A tourist wheels luggage in the Barceloneta district in Barcelona, Spain, on Saturday, June 5, 2021.
Photographer: Angel Garcia/BloombergAirbnb Hosts Try to Evade City Regulations, From Copenhagen to Catalonia
As tourists flood back, cities have responded with a flurry of new rules on short-term rentals. But policing this housing sector remains a challenge.
It’s been almost 15 years since the launch of Airbnb Inc. kicked off a global boom in short-term home rentals, and it still feels as if no city has yet found the right formula for regulating the sector. But it’s certainly not for lack of trying.
Fearful of seeing long-term rental housing drain away to the tourist market, governments have experimented with a flurry of rules. Dallas has blocked vacation properties in certain residential neighborhoods, Barcelona outlawed all short-term room rentals in private homes, and San Francisco and Seattle limit the number of properties a host is able to list. Others cap the number of nights a property can be rented out in a year (90 in London, 120 in Paris) or mandate a minimum number of nights a property must be rented out (Honolulu guests must book for at least 90 days; Singapore requires six months or more). And many cities insist that hosts actually live in the property (as in New York City, Vancouver and Tokyo).