The EU has identified short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb, TripAdvisor, and Expedia as a major driver of Europe’s affordable housing shortage, but has stopped short of spelling out how far it intends to regulate them, according to a draft of its forthcoming housing plan seen by Euractiv.
While light on detail, the draft said the Commission will propose new legislation on short-term rentals next year, aimed at limiting their negative effects while “preserving their benefits.”
The initiative would form part of a broader housing package that pairs closer scrutiny of short-term rentals with a review of EU state-aid rules to steer public funding towards housing projects, alongside new simplification measures for planning, permitting, construction and renovation.
Housing shortages have emerged as a top political priority for the Commission, which has appointed Dan Jørgensen as its first commissioner dedicated to housing a year ago. The European Parliament has also established a special committee on the housing crisis.
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They will clampdown on short terms rental only to end with a lot of empty houses. AirBnb and the like are only the wrong answer to a problem, not the problem themself
They most fucking sure are the problem. From Copenhagen to Lissabon Airbnb and similar have sequestered millions of flats while generating billions in revenue to a non productive class of citizen. They need to fucking go!
Millions of flats that are private properties, and people could do whatever they want with them.
But the assumption is that once AirBnb and the likes are regulated and somehow people could not short rent all these houses, they will be available in the long rent market. And that assumption is all but true.
Italy has about 30% of empty houses (and by empty I mean they are not even on the short term rental market) even with AirBnb around. And the reason is that is hard to get rid of a bad tenant once you rented the house, so people prefer to put houses on AirBnb or just keep them emply and take the temporary loss.
Sure, AirBnb let you make more money but the untold truth is that if you put an house on AirBnb you can have it back as soon as you decide it by just stop listing it. On a long term rent you need to wait months, if not years, and only if you have a good tenants, if you have bad tenants good luck.