| I have legal holiday rentals on two properties in Spain, but they are managed by an specialized company: * The regional administration handed out licenses without problems until a year ago, even when everyone was complaining already about these rentals. It was just paperwork + fee to get the license. They did for years and now they wonder why there are so many flats: they allowed it. * The main issue these rentals cause to the neighbors is people partying, being noisy, inconsiderate. Rentals have rules against these behaviors yet they happen frequently. I wish we or the police had tools to legally kick people out in the middle of the night for this behavior. * Apart from legal rentals, which are being limited now, there are a lot of illegal rentals. They are only starting to crack down on them. AirBNB and others have not complied with the law and this should not come as surprise. They have actively enabled illegal businesses for years. People go to jail for that and they should shut them down. * There is no affordable housing in the city-center. Rental flats make it worse but in many places the issue will not be fixed if they disappeared. The causes are deeper and a nice flat is not going to become "cheap" to rent in any case. * Holiday rentals are a bit more profitable that long-term rentals, but not crazy unless you are doing it at scale and they come with their own problems. Many are switching now to "seasonal" rentals, which are rentals for a period less than a year and the tenants need to go then. They forgot to handle these in the new regulations. Long-term rental is problematic because you can't use your flat when you need it. i.e. if you have a flat that you come to spend your own holidays. So people in that situation have limited alternatives. * I am personally not against switching to long term rentals, but the current situation wrt. licenses etc. puts me in a "wait and see" mode. My flat is legal, so they might make it more profitable by cracking down on illegal ones. Once I put a long-term rental I cannot ever go back to vacation rental either. There is little incentive to switch right now, but I will of course do it if I'm legally required to do so. For all the talk, they haven't taken that step, which is a testament to how politicians can say one thing and then do close to nothing in the end. |