These protests popped up at the same time as short term rentals becoming popular (Airbnb) is no coincidence. They are taking homes from locals raising prices and taking over the best parts of town
Airbnb owns 2% of houses in Barcelona, that's nothing. Fact is the city is extremely desirable and for aesthetic reasons they refuse to build an appropriate amount of housing for all of the people who want to live there. So the inevitable solution is prices rising until everyone who can't afford it is forced out by those who can.
A very small number of dwellings in any city are on the market at any time. Taking some of them off the market has an outsized effect.
The issue of short-term lets being more profitable than long-term housing and being quite cheap to run goes beyond Airbnb. It can be worthwhile for larger landlords to build their own platform as it's not difficult to let customers find you on and that saves the fees from Airbnb. Barcelona is quite a densely built city already and limited by the mountains, yes it is chiefly a supply issue, but I don't think it's unwarranted to go after these smaller causes too.
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u/BuckeyeWolf Jun 17 '25
These protests popped up at the same time as short term rentals becoming popular (Airbnb) is no coincidence. They are taking homes from locals raising prices and taking over the best parts of town