Airbnb-Hostile Cities: Who's Actually Winning, Tourists, Residents, or Property Investors?

Barcelona, Amsterdam, New York, and Lisbon declared war on short-term rentals. Two years of data reveal who really won and what it means for real estate investors.

Published on: April 22, 2026

Quick answer: Three years of data from Barcelona, New York, Amsterdam, and Lisbon show that short-term rental crackdowns reliably raised hotel prices and compressed investor returns in affected segments, but did not deliver the housing outcomes they promised, long-term rents kept rising in all four cities. Hotels were the unambiguous winners, tourists the clear losers, and residents the ambiguous outcome. For investors, the lesson is not to avoid these cities but to stop underwriting them as STR plays: regulatory risk is now the dominant variable, and capital is rotating into secondary cities, mid-term (30-day+) rentals, hotel-class assets, and jurisdictions with predictable property rights.

The short-term rental backlash that swept across major global cities between 2023 and 2026 was supposed to solve a housing crisis.

It didn't.

What it did instead is reshape the economics of urban real estate in ways that every cross-border investor should understand before deploying capital in Barcelona, Amsterdam, New York, Lisbon, or anywhere tempted to follow their playbook.

Because the data is now in, and the scoreboard is not what politicians promised.

The Premise That Launched a Thousand Regulations

The story told to voters across Europe and North America was simple: tourist rentals are eating cities. Restrict Airbnb, homes return to residents, rents fall, the crisis eases.

It was politically irresistible. It played well on local news. It gave city councils a visible enemy.

The problem: in most of these cities, short-term rentals never represented more than a small fraction of total housing supply. Constraining that fraction was always going to produce marginal effects at best, and a cascade of unintended consequences at worst.

Three years into the hardest crackdowns, the outcomes are measurable. Let's walk through them city by city.

Barcelona, The Nuclear Option (2028)

Barcelona has gone furthest. In June 2024, Mayor Jaume Collboni announced that all tourist apartment licenses, roughly 10,000 of them, would not be renewed after November 2028. Spain's Constitutional Court upheld the decision in March 2025, giving the city full legal cover to proceed.

The framing was moral: "give housing back to residents." The data tells a different story. Between 2018 and 2024, as Airbnb listings in Barcelona fell by roughly 24%, long-term rents rose by 37%, against a Spanish national average of 9%. Vacant homes outnumber short-term rentals in the city by approximately eight to one. Hotels and hostels already host around 75% of tourists.

The economic cost of the phase-out is not small. A PwC analysis cited by Spanish media estimates that tourist rentals generate roughly €1.9 billion in annual economic activity and support over 40,000 jobs. By closing the legal channel entirely, Barcelona is betting that displaced demand won't migrate into a black market and that hotel capacity can absorb the shortfall without pushing prices up further.

What it means for investors:

• Apartments currently holding a valid tourist license (HUT) retain value only until November 2028
• Properties already zoned for tourist use trade at a premium in 2025–2026; the premium is time-decaying
• The long-term rental market absorbs the exiting units, compressing yields but stabilizing tenant demand
• Suburban municipalities outside Barcelona city limits (Hospitalet, Badalona, coastal towns) are likely beneficiaries as tourist capital rotates out
• Any investor underwriting Barcelona property on STR cash flows after 2028 is underwriting a ban

The verdict: Barcelona is the first major European city to fully exit the legal short-term rental market. Whether it becomes a template or a cautionary tale depends on whether housing outcomes actually improve, and after a decade of tightening with rents still rising, the early evidence doesn't support the theory.

New York, The De Facto Ban (Local Law 18)

New York's Local Law 18 took effect in September 2023. The rules: hosts must register with the Office of Special Enforcement, the permanent resident must be physically present during the stay, and no more than two guests are allowed at a time. In practice, this eliminated entire-home short-term rentals for stays under 30 days across all five boroughs.

The effect was immediate and dramatic. Airbnb listings in New York City dropped by approximately 90%. In the outer boroughs alone, listings collapsed from roughly 17,000 to around 1,400.

Two years in, the outcomes:

• Rents did not fall. Median Manhattan rents broke $4,000 per month for the first time. Rents in Brooklyn and Queens rose more than 4% year-over-year. Vacancy rates remained essentially unchanged.
• Hotel prices surged. Average daily hotel rates rose around 7% in 2024, far above the national 2.1% rate. New York briefly hit a record ADR above $500.
• Outer-borough economies took the hit. Pre-LL18, about 70% of Airbnb listings were outside Manhattan, compared to roughly 20% of hotel rooms. That geographic dispersion vanished, pulling tourist spending back into midtown and away from Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx.
• A reform bill is now live. Intro 1107 was introduced in the City Council in late 2024, proposing a more differentiated framework. Polls conducted in 2025 suggest broad public dissatisfaction with the status quo.

The real winners: New York's hotel industry, which lobbied heavily for the law and captured the displaced demand at materially higher prices.

What it means for investors:

• Multi-unit investment properties previously underwritten on STR cash flows in NYC are now permanently long-term rental plays
• Hotel assets in the NYC metro have experienced a structural margin lift
• The 30-day-plus furnished rental segment has become a legitimate niche for former STR operators
• Policy reversal risk (via Intro 1107 or a successor bill) is a genuine optionality factor, but not something to underwrite

Amsterdam, The Squeeze Continues (From 30 to 15)

Amsterdam has been tightening short-term rental rules since 2014. The city introduced a 30-night annual cap in 2019. Since then, Airbnb registrations have fallen by more than 50%.

In March 2025, the city announced plans to halve the cap again, from 30 nights to 15, with the change expected to take effect in April 2026. A final decision was scheduled for December 2025.

Current Amsterdam rules:

• Registration with the municipality is required, and the registration number must appear on every listing
• A holiday rental permit (approximately €73 annually) is required for entire-home rentals
• Maximum 4 guests per stay
• Rental must be the host's primary residence
• Each rental period must be notified to the city in advance
• Fines reaching €11,600 for exceeding the night limit
• New proposal: drop the cap to 15 nights per year

The housing outcomes after a decade of restriction echo Barcelona's and New York's. Overnight tourist stays in Amsterdam have continued to rise since 2019, while hotel nights grew, not fell. Hotels captured the demand that short-term rentals were no longer allowed to serve.

What it means for investors:

• Amsterdam residential property is effectively a long-term rental or owner-occupier market; any STR underwriting must assume further restriction
• The B&B segment (separately regulated and not subject to the 30-night cap) remains a niche play for owner-operators, but permit supply is tightly controlled
• Hotel-style serviced apartments and aparthotels are regulatory winners
• Investors seeking STR exposure in the Netherlands are better served by secondary cities (Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht) with more pragmatic frameworks

Lisbon, The Whiplash City

Lisbon's regulatory history is the most chaotic of the four, and for that reason the most instructive about policy risk.

The arc:

• 2019, Lisbon begins freezing Alojamento Local (AL) licenses in "containment zones" covering most of the historic center
• October 2023, The national Mais Habitação ("More Housing") package under the Socialist government introduces sweeping restrictions: freeze on new AL licenses in most urban areas, 5-year renewable licenses, non-transferability, tax surcharges
• October 2024, Decree-Law 76/2024 reverses most of the Mais Habitação restrictions: licenses are again transferable, the 5-year expiration is removed, national bans on new licenses in coastal areas are lifted, and authority is returned to individual municipalities
• 2025, Lisbon municipal authorities lower the containment threshold in some parishes, then raise it again
• November 2025, Lisbon approves new local regulations: containment threshold set at 10% (not the 5% initially proposed), reopening 18 additional parishes to new AL registrations

Meanwhile, the housing outcomes this regulatory gauntlet was meant to achieve:

• Rental price inflation in the Lisbon metropolitan area accelerated from around 5.7% annually (pre-restriction) to roughly 9.2%
• Hotel prices jumped approximately 30% between 2022 and 2024
• Purchase prices continued to rise

What it means for investors:

• Lisbon is the cleanest live demonstration that aggressive STR restriction does not reduce housing costs
• The 2024 regulatory reversal reopened the market, but policy volatility remains the dominant risk
• Containment zones are now set municipally and can change with every election cycle
• Portugal's national tax framework for AL income, tourist taxes (Lisbon at €4/person/night, Porto at €3), and capacity caps (27 guests, 9 rooms) remain stable
• The Algarve, Porto, and interior municipalities with lighter regulation have become the primary frontier for new STR investment capital

The verdict: Lisbon's value for investors now lies less in STR yields and more in its status as a regulatory lab, a city whose policy oscillations signal where other European capitals may swing next.

Who Actually Won?

Three years of data, four cities, one clear scoreboard.

Hotels, the unambiguous winners. In every city with a hard crackdown, hotel occupancy and average daily rates rose. Displaced short-term rental demand didn't vanish, it migrated. The same travelers kept coming; they just paid more, to larger operators, in fewer neighborhoods.

Tourists, the clear losers. Accommodation costs rose across the board. Geographic dispersion shrank, pushing visitors into central tourist zones and away from the outer neighborhoods that previously benefited economically. Budget travel became structurally harder.

Residents, the ambiguous outcome. This is the policy bet that hasn't paid off. Long-term rents have continued to rise in all four cities. Vacancy rates have not meaningfully improved. Housing supply has not expanded. The theoretical mechanism, STR units converting back to long-term rentals, increasing supply, lowering prices, has not materialized at any observable scale.

Property investors, the segmented outcome. This is where nuance matters. The losers are investors who underwrote STR cash flows on the assumption that regulations would stay static. The winners are investors who either (a) held hotel and aparthotel assets, (b) pivoted to long-term rentals in time, or (c) repositioned capital into secondary markets and jurisdictions with more pragmatic frameworks.

The Investor's Playbook in a Post-Airbnb-Ban World

If you're deploying capital into urban real estate in 2026 and beyond, these cities have taught the market several hard lessons:

1. Regulatory risk is now the dominant variable in STR underwriting. Interest rates, occupancy, ADR, none of these matter if the legal framework for operating is removed mid-investment. Treat regulatory stability as a first-order due diligence question.

2. Secondary and tertiary cities are the new frontier. Capital is rotating out of Barcelona into Valencia, Málaga, and smaller Costa Brava towns. Out of Amsterdam into Rotterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague. Out of Lisbon into Porto, Coimbra, and the Algarve. Out of New York City into the Hudson Valley, Jersey Shore, and Philadelphia.

3. Mid-term rentals are the structural winner. 30-day-plus furnished rentals sit above most of these restrictions and capture both relocating professionals and displaced STR demand.

4. Hotel-adjacent assets outperform. Aparthotels, branded residences, serviced apartments, and boutique hotels operate in a zoning class that STR restrictions generally do not touch, and they've inherited the pricing power.

5. Licenses already issued trade at a premium, temporarily. In cities phasing out rather than instantly banning (Barcelona), existing licenses have become tradable scarcity assets. But the premium decays on a known schedule.

6. Jurisdictional optionality is an investment asset. Investors with real estate exposure across multiple regulatory regimes have structurally lower policy risk than investors concentrated in a single city, particularly a politically activist one.

Where Capital Is Flowing Next

The restriction wave isn't finished. Paris has already imposed near-ban conditions on second-home short-term rentals. Berlin, Vienna, Edinburgh, and several Italian cities are in various stages of tightening. Cities that openly regret their restrictions, as Lisbon's 2024 reversal suggests, remain the exception.

The capital response is predictable:

• Golden Visa and residency-linked real estate in jurisdictions that protect investor rights (UAE, Greece, some Caribbean programs) absorb displaced STR capital
• Emerging Mediterranean markets, Albania, Montenegro, northern Cyprus, parts of Turkey's coast, offer higher raw yields with higher regulatory and geopolitical risk
• North American secondary markets, Tampa, Nashville, Charleston, Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, absorb capital fleeing stricter US and Canadian metros
• Southeast Asia, Bali, Phuket, and Ho Chi Minh City remain strong STR markets, though Bali's own regulatory environment has tightened meaningfully in 2024–2025

The Bottom Line

The Airbnb crackdown has produced a clear pattern: short-term rental restrictions reliably raise hotel prices, reliably compress investor returns in affected segments, and unreliably deliver the housing outcomes they promise.

For cross-border real estate investors, the lesson is not to avoid these cities, some remain excellent markets on other metrics, but to stop underwriting them as STR plays. The regulatory risk premium for short-term rental cash flows in Tier 1 Western cities has permanently re-rated upward.

The investors who are doing best in 2026 aren't the ones fighting the trend. They're the ones who read the political tea leaves early, rotated out of over-regulated core markets, and redeployed into secondary cities, mid-term rentals, hotel-class assets, and jurisdictions where property rights remain predictable.

Tourists aren't winning. Residents aren't winning. Hotels are winning. And investors who understand the difference between a market cycle and a regulatory regime change are the only ones writing the playbook for the next decade.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which cities have banned Airbnb completely?
Barcelona has announced the most sweeping ban, phasing out all approximately 10,000 tourist apartment licenses by November 2028. New York City's Local Law 18 is not technically a ban but imposes rules so restrictive that it eliminated over 90% of listings. Several smaller European cities and Hawaiian islands have imposed de facto bans through zoning.

Did Airbnb restrictions lower rents?
In every major city studied, Barcelona, Amsterdam, New York, Lisbon, Paris, long-term rents continued rising after short-term rental restrictions were imposed. No observable, scaled reduction in residential rents has been attributed to these laws.

Can I still invest in Airbnb properties in Barcelona?
Yes, until November 2028, when all existing tourist licenses expire and will not be renewed. After that date, entire-apartment short-term rentals will not be legal in Barcelona city limits. Some investors are buying properties with existing HUT licenses to extract yield before the phase-out.

What's the best city to invest in short-term rentals in Europe in 2026?
Regulatory risk has become a dominant factor. Markets with relatively stable frameworks and strong tourism demand include Porto, the Portuguese Algarve, Valencia and Málaga, Seville, Athens, Kraków, and several Italian secondary cities. Every investment should include a current check of local regulations, as frameworks can change rapidly.

What happens to Airbnb properties after a city bans them?
Most convert to long-term rentals at significantly lower yields. Some become mid-term furnished rentals (30-day+) which often remain legal. A smaller portion are sold to owner-occupiers. Hotel operators and aparthotel platforms generally benefit from the transition.

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A note on the numbers: where no source is named, the market figures in this article (prices, yields, costs) are indicative estimates compiled from publicly available market data and industry reporting at the time of writing. Markets move and rules change, so treat them as a starting point and verify current figures with official sources before acting on them.