Latest / STR Unpacked / No Grandfathering
Transcript
- Ben: Good morning and welcome to your short-term rental bulletin on the 10th of September. So, quite a big one for you today, quite a meaty one, so bear with me. But this is important. So we're looking at the EU, and Brussels has published the Affordable Housing Act yesterday. And the most important line in this act, I think, is not about the caps. So we're going to go to Article 3. Now, Article 3 says: when a city restricts short-term rentals to project housing affordability. The servitors derivative stops applying. So that includes the notification duty in Article 15-7. The one obligation that puts a restriction in front of Brussels before it takes effect on affordability grounds, that check is gone. In exchange, the Act sets a real test. A city has to show price to income ratio of eight or higher, meaning eight years of income to buy an average local home. It has to show that the ratio is rising in the last 10 years, and it has to demonstrate that short-term rentals has specifically damaged affordability for at least three years. It has to rule out less restrictive options, measures run five years maximum, and then it gets reviews. And this is the one that I think that matters most. The city cannot restrict it unless it is already applying and enforcing the EU registration regime. Including taking down unregistered listings. Now, the part that I think has been pretty underreported is Article 14. The regulation does not apply to measures adopted before it enters force. So if we look at Barcelona's 2028 phase-out plan or the Paris rules or the Athens freeze, all outside it, every safeguard in this act is prospective. Now, a correction to the bulletin on Tuesday is that the leak draft. Coverage promised grandfathering. Now, the published text uses that word once in Recital 2025, and Recital 2025 is about property acquisition. Recital 26 is the short-term rental one, and it says nothing of the kind. What existing hosts get instead is article 10. Appropriate transitional arrangements. A duty on the city, not an exception for you. Now, the Commission's own evidence, activity across the four main platforms grew 93% between 2018 and 2024. And in central Madrid, there are around 40 short term rentals for every 100 homes in the long term rental market. Now, it's worth saying none of this is law yet, and it goes to Parliament and Council now. So the safeguards start when the act does. Rules you are already living under are not covered by them. So that's your Thursday in Bell Latin. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you tomorrow.