Cities on two continents are pushing thousands of former tourist rentals off short-term platforms and toward long-term housing. After years of watching residential apartments operate as de facto hotels, local governments have begun banning, capping or phasing out vacation rentals across cities, neighborhoods and districts.
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Barcelona, Budapest, Amsterdam and Beverly Hills are among the cities adopting major restrictions since mid-2024, driven by overlapping but distinct pressures. The four cities operate under different governments, legal systems and housing markets, yet each decided that protecting its residents’ access to housing outweighed the tourism revenue at stake.
EU regulation creates a standardized data system
EU Regulation 2024/1028 began full application across the European Union on May 20, 2026, creating a common framework for short-term rental registration and platform data sharing. In member states with established registration procedures, platforms must now transmit host activity data through national or regional digital entry points.
Many EU cities and countries already operated their own registration and data-sharing systems, but these varied widely in structure and scope. The regulation standardizes the process, giving public authorities a consistent way to access booking data rather than relying on the patchwork of systems that preceded it.
Barcelona phases out all 10,101 rental licenses
The Barcelona city council announced in June 2024 that it would not renew any of the 10,101 tourist-apartment licenses then active in the city when they expire in November 2028. The city expects every one of those units to return to the residential housing market.
Mayor Jaume Collboni cited what he said was a 68% increase in rental prices over the prior decade as the driving force behind the decision. By the time of the announcement, the city had already issued more than 10,500 fines and ordered thousands of closures of illegal tourist rental operations since 2016. Spain’s Constitutional Court upheld the Catalan legal framework enabling these restrictions in March 2025, removing the rental industry’s strongest legal challenge.
Budapest’s tourist district sets vacation rental days at zero
Terézváros, Budapest’s District VI, became the first Hungarian jurisdiction to set the permitted number of short-term rental days at zero when Decree 26/2024 took effect on Jan. 1, 2026. The district, home to Andrássy Avenue and some of the city’s most concentrated tourist traffic, had seen short-term rental listings grow to a substantial portion of its housing stock before the measure passed.
Hungary’s Supreme Court upheld the measure on Nov. 11, 2025, ruling it proportionate and consistent with residents’ right to a livable neighborhood. The tourism industry had publicly opposed the restriction before the ruling.
Amsterdam halves its rental night cap
Amsterdam halved its vacation rental night cap from 30 to 15 per year in specified neighborhoods in Centrum and De Pijp, effective April 1, 2026. The reduction is the first step on the city’s formal “escalation ladder,” a policy framework that lays out progressively tighter restrictions. If nuisance levels in the affected areas do not improve, the next step might be a full temporary ban on vacation rentals for up to three years.
Amsterdam’s current approach followed legal setbacks. The Council of State ruled in 2023 that an earlier outright ban in three neighborhoods was unlawful, and in 2024 found the city’s fine structure disproportionate. The 15-night escalation operates under a different legal basis adopted after those rulings.
Beverly Hills sets $5,000 daily fines
Beverly Hills enacted a citywide ban on short-term rentals under Ordinance 25-O-2918, effective Sept. 5, 2025. The ordinance requires a minimum initial lease of 12 months for all residential units, with fines of up to $5,000 per day for violations. The city currently describes the prohibition as applying to all single-family and multifamily units throughout Beverly Hills.
What the next 2 years look like
These four cities are using different tools to address a shared concern. Barcelona chose a license phaseout, Budapest set rental days at zero, Amsterdam tightened an existing night cap and Beverly Hills imposed a citywide lease-length requirement. These approaches represent different legal systems, housing markets and levels of regulatory ambition, and none has produced a single model other cities simply copy.
For travelers seeking quiet over crowds in Europe and America, the window of abundant, lightly regulated vacation rental supply in the most popular neighborhoods is narrowing. How far and how fast it narrows depends on the legal and political specifics of each city that follows, but the direction in these four is clear.
Mandy is a luxury travel, fine dining and bucket-list-adventure journalist with expert insight from 47 countries. She uncovers unforgettable experiences around the world and brings them to life through immersive storytelling that blends indulgence, culture and discovery, and shares them with a global audience as co-founder of Food Drink Life. Her articles appear on MSN and through the Associated Press wire in major U.S. outlets, including NBC, the Daily News, Boston Herald, the Chicago Sun-Times and many more.