Barcelona, New York and Santa Monica Still Lock Out Whole-Home Rentals
Whole-home short-term rentals remain effectively closed to new entrants in Barcelona, New York City and Santa Monica, where existing rules either cap licence numbers, require a host to be present, or are set to eliminate tourist-apartment permits entirely by the end of the decade. For operators weighing expansion into new markets, the practical question is not whether a city has "strict" rules but whether it permits unhosted whole-home letting at all.
Where whole-home rentals are already restricted
New York's Local Law 18, in force since September 2023, requires hosts to register with the Mayor's Office of Special Enforcement and bars stays under 30 days unless the host is present in the unit and no more than two guests are booked at a time. That has pushed most previously listed entire-home units in the five boroughs off Airbnb and Vrbo entirely, since the law does not accommodate the standard unhosted rental model most professional managers run.
Santa Monica has taken a similar line for years: only "home-sharing," where the permanent resident stays on site during the guest's visit, is licensed. Whole-unit vacation rentals with no resident host are not permitted under the city's ordinance, regardless of zoning or building type.
Barcelona's licence freeze has a hard end date
Barcelona's city council has committed to cancelling all roughly 10,000 licences currently held by tourist apartments by November 2028, when the current permits expire and the city says it will not renew them. Until then, existing licensed operators can continue trading, but no new licences are being issued, and the city has already fined and delisted a large batch of unlicensed listings from major platforms over the past two years.
Paris takes a narrower but still binding approach: a primary residence can be let short-term for a maximum of 120 days a year, and every listing must carry a registration number that platforms are required to display and verify. Enforcement has included substantial fines for landlords letting rooms or flats without registering, and the city has pushed platforms to remove non-compliant listings rather than simply flag them.
What this means for operators scouting new markets
The common thread across all four cities is not the size of the fine but the shape of the restriction: some markets cap supply, some require a resident host, and some are winding down permits on a fixed timeline regardless of demand. An operator running a multi-city portfolio needs to check, market by market, whether the rule blocks the business model outright or simply adds paperwork and a cap on nights. Tools that centralise compliance tracking and channel listings, such as the guidance Lodgify publishes for hosts navigating local rules, are becoming a standard part of due diligence before signing a new property in any of these cities.
None of this is static. Barcelona's 2028 deadline could shift depending on legal challenges from property owners' associations, and New York's registration numbers are still being contested in court by some hosts. Operators should treat every one of these rules as the current position, not a permanent one, and revisit local ordinances before committing capital to a market with an active licensing dispute.
