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Barcelona Cracks Down on Airbnb Rentals with Illegal Apartment Squads

posted by n1 on Monday June 05 2017, @08:39AM   
from the death-and-taxes dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The next time you book a holiday apartment in Barcelona you may wake up to find an inspector standing at the end of the bed.

Amid growing evidence that the massive upsurge in tourist apartments is driving rents up and residents out, the city has launched a crackdown on illegal, unlicensed apartments, and Airbnb, the dominant platform, is in the eye of the storm, although not the only offender.

According to the council, there are about 16,000 holiday rentals in the city, of which nearly 7,000 are unlicensed. Last year Barcelona fined Airbnb €600,000 for continuing to advertise unlicensed flats on its platform.

The city has doubled from 20 to 40 the team of inspectors who roam the streets seeking out illegal rentals, armed with apps that reveal at a click whether properties are legal or not. By next year their number will have risen to more than 100. Cross-referencing licences with property advertised online, they identify rogue apartments which are then ordered to close down. Owners – when they can be found – face fines of up to €60,000.

-- submitted from IRC

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Original Submission

• Re:How to prevent price hikes for ordinary tenants (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 05 2017, @11:57PM

  by khallow (3766) on Monday June 05 2017, @11:57PM (#521055) Journal

  While those are interesting problems which probably actually do manifest a little in the real world, I don't buy that they strangle cities. Point one is spurious. Airbnb is part of "the market" so apartments selling on Airbnb are by definition still on the market. Similarly, when I spoke of living options, it was for residents and visitors not merely your favored class of resident (long term and never leaves long enough to take advantage of Airbnb).
  
  Further, let's consider what has to be happening in that city for this to be a problem. Normal rent has to be considerably lower than Airbnb-generated rent. That's not going to happen unless the local market is pretty messed up (probably for both long and short term housing). At that point, the last two points are inevitable. The money is in the "loud, unaccountable tourists" not the locals and hence, all businesses are going to change to better support/exploit the money in this environment - hello waffle houses. All Airbnb does here is level the rent disparity which causes visitors to get screwed so much.

  Parent