Barcelona Is the Latest City to Crack Down on Airbnb Rentals

Depending on how you view it, the story of Airbnb is either a story of an online service thriving after meeting an underused niche or one of technological overreach doing serious damage to the urban landscape. On one hand, there are plenty of cases where Airbnb provides travelers with a pleasant space to live that also benefits area residents. On the other hand, multiple studies have pointed to the detrimental effect of short-term rentals on multiple cities’ real estate options for people who actually live there.

That’s why a growing number of cities have announced plans to regulate short-term rentals – or eliminate them altogether. There’s international momentum for this, with Barcelona being the latest city to take a big step towards phasing out short-term rentals altogether. As Business Insider’s Eliza Relman and Dan Latu report, the city has set an ambitious goal that will represent the end of short-term rentals there by 2028.

Business Insider cites a study published four years ago in the Journal of Urban Economics which explored the effects of short-term rentals on the city’s larger real estate market. The study’s authors wrote at the time that “for the average neighborhood, Airbnb activity has increased rents by 1.9%, transaction prices by 4.6% and posted prices by 3.7%.” For the neighborhoods most affected by Airbnb, the study found that rents were increased by as much as 7%.

The presence of Airbnb, Vrbo and similar services makes it easy for people to rent spare rooms or make extra money while traveling; unfortunately, for some in-demand locations, it also incentivizes some property owners to opt for short-term rentals only, causing the existing housing supply to shrink.

As Business Insider reports, Barcelona’s effort to eliminate short-term rentals at the end of 2028 comes on the heels of a partial ban enacted in 2021 — and it’s in line with what some other European cities and tourist destinations have enacted.

Illegal Airbnb Listing in Los Angeles Leaves Guests and Owner Equally Frustrated

The listing has since been taken down

Still, a ban on short-term rentals doesn’t mean the end of short-term rentals in practice. Earlier this year, The Guardian‘s Zoe Rosenberg looked at the effects of New York City’s ban on short-term rentals. “For many tourists, there’s no good answer yet to the so-called Airbnb ban,” Rosenberg wrote, pointing to the city’s high hotel prices. One side effect of the ban was sparking an increase in Airbnbs across the river in New Jersey — which suggests that municipalities near Barcelona might see a similar uptick in the years to come.