Latest / STR Unpacked / Enforce Or Don't Restrict
Transcript
- Ben: Good morning and welcome to your short-term rental bulletin on Friday, the 11th of September. So I think there have been three big stories this week, and I think one of them has been pretty underreported on. So that's where I really want to start. So let's dive straight into it. We're going to be talking about the EU and Brussels published the Affordable Housing Act on Wednesday. We covered this earlier in the week. But let's dive into it specifically. So Article 10-1-E is where authority restricts short-term rentals to protect housing affordability. That measure only stands if it applies and enforces regulation EU 2024 slash one two eight in the relevant geographical area, including taking down listings with no registration number. Plenty of places restrict while barely enforcing. Under this text, that is a defect in the measure. And you can cite the article. Article 11 gives you the judicial review, including the right to challenge the authority's own assessments. Article 12 caps only measure at five years. Article 14 is the limit. the regulation does not apply to measures adopters before it enters into force. So everything already on the book sits outside it and none of this is law yet. So let's go into Airbnb next. So Airbnb's guidance gives hosts living in the European Economic Area or Switzerland until the 13th of October to reprice with a single 15.5% fee. the 15.5% is not the whole cost. Where a country taxes the service fee, VAT on goes on top of it. Airbnb's worked example uses 20% VAT, which takes 15.5% to 18.6%. Obviously, if you are VAT registered, you do recover that. But if you are not VAT registered, you do not. FocusWire and short-term rentals both report Google, telling partners. is removing the vacation rentals unit from search across the European economic area. If your channel manager feeds Google Vacation Rentals, check the traffic this week. The reason is the Digital Markets Act. The commission finds Google 890 million euros. On the 23rd of July, and 460 million of it was for self-preferencing in search, and required compliance is within 60 days. So that does land on the 21st of September. So if we're kind of looking at the week, two of these things went your way and one didn't, which to be honest, is a pretty good week in the short-term mental world, I think, at the moment. But that's the week. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next week.