Barcelona to ban all short-term property rentals in bid to tackle soaring prices

The city of Barcelona has announced plans to ban all short-term rentals following complaints blaming tourism for a local housing crisis and soaring rents.

The Mayor of the Spanish city, Jaume Collboni, announced on Friday that no new licences will be issued and existing ones will not be renewed. The council aims to have no homes rented as tourist accommodation by 2029. Some 10,000 houses are currently registered as tourist rentals. 

Barcelona has already banned the renting of rooms to tourists, but rents have continued to skyrocket, increasing 14% in the space of 12 months.

Collboni said the measure marked a turning point and would, in time, provide a greater supply of affordable housing for the working middle class, who currently have to live outside the city.

The rising cost of housing is a widespread problem, but the strategy adopted by Barcelona’s administration is probably one of the more aggressive stances toward short-stay apartments, made popular by websites such as AirBnB and Booking.com.

Measures to control tourist rental properties have been adopted in several other cities around the world. New York, Vancouver and Tokyo require that the hosts must also live in the apartments they rent out, while other cities cap the number of short-stay rental properties which can be listed by a single individual. 

Many other cities, most notably London, Amsterdam and Paris, have imposed annual limits on how long an apartment can be rented out.