Last year, Lisbon updated the restrictions on short-term holiday rentals in the city, but more than one in five Lisbon listings on Airbnb claim they are “exempt,” according to data from Inside Airbnb.
Holiday rentals, and the legislation that controls them, have come under increased scrutiny in recent years as tourism levels have risen — along with rents, house prices, and the cost of living in Portugal’s capital.
Our analysis found that more than half of the homes claiming to be exempt appear not to meet the criteria — and a further 669 listings displayed no license at all.
What makes a legitimate exemption on Airbnb?
There are two “rule-of-thumb” exemptions from needing to register as an Alojamento Local (AL), the system that regulates holiday lets in Portugal, Lisbon City Council told Atlas in an email.
First, if the listing is another kind of tourism establishment, such as a hotel, hostel or, confusingly, what are called “touristic apartments.”
Second, listings can be exempt if they only offer medium- or long-term stays.
Advertisements on Airbnb offering a “minimum stay of 30-nights” are “likely compatible with this form of housing rental,” the Council said, assuming there is a valid contract and the dwelling is licensed for housing.
“There is a large number of units [on Airbnb] which are not advertising as AL and are offering only [medium-term] rental. This is legitimate,” the Council told us.
A little over 40% of the homes listed on Airbnb as “exempt” seem to fall in this category.
These do not cater to the typical short-stay tourists that Alojamento Local are aimed at, the Council said.
Listings claiming exemption on this basis cannot, however, “offer extremely short stays of only a couple of days to a couple of weeks,” Lisbon City Council warns.
Our analysis found that almost 1,400 “exempt” homes on Airbnb offer stays of seven days or less.
Shown an example, Lisbon City Council said it was “most likely an illegal AL,” or at least one that should be, but is not, displaying its registration number.
No license, no problem
Just under 4% of all the Airbnb listings in Lisbon display no license at all — in breach of municipal rules.
“All Alojamento Local units must display their registries… on the advertisements on platforms,” Lisbon City Council told us.
Of course, not displaying a registration number does not mean the owner doesn’t have one.
Some listings may have been created before Airbnb required a license to be added, for example.
However, when shown a random selection of license-free listings, Lisbon City Council told us they all “appear to be illegal.”
And these are far from isolated incidents.
“With the knowledge that we have, we notice empirically that there are a lot of Airbnbs that are not registered,” says Luís Mendes, a geographer at the University of Lisbon and member of Morar em Lisboa, a citizens group campaigning for fair housing.
“We have a lot of people come to us and say, ‘Oh, I have two Airbnbs in my in my building… but I looked for them in the national registration and they don’t exist,’ so they know it’s illegal,” he says.
“And because there is no kind of [inspection or oversight], there’s no way to impose or enforce the law.”
This, Mendes says, is driven largely by a lack of power, resources, and staff to tackle the problem.
“They took the power [to regulate Airbnbs] from the condominiums and gave it to the municipality, but without any kind of strategy or instruments like human resources, technical resources, or even finances,” he says.
Lisbon City Council said they report any “illegal or suspect unit” to Airbnb as well as the Economic and Food Safety Authority, the government agency tasked with regulating AL and shutting down illegal units.
The impact of medium-term rentals
While medium-term rentals may be exempt from AL licensing, they still put pressure on Lisbon’s housing stock, according to Mendes.
“The impacts in the neighborhood life, in the cost of living, in the housing prices, both for sale and for rentals — basically, it’s the same [as short-term rentals],” Mendes says.
“It’s the same impact as touristification and other kinds of transnational gentrification.”
And the number of medium-term rentals has boomed in the past five years, driven by changes in legislation and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The medium-term [sector] just exploded during and after COVID because it was a way to save the short-term rental industry,” says Mendes.
Importantly, many of these rentals aren’t mom-and-pop operations, with hundreds of short- and medium-term rentals now run by a handful of companies.
“In the last two years or more, the level of professionalization of Airbnb is around 60% of the sector — a little bit more than half of the sector,” says Mendes.
Almost 600 of the exempt homes listed on Airbnb in Lisbon are operated by just two companies: Blueground and Ukio.
The average price these companies charge is about 150€ per night — or 4500€ per month.
“When we think about the impact — social, economic, and even cultural impact — of a short-term rental or middle-term rental… I would say that the ones that are managed by large companies, the impacts are larger and bigger,” says Mendes.
Both companies also operate in other cities around the world experiencing a squeeze on housing, including Barcelona and Paris.
“They create some kind of cosmopolitan atmosphere”
Despite the issues that medium-term rentals bring, their impact is considerably “softer” than touristic properties, according to Mendes.
“The people that come here [for medium-term rentals] create a cosmopolitan atmosphere in the city, and they are different from the profile of the tourists — at least they create some kind of small stabilization in the neighborhoods,” says Mendes.
“If you have a neighbor for one month, two months, three months, half a year, it’s different.”
Lisbon City Council sings a similar tune, telling us: “We have several thousand temporary residents (students, digital nomads, expats…) who are an integral part of modern Lisbon, who find housing solutions though these rentals.
“These are considered residents (even if not permanent), not tourists.”
Could data-sharing help tackle the problem of “exempt” listings?
When asked if short-term rental platforms like Airbnb were doing enough to tackle the problem of illegitimate exemptions, Medes responded with a resounding: “No.”
“The platforms need to collaborate more with municipalities and other authorities that control urbanism and social life in a city,” says Mendes.
“From a technical and scientific point of view: we don’t have enough information.”
From 20 May this year, that could all change.
New European Union legislation will require short-term rental platforms like Airbnb to share certain data with the authorities.
“I think that this new EU recommendation will make [the platforms] do better,” says Mendes.
“It will definitely give us more detailed information: Who are the owners of the Airbnbs? How many lodgings do they have? What is the occupancy rate? et cetera.”
Lisbon City Council officials are equally positive, saying they expect “changing European legislation” to strengthen their ability to deal with illegal or suspect units.
Most importantly, Mendes says, this new legislation shows the EU acknowledging something many of us have understood for a long time:
“The European Union is recognizing that short-term rental is one of the housing crisis causes.”
Airbnb, Blueground and Ukio were contacted but did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
