Barcelona will eliminate tourist apartments

Barcelona has a population of ~1.7 million. The metro area surrounding is ~5.7 million. The metro area grew by ~100k in the past four years.

They are freeing up ~10,000 houses over the next four years with this legislation. Barcelona built ~15,000 new properties between 2011 and 2020.

The math don't math. It's a drop in the bucket. The entire impact of AirBnB + all housing built in the last decade does not offset the last half decade of population growth.

Housing must be built more quickly than your population is growing to keep prices down, or you must concede that you live in a nice area where people wealthier than you wish to be and that those people are going to gentrify the area and displace locals. It's an unpleasant reality of the world.

EDIT: some good feedback in the responses. thanks! I'm being a bit dramatic by saying it's just a drop in the bucket, this action frees up more housing than was built over the same timespan, and it's possible to have effects on pricing greater than what would be inferred by the raw numbers because economics is tricky. cheers.

Honest question: does this work?

It seems to me that this change will have unintended effects and will fail to produce the desired results.

AFAIK rent in NYC hasn’t gone down since they changed their short-term rental regulations.

I might be naive, but I’d assume that the solution is to build more housing to increase the supply instead of curbing the demand?

Genuinely curious about others’ takes on this.

I've been living in Barcelona for a long time. The mayor is very, very cozy with the hotel industry, which is very much effected by tourist apartments and Airbnb. And he will most likely be out of power in 3 years, so won't actually have to see this through and is just doing this to make himself look good with the many citizens who believe we have too many tourist.

People will do literally anything over building enough housing to make everyone happy

A lot of People in “colder” countries with higher purchasing power (specially in Europe) still want to move to Barcelona now that they can work remotely. I wonder how this fact affects the prices compared to tourism apartments.

being a tourist destination seems to me almost like a resource curse, like oil wealth can be in certain countries.

tourism can be so lucrative that it is actually profitable to force out normal people and completely reorient the economy away from all other productive activities. eventually large parts of the city will become totally stagnant, but this doesn't seem to stop tourists from coming. there's often a constituency of people who are really benefiting from tourism (property owners, tour operators, restaurants) and who form a powerful bloc opposed to any restrictions or taxes.

it really seems quite similar to an economy where natural resource profits drive everything, it's impossible to get any other industries off the ground or make enough money to live in any other way.

I like AirBNB especially for housing me in a regular apartment with more local vibe, won't travel to Barcelona again because I hate hotels for being too impersonal, there are other places that don't close up to visit. I respect their choice, I also prefer tourism on my own terms.

Taxing short term rentals to build affordable housing seems like a good idea to me.

It's a short term authoritarian bandaid that doesn't even help that many people, all the while fostering resentment and opening up increasingly authoritarian measures in the future.

We should go the asian route of increasing density and size. It's not like Barcelona is fully developed border to border.

I see AirBnB as a cheap-ish alternative to hotels, although short-term landlords are doing their best trying to extract as much money from their clients as possible (famous "$300 cleaning fee").

Thus, I don't think the city will really suffer from shrinking of the cheap tourism segment. Barcelona is already overcrowded, so making this crowd less dense and more rich at the same time is a net positive scenario. Also, the city needs long-term housing for those who work and study there.

There are lots of beautiful hotels in Barcelona. I visited the city about 10 times and never stayed in the same hotel twice, the choice is wild.

Barcelona seems wonderfully experimental in its governance. Iirc they also tested herbal decriminalization and developed new learning. I wonder what will be learned from this foray into property controls?

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/catalonia-cracks-down-b...

Well I certainly how it works well for them. It's a terrible feeling to feel like you're getting priced out of your own home.

We stayed in a few different week-long AirBnBs (or some other rental service) in 2019 in Barcelona and loved it. Although, and this could be a big source of the problem, both people we met up with to get keys were not Spanish and specifically asked if we could speak French or German instead.

This will be an excellent case study that the rest of the world can watch and learn from. Does it have the desired impact? Are there unintended consequences?

We can all speculate till the sun goes down about what we think is going to happen, now we're going to get real data. This is great.

Even if the outcomes are "bad", they can just undo this is ~5 years. At least we will have all learned from it.

One of my most distinct memories of visiting Barcelona in 2018 was going to a hip hang out spot with a few cousins who live there, turning a corner and seeing the words "TOURISTS FUCK OFF" graffiti'd in large letters along the side of the building. I remember thinking "oh they're talking about me."

Oh The Urbanity! - Vacation Rentals vs. Affordable Living: The AirBnB Dilemma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1VeEGCzqn4

Good. Tourists should sleep in hotels and locals should sleep in their flats.

Platforms like AirBnB only put oil in the fire when it comes to housing crises.

Hostels and hotels are strictly better in my opinion. I stayed in a hostel in Barcelona. A group of us went to a football game and had a great time.

Will this actually change anything? Curious if folks will just create a black market for these instead (this is basically how ny works)

All politicians have been saying that a decade at least.

In Spain, home owners associations can forbid tourist apartments if they vote it. Why can’t they just do it?

Spain is suffering a multi-centralization process. Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Malaga are increasing their populations. The rest of the cities are losing inhabitants. Why? Because the job opportunities are not there.

Airbnb has made it unnecessary to have friends in city X who will gladly let you couch surf - because lets face it: hotels are a prohibitive rip off. Hotel owners must hate it.

To me it seems much more likely that this is the reason for such bans because in housing terms the number of Airbnb properties seems far too small to make a difference.

What could possibly go wrong ?

My money is on what happens every time governments stick their hairy knuckles in the delicate mechanics of the free market: the economy works around them.

IMO, in this case, it will foster a huge black market (because there's strong demand for the stuff) and make a stream of taxable income disappear underground altogether.

From today's another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40754463):

> "Spain is Europe’s fastest-growing big economy. Nearly three-quarters of the country’s recent growth and one in four new jobs are linked to tourism"

This sounds silly.

70% is ~5.4% yearly, 40% is 3.4% growth yearly. Seems, fine?

These are incredibly reasonable growth rates. Am I missing something?

Anyone knows how much of Barcelona’s municipal revenue is originated from tourists directly and indirectly?

Good. Dublin should follow next.

The actual decree: https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-2024-281

Aren't those apartments concentrated in the old parts of the city, where no sane person would want to live long-term anyway? Full of noise, dirt, drunkards, junkies, prostitutes etc?

I honestly think we need:

1. To outlaw AirBnB. Except if people are staying in your house while you're there. Other than that, it should be illegal;

2. 80% Capital Gains Tax on property sales other than your primary residence, withheld at source.

3. Withold 40% of rent income at source, which can only be credited against taxable income in the state and country; and

4. Tax non-primary residences at 2% of their market value every year in addition to any property taxes; and

5. If landlords want out, let the state buy them out and use those properties for affordable housing for all citizens. The UK previously came "dangerously" close to eliminating landlords this way last century [1].

EDIT: another big one:

6. Ban HOAs. Entirely. They are anachronism invented to enforce segregation. Any function they perform (eg picking up trash, tending communal parks) is and should be the function of local government, which is democratic. HOAs are not.

Lastly, the one exception I would carve out is for multi-families and ADUs (accessory dwelling units). These were once commonplace but are now prohibited in most of the US.

Just like renting out a room in your house while you're there, ADUs mean the landlord is also affected by any potential misdeeds or abuse by the tenant so is invested in that not happening.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/19/end-of-...

Ada Colau yapped about Airbnb too. She was Mayoress for 8 years. And the problem seems to only be worse

Maybe it's a bigger problem than Airbnb?

If somebody owns an apartment, they should be able to do whatever they want with it (including renting it to tourists)

Four year window for licenses to expire. Good time to get a pied a terre there. Should be fun!

Bye bye to the great experience of living in Barcelona like a local for months. How will they limit temporal renting? Where is the limit line? Should you be a resident in the age of remote working?

You could, you know, just build more housing. But that would be far too sensible. A 30% social housing requirement seems equally nuts. Who is going to want to build anything with those margins. If you want social housing, that’s great: raise taxes and pay for it. Throwing a massive wrench in the market machinery helps nobody apart from the politician who wants to create the impression that they are “doing something.” The unaffordability crisis is just going to worsen, until you end up with an S.F. situation, where the middle is hollowed out and only the extremes remain.

Ya listening Canada? This is how it’s done.

As they should. Speculating with housing is as disgusting as speculating with healthcare, the fact that is normalized in countries such as USA makes it not less disgusting.

any legit + non-paywall source? [this outlet will publish anything for $, so not even a "trusted source"]