Book that dreamy apartment rental for your next trip while you still can. Barcelona, Budapest, Amsterdam and Beverly Hills have all decided vacation rentals are eating into housing residents need, and they’re pushing thousands of units back onto the long-term market. Four cities, four different playbooks, one message for travelers: the easy rental you found last year might not exist next time you look.
City officials in each of these places point to the same root problem. Residential apartments spent years operating like informal hotels while local families struggled to find housing nearby. Governments responded with everything from license phaseouts to nightly caps to outright bans, each built around that city’s own legal system and housing market. The four approaches look nothing alike, but they share one goal, getting apartments back into the hands of people who actually live there.
New EU Rules Standardize Rental Data Across Europe
A new EU regulation started full rollout across the European Union this year, giving governments a shared system for tracking short-term rental activity. Cities that once ran their own separate registration systems now report through the same standardized process, replacing a patchwork of local rules that never quite matched up.
Barcelona Is Phasing Out Every Rental License
Barcelona announced in 2024 that it won’t renew any of its roughly 10,100 tourist apartment licenses when they expire in November 2028. Every one of those units is expected to return to the residential market. Spain’s Constitutional Court upheld the legal framework behind the plan in 2025, closing off the rental industry’s strongest court challenge.
Budapest’s Tourist District Set the Limit at Zero
Terézváros, Budapest’s District VI and home to some of the city’s busiest tourist streets, became the first Hungarian district to set its permitted short-term rental days at zero starting Jan. 1, 2026. Hungary’s Supreme Court upheld the rule in late 2025, calling it fair to residents even as the tourism industry pushed back hard.
Amsterdam Cut Its Rental Cap in Half
Amsterdam halved its vacation rental cap from 30 nights a year to 15 in the Centrum and De Pijp neighborhoods starting April 2026, with the city’s holiday rental permit rules confirming the new limit. It’s only the first step. If nuisance complaints don’t ease up, the city could move to a full temporary ban in those areas. Amsterdam tried an outright ban before, but courts ruled it unlawful in 2023, so this round rests on different legal ground.
Beverly Hills Banned Short-Term Rentals Outright
Beverly Hills went further than any other city on this list. Its citywide ban took effect in September 2025, requiring every residential lease to run at least 12 months and threatening violators with fines up to $5,000 a day. The rule applies to every single-family and multifamily unit in the city.
What This Means for Your Next Trip
If you’ve been chasing quieter corners of Europe for your next trip, keep this in mind while you book. The abundant, easy-to-find rentals in these cities’ most popular neighborhoods are getting harder to come by. Start your search early, stay flexible on neighborhoods, and don’t be surprised if your favorite booking site shows fewer options than it did last year.