmhouse or converted barn sleeping 10 to 14.
The cheapest regions
By median per-head price in the data today, the cheapest regions with a decent choice are Pembrokeshire (about £127 a head for the week), Perthshire (£132), the Brecon Beacons and Devon (both £135), Norfolk (£139), then Argyll, the Lake District and Snowdonia (all around £143). Cornwall sits at about £150. The pattern is that west Wales and the Scottish regions a couple of hours from the Central Belt undercut the south-west of England, often for a bigger house.
Devon is interesting because it has the widest choice of any region (66 houses) and a low median at the same time, so there is room to be fussy and still pay under £140 a head in the quiet months.
The cheapest weeks
The from-price is the low-season week, usually a week in November, January, February or early March, outside half term. The same house in August is typically two to three times that, and Christmas, New Year and Easter are at or near the top. If the group can travel in a term-time week between October half term and Easter, the saving on a house for 12 is routinely £1,500 to £3,000 on the week.
Weekends alone (Friday to Monday) in low season are often 60 to 70 percent of the week’s price, so if you only need three nights, a short break in February can be the cheapest way to get 14 people under one roof anywhere in Britain.
What you give up
Cheap houses are cheap for a reason, and usually it is one of these: no hot tub (there are no hot tub houses in the data under £80 a head), more sofa beds and bunk rooms in the sleeps count, fewer bathrooms, a kitchen with one oven, a long drive from a motorway, or a location that is lovely but not on a beach. None of these matters to every group. Decide which ones matter to yours before you filter, and check the bedrooms and bathrooms counts in the facts table rather than trusting “sleeps”.
Count the extras
The headline price is rarely the whole bill. Watch for: a booking fee (often £25 to £50), a refundable damage deposit (£250 to £1,000, which somebody has to front), a cleaning charge, metered electricity or oil in older houses, charges for dogs (£20 to £40 per dog per week), and hot tub or pool heating supplements. Linen and towels are nearly always included on the big houses but check. Ask the agency the total for your dates before you commit the group.
Cutting the bill without going down market
Three things that work. First, take a house one size up and fill the spare beds: a house for 16 at £2,400 is £150 a head, but if it will take 18 it is £133. Second, book a house with a proper kitchen and cook; a group of 12 eating out twice a day in Cornwall spends more on food than on the house. Third, pick a house within two hours of most of the group, because fuel and a day lost to the drive are real costs too.
Where to look first
If budget is the first filter, start with the sleeps 10 and sleeps 12 pages, and work through Pembrokeshire, Devon, the Brecon Beacons and Norfolk. The row of houses below is the cheapest per head in the current data, biggest first within the price, one per region.
