legal aspects of housing, land and planning
The Recent Rise in Mid-Term Rentals in Barcelona: Causes and Implications
Recent studies identify an increase in mid-term rentals (MTR) in cities like Barcelona and relate it to the growth of temporary populations and changes in labour dynamics in the post-Covid era. By analysing MTRs registered between 2018 and 2023, this study aims to quantify changes in rents and the number of contracts of this kind in three municipalities in the Barcelona area. The results show that MTRs are concentrated in Barcelona, where their number almost tripled and the average rent grew fivefold over the period analysed. The rise started in 2022, and this coincided with when the law to regulate residential rentals in Spain was announced rather than when it came into force. The shift in properties from the residential market to the barely regulated and more profitable mid-term market, hinders access to housing for the low-income population. This problem underscores the urgent need for the regulation of MTRs.
Struggling with and through Knowledge Production: The Campaign ‘Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.’s’ Attempt at Housing Definancialisation in Berlin
The article looks at the role of knowledge production in conceptualising the impact of social movements, taking the campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen (Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.) as an example. The campaign proposes to socialise the assets of all (financialised) landlords who own more than 3,000 apartments in Berlin. The article analyses how the campaign has developed and popularised strategic knowledge about housing financialisation and definancialisation. Empirically, the article analyses two phases of the political work. It discusses the beginnings of the campaign in the run-up to the 2021 referendum, where the campaign translated knowledge about the role of institutional financial investors in Berlin’s housing crisis into a demand for socialisation. The article also analyses the phase after the successful referendum in 2021, where the knowledge production shifted to the juridical field as the Berlin Senate set up an expert commission to discuss the constitutionality of housing socialisation.
Short-Term Rentals and the Residential Housing System: Lessons from Berlin
The increasing professionalisation of Airbnb-style short-term rentals has emerged within a grey space between residential housing and hotel accommodation. Subsequently, an array of contestations have arisen, due in no small part to the intangibility of online short-term rental platforms as well as the absence of clear regulation at the municipal level. In urban settings already confronted with housing issues such as supply shortages and reduced affordability, recent studies show how the proliferation of short-term rentals can amplify housing market pressure while feeding into the broader urban processes of gentrification, touristification, and displacement. Using Berlin, Germany, as a site of analysis, this paper explores the expansion of short-term rentals in relation to various policy interventions designed to regulate the conversion of residential housing into tourist accommodation.
Conditions for the Introduction of Regulation for Short-Term Rentals
Most cities in major agglomerations in Europe started to address the rise of short-term accommodation rentals by introducing regulation designed to protect the local housing stock. The momentum behind the widespread introduction of such regulations can be attributed to qualitative and quantitative factors. This article examines selected fields related to short-term rentals in order to uncover the (structural) triggers or conditions that are necessary and sufficient for municipalities to initiate the regulation of their housing market. The study is based on the systematic examination of the effects of those triggers and their combinations using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). With this method, we explore the implementation or non-implementation of regulation on a sample of major German cities. The results suggest a universal set of conditions covering three central fields: housing market situation, accommodation market conditions and tourism accommodation demand.
Understanding Short-Term Rental Regulation: A Case Study of Lisbon (Portugal)
Notwithstanding the positive impacts of short-term rentals (STRs), it is often their negative effects that have been raising pressing questions for urban planners and public policy-makers, including changes in housing dynamics, conflicts between residents and visitors, tourism gentrification phenomena, unfair competition practices, and tax evasion, among other externalities. Because of this, short-term rental regulation has become an important item on the political agenda of municipalities that live daily with these issues. In order to contribute to a better understanding of STR regulatory approaches, this paper investigates how Lisbon (Portugal) has been responding to the effects attributed to STRs. It can be concluded that the main negative impact of STR in Lisbon is its effects on the housing prices increase and that the main STR regulation measure is focused on zoning: definition of zones for the application of differentiated STR rules and management.
An Analysis of the Holiday Rental Issue in Spain
Holiday lets and holiday rentals have generated a major debate in recent years in Spain with regard to their regulation. Their impact, not only on tourism, but also on urban sustainability and local planning, have led to public intervention to control their expansion. This article analyses the origin of holiday lets, their problems, and how the public authorities have intervened in this regard, thus providing an overview of the impact of this type of accommodation in Spain.
Correlation of Homeowners Associations and Inferior Property Value Appreciation
North to south migration in the U.S. and housing developers’ claims of benefits led to exponential growth in neighbourhood homeowners associations during recent decades. Sanctioned by state laws, association rules governing homeowners are usually initiated by developers who claim that the rules protect property values. But the claim is not supported by empirical analysis. Inflation adjusted annual percentage returns in consecutive sales of a sample of 900 most recent home sales in Duval County Florida, Pima County Arizona and St. Louis County Missouri during late 2017 and early-2018 were examined. The results revealed that the annual percentage returns on homes sold in homeowners associations were significantly less than those of homes in other neighbourhoods statistically controlling for property characteristics and prevailing economic conditions at the time of the original purchase. Correlates of home prices at any point in time are not predictive of percentage return from purchase to sale.
Nature-Home-Housing: Greening and Commoning of Urban Space
Editorial
The Housing Market Reform Agenda: A Review of a Recent Housing Policy Document in the Netherlands
The Dutch Cabinet published its Housing Market Reform Agenda on 17 September 2013. This paper describes the main features of the Agenda and presents an ex-ante evaluation of this policy document. The introduction of a landlord levy is one of the biggest inconsistencies in this Agenda. The Housing Market Reform Agenda is particularly critical of housing associations. There are good reasons to throw away the bath water, but the baby (= the housing association) should be nurtured.
Managing the Land Access Paradox in the Urbanizing World
In the midst of rapid urbanisation and economic growth, the developing world faces challenges in the relationships between land, poverty, and security. Rising social and economic exclusion and insufficient land regulations have spawned an informal housing sector. Given the risk to the broad base of middle- and low-income households in developing countries and the growing demands in urbanising land markets, it is imperative that governments develop a more fine-grained understanding of their land and housing policies. Local authorities must also begin to consider innovative ways to preserve affordability in a market-responsive way. Community land trusts (CLTs) provide one means of resolving the paradox between formalising land ownership and mitigating exclusion from an increasingly unaffordable land market. CLTs seek to balance private property rights, which are the cornerstone of modern land markets and individual wealth, with the affordability and accessibility needs of the community.
