STR Unpacked

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STR Unpacked is a short-term rental industry podcast that reviews the key news stories of the week alongside an invited sector expert, providing commentary, insight and practical interpretation of how current developments are shaping the market.

  1. 1d ago

    Enforce Or Don't Restrict

    Three things happened in European short-term rentals this week, and one of them has been badly under reported. The Affordable Housing Act, published Wednesday, gives compliant operators something to argue with.Article 10(1)(e). Where an authority restricts short-term rentals to safeguard housing affordability, the measure only stands where that authority "applies and enforces Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 in the relevant geographical area", including "orders requiring the removal or disabling of listings without a registration number". Plenty of places restrict while barely enforcing. Under this text that is a defect in the measure, and you can cite the article. Article 11 gives affected operators effective judicial review, "including the possibility to challenge the assessments carried out by the competent authority". Article 12 caps any measure at 5 years. Article 14 is the limit. The Regulation "shall not apply to measures adopted before" entry into force, so everything already on the books sits outside it. And none of this is law yet. It is a proposal, COM(2026) 599 final, now with Parliament and Council. Airbnb's 15.5% fee, and a correction.If you operate professionally you have been on the single 15.5% fee for months. Airbnb's rollout put Germany and the UK on 22 June, and hosts on property management software moved earlier still. The 13 October date in circulation is for hosts not yet on it. For most of this audience it is not a deadline. The part worth your time is VAT. Airbnb's Help Centre says "VAT is charged on the Host service fee for a reservation", across roughly 60 countries including the UK, Ireland and Spain. Hosts who give Airbnb a valid VAT number "may not be charged VAT on Airbnb service fees". Without one, 20% VAT on a 15.5% fee is 18.6%. If you manage for individual owners, check which of them has a number on file. Google is removing the vacation rentals unit from Search across the EEA.Reported by PhocusWire and shorttermrentalz from an email Google sent partners. No public Google post exists, so treat the wording as second hand. If your channel manager feeds it, look at what that traffic did this week. The driver is the Digital Markets Act. The Commission fined Google 890 million euros on 23 July, 460 million of it for self-preferencing on Google Search, and Google "is required to comply with the Commission's decisions within 60 days". That is 21 September. Two of those three went the operator's way, which is not how most weeks go. An authority that will not enforce its own register may find it cannot lawfully restrict you either. Is the authority where you operate actually enforcing the register it already has?

  2. 2d ago

    No Grandfathering

    Brussels published the Affordable Housing Act yesterday. The most important line in it is not about caps. Article 3(1): short-term rental restrictions taken on housing affordability grounds "shall not be subject to Directive 2006/123/EC, including the notification obligation laid down in Article 15(7)". That notification duty is what puts a proposed restriction in front of the Commission before it takes effect. On affordability grounds, it is gone. What replaces it is a real test. A city has to show a price-to-income ratio of 8 or higher, that ratio rising across 10 years, and that short-term rentals specifically damaged affordability for at least 3 years. Less restrictive options ruled out. Measures capped at 5 years, then reviewed. And the one operators should be using. Under Article 10(1)(e) a city may only restrict where it already "applies and enforces" the EU registration regime, including taking down unregistered listings. Plenty of cities restrict while barely enforcing. That is now a proportionality failure with a citation attached. Now the part almost nobody has reported. Article 14: the Regulation does not apply to measures adopted before it enters into force. Barcelona's 2028 phase-out. Paris. The Athens freeze. No 8x test, no 3-year evidence burden, no 5-year sunset. Every safeguard in this Act is prospective. And a correction to Tuesday, which is mine to make. I said the leaked draft opened the door to grandfathering for existing operators. The published text uses that word once, in recital 25, and recital 25 is about property acquisition. Recital 26, the short-term rental one, has none. What hosts actually get is Article 10(2), "appropriate transitional arrangements". A duty on the city, not an exemption for you. Two figures from the Commission's own Q&A. Activity across the 4 main platforms grew 93% between 2018 and 2024. Central Madrid has around 40 short-term rentals for every 100 homes in the long-term rental market. The caveat: this is a proposal, COM(2026) 599 final. Parliament and Council next, and the Commission has given no timetable. The safeguards start when the Act does, and the rules you are already living under are not covered by them. If your city restricts you tomorrow, your first question is whether it is actually enforcing the registration regime it already has. What is the answer where you operate?

  3. 3d ago

    Greece Will Pay You To Quit

    Greece is paying owners to leave the short-term rental market. As the law stands today, that offer expires on 31 December. Most of this week's coverage led with the extension. The extension is not law. The deadline is. What was announced on Monday, at the detailed briefing on the Thessaloniki fair package: New registrations in the short-stay registry stay blocked in central Athens and central Thessaloniki, running into 2027. For Athens that is a third consecutive year. The freeze has applied since 1 January 2025 across the 1st, 2nd and 3rd municipal districts. Thessaloniki's 1st Municipal Community was added from 1 July 2026. It is having an effect. On AADE figures, registrations across the three central Athens districts fell from 29,589 at the end of 2024 to 27,036 by October 2025. Down 8.6%. Across Greece, 116,636 properties were actively let in 2025. Now the part almost nobody is spelling out. Since 2024, article 9 of Law 5162/2024 has given owners 36 months of completely tax-free rental income for shifting a property out of short-term letting, or out of standing empty, into a long lease. The conditions: minimum 3 year lease, up to 120 square metres plus 20 square metres per dependent child, and the property must have been on short-term letting or declared vacant on form E2 for 3 consecutive years. The deadline is 31 December 2026. The government announced this week that it will extend the exemption across 2027 to 2030. There is no bill. As the law stands you have 113 days to find a tenant, sign the lease and register it on myProperty. If you read "extended to 2030" and relaxed, that is the trap. Two more things operators keep missing: A property in a frozen zone that changes hands, whether by sale, parental gift or inheritance, is deleted from the registry and cannot be re-registered while the restriction runs. The registration does not survive the transfer. And the penalties inside the frozen zones are not the ordinary ones. Letting there without a pre-existing registration attracts 50% of rents collected since the restriction began, minimum 20,000 euros, doubling to 100% and a minimum of 40,000 euros for a second breach in the same tax year. The general penalty for operating without a registration number elsewhere in Greece is 50% of gross income with a 5,000 euro minimum. The honest caveats: None of this week's package is gazetted. No ministerial decision, no bill. On last year's precedent the instrument did not appear until 31 December. And the freeze regime is under challenge at the Council of State, filed in March 2026, on proportionality and the EU Services Directive. Why any of this is happening: Greek rents rose 10.1% in 2025, the second fastest in the EU behind Croatia. 37.4% of Greek renters are housing cost overburdened, against an EU average of 27.8%. Greece has stopped arguing about whether to restrict supply. It is now pricing the exit. When a government offers to pay you to leave a market, read the expiry date, not the press release. If you hold Athens stock, what is your number for staying?

  4. 4d ago

    Get In Before The Door Shuts

    Tomorrow, Brussels hands every city in Europe a legal instruction manual for capping short-term rentals. The European Commission presents its Affordable Housing Act on Wednesday 9 September. Reuters and Euronews have both seen the draft. What it does: gives national and local authorities explicit EU legal cover to restrict short-term rentals in areas under housing stress. Until now there has been no such framework. How an area qualifies: Price-to-income ratio and its movement over time, plus indicators showing the pressure is unlikely to ease. Reported trigger is house prices at 8 times local income, risen over the past decade, with no improvement expected within 3 years. The line operators need to read twice: The draft says quantitative caps, or grandfathering rules that let those already operating continue under existing regulations, could be more appropriate than a ban on the acquisition or use of property. Grandfathering. In a Commission draft. That is the whole story. Also in scope: Renting your own primary residence is exempt The target is commercial operators running multiple properties Restrictions on second-home purchases apply only in areas of acute pressure Why this is bigger than another city crackdown: Since the CJEU's Cali Apartments judgment in September 2020, every city wanting to restrict short-term rentals has had to defend its proportionality in court, one case at a time. Paris, Barcelona and Amsterdam all fought that fight separately. This draft replaces the fight with a template. The pressure behind it, from Eurostat: EU house prices up 64.9% since 2015 EU rents up 21.8% over the same period Q1 2026 alone: prices up 5.1%, rents up 3.0% The Commission's own Joint Research Centre puts the shortfall at more than 2 million new homes a year to 2035, needing an extra €150bn annually. The platforms argue short-term rentals are 1.2% of EU housing stock. In Sorrento, Dubrovnik and Fuerteventura the reported figure is closer to 20%. The averages were never the argument. The caution, and it is a real one: this is a leaked draft, not law. It goes to member states and Parliament next, and the thresholds can move before anything binds. What to do this week: Know your price-to-income ratio. If your city is anywhere near 8 times, assume a cap is coming and act like it. Get every property fully licensed and registered now. Grandfathering rewards the compliant and only the compliant. An unregistered unit has nothing to grandfather. If you are buying, the acquisition window in stressed markets is narrowing, not the operating window. From Wednesday, the most valuable thing about a licence may be the date it was issued. Are you treating your licences as a cost or as an asset?

  5. 5d ago

    March 2027. England Finally Has A Date

    England's short-let register has a date. By March. Lisa Nandy told the Commons on Thursday the national scheme will be "up and running in full by March", which means March 2027. It's the first firm month the government has put on it. Where that leaves the UK: → Scotland: licensing, in force since October 2022 → Northern Ireland: certification, long established → Wales: visitor accommodation register opens October 2026, deadline 31 March 2027 → England: register fully operational by March 2027 What we still don't know about England: → What you'll have to submit → Who administers it → How often you re-register → Whether the secondary legislation the department said it needed in February has moved Two things in the same session worth noting. The question that drew the answer was about London's 90-day cap and the inability to enforce it without a register. And the tourism minister confirmed the government is developing an overnight visitor levy power for England, permissive, for local areas that choose to use it. Elsewhere this week: → Wednesday: the European Commission presents its Affordable Housing Act. The draft seen by Reuters and AFP sets a test for when cities can restrict short-term rentals, favours caps and grandfathering over bans, and exempts primary residences. Full bulletin Thursday. → Greece: the finance ministry's breakdown of Saturday's Thessaloniki package, as reported by Skai and Eleftheros Typos today, extends the freeze on new short-term rental registrations in central Athens and Thessaloniki into 2027. Registration isn't restriction. It's the data restriction runs on. If you operate in England, what's the one thing you'd want the register to get right?

  6. Sep 4

    12.5% Fewer Listings. 12% More Guests.

    Spain has 12.5% fewer short-term rentals than a year ago. In July, 12% more tourists stayed in them. Three official releases landed on Tuesday and they all point the same way. INE, Spain, July: → 11.5m international tourists, up 4.6% → Spend €18.2bn, up 10.9%. €1,579 per tourist, up 5.9% → Tourists staying mainly in rented homes: up 12.0%. Hotels: up 3.8% → January to July, rented homes up 11.0% to 7.7m tourists → Non-hotel paid accommodation spend up 20.6%, average stay 10.7 nights vs 5.1 in hotels Set that against AirDNA's July figure for Spain: active listings down 12.5%. The supply is contracting and the demand for it is not. Eurostat, EU first half 2026: → 1,321m nights, up 1.7% → Foreign visitors up 2.5%, domestic up 0.9% → Ireland +14.6%, Malta +9.9%, Slovakia +5.9%. 9 countries fell, Cyprus -7.7% and Romania -6.7% Expedia Group, same day: 12 new products for Vrbo and Escapia. → Sponsored Listings now global, pay per booked night → Same-day bookings and two new cancellation policies live now → Non-refundable rates and Vrbo inside Expedia packages coming → Host protection programme for damage and chargebacks, in beta And Roomex, the Dublin workforce travel platform, added 172,000 self-catering properties for multi-week project stays. A corporate channel that wants your inventory for the nights leisure doesn't fill. What it means if you're operating: Every regulator in Europe is working on the supply side. Nobody is working on the demand side, and the demand side is growing faster than the hotels. The OTAs and the corporate bookers are building for the operators who are still standing when the cull is done. If you're compliant, the maths is moving your way. Price like it. Regulation cuts the listings. It doesn't cut the guests. Where did you see demand hold up this summer despite the rulebook?

  7. Sep 3

    Airbnb Just Hired Booking's Homes Guy

    Airbnb just hired the executive who ran Booking.com's hotels and homes business. And gave him Airbnb Hotels. Pepijn Rijvers started on Tuesday as Chief Business Officer, leading Homes, Hotels, Global Markets and Enterprise Operations. → More than 12 years at Booking.com from 2008: Chief Marketing Officer, then Managing Director of Global Hotels and Accommodations. Chesky says he built Booking's homes business → Then Chief Business Officer at Tripadvisor Group and president of Viator → Replaces Dave Stephenson, Airbnb's former CFO and first CBO Chesky's memo to staff pre-empted the obvious question. "Booking?! Yes, Booking." His framing: Booking is an intent platform, you arrive knowing where you are going. Airbnb wants the part of the trip before that. Read the job title. Booking has alternative accommodation at roughly 37% of room nights. Airbnb is now running that play in reverse: boutique and independent hotels in 20 destinations since May, London, Paris, Madrid and Rome included. On the Q2 call last month Chesky said the hotel initiative was "going significantly better than I expected" and Airbnb would be "stepping on the gas". Hotels are a single-digit share of nights, growing about 3x faster than homes. Airbnb's case for hosts: hotels bring in new guests, and around 35% of first-time hotel bookers come back and book a home. What it means if you operate in Europe: → The person who spent years bringing supply onto Booking now sets how Airbnb treats professional supply. Expect Enterprise and Global Markets to get more commercial, not less → In launch cities your listing already sits on the same results page as a boutique hotel → Two platforms converging on the same inventory is a distribution risk before it is an opportunity. Direct channel and repeat guests are the hedge Who benefits more from this hire, Airbnb or the professional operator? Full episode and sources in the comments.

  8. Sep 2

    Exempt Doesn't Mean Excluded

    France's e-invoicing reform went live on 1 September. If you assumed VAT exemption kept you out of it, it does not. → Every business established in France that counts as a taxable person must now be able to receive electronic invoices through a state-approved platform. Size, turnover and tax regime make no difference. → Ordinary furnished letting is exempt from VAT, with no option to be taxed. The exemption attaches to the supply, not to your status. The reception obligation still applies. → There is nothing for a classic meublé to issue. Rent receipts are not invoices. → At least three of the four hotel-style services (breakfast, regular cleaning, household linen, reception) takes the letting out of exemption. Issuing and data reporting then follow on 1 September 2027 for small and micro businesses, and already apply to large and mid-sized ones. → An emailed PDF is not void. The DGFiP's own start-up guide says an invoice received by mail, PDF or paper can still be processed, paid and used to deduct VAT. It has simply stopped being the compliant way to send one. → No automatic fine on day one. Formal notice first, then 500 euros after three months, then 1,000 euros after a second notice, renewable every quarter. The first-offence relief that covers other invoicing penalties does not extend to this one. → The obligation follows French establishment, not French property. A non-French company with no establishment in France sits outside the rule. If you hold French stock through an SCI or a French operating company, you do not. The DGFiP published a start-up guide in July saying sanctions will not be applied to businesses that hit genuine difficulty but are engaged in a serious compliance trajectory. It also says it will distinguish those from inertia and avoidance. That is a grace period, not an exemption. And the reason this stings. Spain's INE published July on Monday. Overnight stays in tourist apartments were exactly flat year on year. Average stay fell 7.3% to 4.8 nights. The tourist apartment price index rose 6.2%. Volume has stopped growing. The administrative load has not. Every hour that goes into a compliance project this autumn is an hour not going into rate strategy or direct bookings, and the calendar does not care which one pays your bills. If you hold French stock, the job this week is small: work out which entities are established in France, then designate a platform. It takes less time than the mise en demeure will. How much of your team's autumn is already committed to compliance work rather than revenue?

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STR Unpacked is a short-term rental industry podcast that reviews the key news stories of the week alongside an invited sector expert, providing commentary, insight and practical interpretation of how current developments are shaping the market.

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  • Creator
    Ben
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    143
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Ben
  • Show Website
    STR Unpacked