Short-Term Rentals: Europe Changes Perspective — The Real Issue Is Not Airbnb, but the Fut

LT Immobili & Design 10 September 2026

For years, the debate surrounding short-term rentals has remained largely confined within the same boundaries.

On one side are property owners, who defend their right to decide how to use their homes and, in many cases, to achieve higher returns through the tourist rental market than through traditional long-term letting.

On the other are cities — particularly those with strong tourism demand — witnessing a gradual reduction in the number of homes available to people who need somewhere to live all year round.

The Affordable Housing Act proposal, presented by the European Commission on 9 September 2026 and closely associated with European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jørgensen, attempts to change the perspective.

It does not begin with the platforms.

It begins with housing.

And, above all, with a more difficult question:

when does a particular use of residential property cease to be merely an individual choice and begin to have significant consequences for the housing market of an entire area?

This is probably the first point that needs to be made clear.

Brussels is not proposing to ban Airbnb, nor is it seeking to impose the same maximum number of rental days across the whole of Europe.

Instead, the proposal aims to establish a common framework within which Member States, regions and local authorities could adopt certain measures when there is demonstrable pressure on the availability and affordability of housing.

Responsibility for housing policy remains predominantly national and local.

The European Union becomes involved because restrictions on short-term rentals, the use of residential property or certain forms of real estate investment may also affect the freedom to provide services and the movement of capital within the European single market.

It is therefore, above all, a legal framework.

And that distinction matters.

This is where the proposal becomes particularly interesting.

It should not be enough simply to claim that “there are too many tourists” or that “rents have become too expensive”.

An authority wishing to intervene would need to rely on data.

Among the criteria identified is a ratio between average residential property prices and disposable income per capita equivalent to at least eight years of income, together with a deterioration in that ratio over the previous ten years and an expectation that, without intervention, the situation is unlikely to improve over the following three years.

Let us translate that concept into numbers.

Imagine, purely as an example, an area where the average annual disposable income per capita is €25,000.

The calculation is straightforward:

€25,000 × 8 = €200,000

If the average price of a home in the same area were €200,000 or more, the ratio would therefore reach the eight-year threshold referred to in the proposal.

But imagine that ten years earlier the situation had been different.

The average home cost €150,000 and disposable income stood at €22,000.

At that point, it would theoretically have taken around 6.8 years of income to equal the average value of a home.

Today, if the average property price had risen to €250,000 while disposable income had increased to only €25,000, that figure would become 10 years.

And it is precisely this growing gap between incomes and property prices that becomes significant.

Of course, nobody actually uses their entire annual income to purchase a home. The ratio is simply an indicator designed to show how far property prices may be moving away from the economic capacity of the people who live in a particular area.

There is, however, an important distinction.

Crossing that threshold would not automatically lead to restrictions on short-term rentals.

The figure would need to form part of a broader analysis examining how the market has evolved and demonstrating the existence of structural housing pressure.

This is an important principle because it suggests a move away from regulation based primarily on perception towards regulation based on measurable evidence.

It also acknowledges something that those working in real estate understand very well:

there is no single national property market.

There are territories, cities and neighbourhoods.

Sometimes even a handful of streets can display completely different market dynamics.

The proposal also envisages that an area subject to measures could correspond to a municipality, a neighbourhood, a metropolitan area, a rural area or only part of one of these territories, provided that its boundaries are proportionate to the housing problem being addressed.

One aspect likely to generate considerable debate is the distinction between someone who occasionally rents out their own home and someone who uses one or more properties on a permanent basis within the tourist accommodation market.

The text provides particular protection for the owner’s primary residence in relation to restrictions adopted under this specific framework.

The reasoning is understandable.

A family renting out the home in which it normally lives for a few weeks each year does not necessarily remove a property from the residential housing market.

The situation may be very different when an apartment is purchased or retained exclusively for short-term tourist accommodation for most of the year.

And it is precisely activities characterised by greater scale, frequency or commercial nature that the proposal suggests authorities should focus on when considering possible intervention.

This distinction could become one of the central elements of future European regulation.

Because it moves the debate away from a very simple question — short-term rentals: yes or no? — towards a considerably more interesting one:

how many homes are actually being removed from permanent residential use?

There is another aspect that deserves particular attention.

In order to introduce restrictions aimed at improving housing affordability, it should not be sufficient merely to demonstrate that a large number of tourist apartments exist.

Authorities would need to demonstrate that the activity has produced a significant negative effect on housing availability or affordability for at least the three years preceding the intervention.

That is a substantial distinction.

It recognises that correlation and causation are not necessarily the same thing.

A city may have a large number of short-term rentals while simultaneously experiencing a shortage of housing.

But the real question should be how much the first phenomenon actually contributes to the second.

Property prices can rise for many different reasons: insufficient new construction, demographic changes, international demand, growth in second-home ownership, vacant properties or planning difficulties that make the redevelopment of existing buildings more complicated.

The European Commission itself recognises that insufficient housing supply remains one of the structural causes of the problem.

Restricting short-term rentals alone cannot solve a housing crisis.

And this may be one of the most balanced aspects of the entire proposal.

Focusing exclusively on the platforms, however, risks overlooking what may be the most significant part of the discussion.

The European framework also considers possible measures relating to the use of properties that are not primary residences.

Examples discussed include measures concerning homes left vacant for extended periods, restrictions on certain non-residential uses and instruments designed to preserve part of the housing stock for permanent residential use.

Here too, however, the proposal needs to be interpreted carefully.

The regulation does not automatically give municipalities a new European power to prohibit the purchase of second homes, nor does it require them to introduce such measures.

Rather, it seeks to define the European conditions within which certain interventions could be considered compatible with EU rules where national or local authorities already possess the necessary legal powers.

It may sound like a technical distinction.

But it is essential to understanding what could actually happen.

This is where the debate becomes especially interesting for areas such as Versilia and, more broadly, for many Italian tourist destinations.

Consider places where permanent residents, second homes, seasonal tourism, property investment and short-term rentals all coexist.

In these markets, the boundary between a home and tourist accommodation has gradually become less clear.

The same apartment can be a second home for one family, an investment for a property owner, accommodation for a tourist and, potentially, a permanent home for someone working in the same town.

Four perfectly legitimate uses.

But all competing for the same property.

This is precisely the question Europe is beginning to address: how can a balance be maintained when one of those uses becomes economically far more attractive than the others?

There is no simple answer.

Excessive restrictions on tourist rentals could penalise property owners, investment and entire local economies that also depend on tourism.

Ignoring the phenomenon entirely, on the other hand, could contribute in certain areas to making it progressively more difficult for workers and families to find housing at sustainable prices.

Finding the right balance will be the real challenge.

For anyone purchasing property as an investment, another important question emerges.

In recent years, many investors have assessed an apartment using an apparently straightforward calculation: purchase price, management costs, expected occupancy and potential short-term rental returns.

In the future, that may no longer be enough.

Alongside traditional planning, cadastral and tax due diligence, investors may increasingly need to consider the long-term economic use of the property itself.

The question should no longer be simply:

“Can I rent it out today?”

But also:

“How likely is it that I will still be able to use it in the same way ten years from now?”

That represents an important shift in perspective.

If regulation becomes increasingly localised, the value of a property investment may depend not only on location and the characteristics of the home, but also on the flexibility of its potential uses.

A property capable of producing sustainable returns both through traditional long-term letting and short-term tourist rentals could carry a very different risk profile from an investment that only makes financial sense because of high short-term rental yields.

There is another development, already under way, that deserves attention.

Since 20 May 2026, EU Regulation 2024/1028 has applied, introducing a more uniform system for the registration and sharing of data relating to short-term accommodation rentals.

Platforms will therefore increasingly cease to represent a statistically opaque part of the market.

Public authorities will be better able to understand the location, frequency and intensity of short-term rental activity and use that information to assess its actual impact on local housing markets.

This could prove to be one of the most significant changes of all.

For years, the debate surrounding tourist rentals has often developed before the data.

Now the opposite may begin to happen.

Measure first. Then, if necessary, intervene.

They probably will not.

Tourism will continue to require different forms of accommodation, and short-term rentals will remain an important source of income for many property owners.

The European Commission itself acknowledges the economic and social benefits of this market.

But the model could become more selective.

In areas where there is no significant housing pressure, relatively little may change.

In cities and destinations where the relationship between incomes, property prices and housing availability has reached critical levels, local authorities could eventually have a stronger legal framework within which to act.

And perhaps this is the real cultural shift behind the European proposal.

For a long time, we have looked at a home almost exclusively from the owner’s perspective.

How much is it worth?

What return can it generate?

How can it be used?

Today another question is increasingly entering the discussion:

what role does that home play within the city in which it is located?

This does not necessarily mean questioning private property rights.

It means recognising that the real estate market constantly exists at the intersection between individual interests and collective change.

And it is probably at that intersection that one of the most interesting debates about the future of the European property market will unfold over the coming years.

The European proposal was presented by the European Commission on 9 September 2026. It is not, at present, definitively approved legislation: it must go through the European legislative process and its provisions may therefore change.