Short-term rentals are facing changes. Communities with veto power

The government returns to hard restrictions on short-term rentals. Communities and cooperatives will be able to prohibit such activities in the building, and municipalities will be able to create zones in which daily rentals will be limited or completely excluded. This does not mean, however, that every offer removed from the platform will become an apartment for a permanent tenant – point out analysts of the RynekPierwotny.pl website. First, it is necessary to determine how many premises have actually fallen out of the regular long-term rental market.

On September 2, 2026, the Council of Ministers adopted an amendment to the project regulating short-term rental. The document included the return of solutions removed before its adoption by the government in July: the right of communities and cooperatives to prohibit daily rentals and the possibility for municipalities to create special restriction zones.

The government returns to hard restrictions

The self-amendment complements the project adopted by the government on July 14 and submitted to the Sejm as form No. 2865. It provides for the treatment of rental for a period of less than 30 days for one customer at a time as a hotel service, the creation of a Central List of Tourist Accommodation Facilities, individual numbers in advertisements, security requirements and administrative penalties of up to PLN 50,000. zloty.

The housing community will be able to adopt a resolution prohibiting the provision of such services in a given property. The owners’ votes are to be counted in accordance with the rules applicable in the community, i.e., as a rule, according to the size of the shares. In the cooperative, more than 50 percent will have to vote in favor of the ban. all persons entitled to vote.

The ban will not end operations overnight. An entrepreneur who already rents premises will be given six months to complete or cancel the reservation and withdraw the facility from the market. Only after this period can the premises be removed from the register.

The control mechanism is also to be strengthened. Residents of the same or neighboring property, community or cooperative will be able to submit an application for its implementation. If within six months the competent authorities find three violations of public safety or order, the local government will be obliged to remove the facility from the register. Re-entry will be possible only after a year.

The commune council, at the request of the commune head, mayor or city president, will also be able to designate a zone in which short-term rental will be limited or prohibited. Restrictions can be differentiated depending on the area, type of facilities and period of validity. Therefore, the commune will be able to cover only the most touristy districts or selected parts of the year.

The draft resolution will have to undergo at least 21-day consultations with residents, and the restrictions established will be able to enter into force at the earliest six months after the resolution is announced. However, the rights of communities, cooperatives and local governments themselves are to come into force only on January 1, 2028. Most of the remaining provisions are to enter into force 14 days after the announcement of the Act.

For now, it is still a project that must go through the parliamentary procedure. However, the direction of regulation has become much clearer: in addition to registration and reporting, there will be tools to actually limit activities in a specific building or part of the city.

44 million overnight stays does not mean 44 million apartments

Platform figures easily sound more residential than they actually are. Eurostat counts person-night stays. If a family of four stays in one apartment for three nights, the statistics will show 12 overnight stays, even though it concerns one apartment and one reservation. The high number therefore indicates the scale of tourist traffic, not the number of apartments taken off the market.

According to Eurostat data compiled by “Puls Biznesu”, in 2025 guests spent 44.39 million nights in Poland in properties booked via Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia. A year earlier it was 39.02 million, so the market grew by approximately 14%. Throughout the European Union, the result for 2025 reached 951.6 million person-night stays. In the first quarter of 2026, growth in the EU was another 9.7%. year to year.

For cities, however, this is still a photo with too low resolution. One apartment may be listed simultaneously on several portals. Some offers concern a room in the owner’s premises, some apply to the entire apartment, and still others are only available during the season or during the host’s absence. Aggregating ads or accommodations does not separate these models.

The new data is intended to indicate a specific location

From May 20, 2026, EU Regulation 2024/1028 on the collection and disclosure of data on short-term rentals applies. It does not introduce a European ban, a day limit or a single policy for all cities. However, it is building a common information infrastructure for countries that apply registration procedures and request data from platforms.

In such a system, one physical premises is to receive a unique registration number, visible in the advertisement and verifiable via the platform. The host is to indicate, among others: exact address, maximum number of places and whether it offers the entire premises or part of it, as well as whether it is its main or additional place of residence.

The platforms are to provide the administration with the number of nights and guests assigned to a specific unit. As a rule, reporting takes place monthly; a quarterly mode is planned for the smallest portals.

This is a qualitative change. Instead of asking how many times “book” was clicked, the administration will be able to determine whether several advertisements contain the same address, how intensively the premises are used and whether they actually function as a year-round accommodation facility.

The housing pressure is local, not nationwide

Short-term rentals do not work the same everywhere. In a seaside resort, the property may cycle between holiday stays and off-season rentals. In the center of a large city, an entire apartment serving tourists for most of the year competes directly with a person working or studying. In a smaller town, the platform can, in turn, launch a previously empty house without taking anything away from the local rental market.

– Short-term rental does not replace apartments everywhere, but locally. Therefore, the basic measure should not be the number of overnight stays, but the share of entire apartments used for most of the year for tourism in a specific district – comments Jarosław Jędrzyński, expert of the RynekPierwotny.pl portal.

Krakow clearly shows the difference between the accommodation and residential scale. As of August 2026, over 3.5 thousand were registered in the municipal eKON register. uncategorized accommodation facilities – including: apartments for short-term rental, guest rooms and hostels – offering a total of over 47,000. accommodation places. These are important data for tourism and service control, but only information about the type of premises, the intensity of its use and the share in the housing stock of a given district will allow us to assess the real pressure on housing.

The most useful indicators are therefore the share of entire short-term premises in the housing stock, the number of active days, the concentration of offers from professional operators, changes in the supply and long-term rents, and the number of complaints and interventions. The analysis should reach at least the level of districts, and in historic centers even down to building blocks.

The register, zone and community resolution solve other problems

In public discussion, these instruments often appear interchangeably, although they operate on three different levels. The register answers the question of who rents where and how intensively. It allows you to limit the gray zone, control basic requirements and compare data from platforms with administration information.

The zone allows the commune to respond to excessive concentration of tourist apartments in a specific district. However, the resolution of a community or cooperative concerns a single building in which the residents have to deal with noise, the movement of strangers, the feeling of danger or the costs caused by the frequent exchange of guests. Removal from the register after three documented violations is a sanction for behavior, not a general market limit.

These instruments are not interchangeable. The city may know how many establishments operate in its area, but only the zone will allow it to limit their concentration. In turn, even the best designated zone will not automatically resolve the conflict in a specific building. This is the purpose of residents’ right to adopt resolutions and initiate inspections.

Precision will be key. Too broad a ban may also affect places where tourist rentals do not compete with the local housing market. If it is too narrow, it may only shift activity to neighboring streets. Therefore, zones should be designated based on data on the actual use of premises, and not solely on the number of advertisements.

Will the regulation give apartments to tenants?

The first possible scenario is favorable for long-term tenants. Some owners give up their business when the costs of adaptation and maintenance or the risk of a ban in the building or local zone reduce profitability. The premises are then available for regular lease or sale. This effect may be visible in downtown enclaves with a very high concentration of apartments.

In the second scenario, operators register premises, meet the requirements and continue operating. The market is becoming more transparent, but its structure has not changed much. If the daily rate after deducting costs still clearly exceeds the rent obtainable from a permanent tenant, the registration number alone will not change the economic decision.

There is also a third scenario: some offers disappear from the platforms, but do not return to the rental market. The owner can sell the apartment, keep it for his own needs, rent it outside the portals or leave it empty. Therefore, the number of ads removed cannot be treated as the number of new apartments for tenants.

The actual effect will be determined by the relationship between the daily rate and the monthly rent, seasonality, cleaning and service costs, taxes, technical requirements and regulatory risk. Data will allow you to measure this effect, but will not guarantee it.

The investor should also take into account the emergency variant

Buying an apartment solely based on today’s daily rate becomes more risky. The calculation should include lower occupancy, registration and adaptation costs, the possibility of including the location in a municipal restriction zone, a resolution of the community or cooperative and the option of switching to long-term rental.

It is worth checking not only the expected income, but also whether the premises have the parameters and location to obtain a satisfactory monthly rent. The safest investment should not be dependent on one operating model. If profitability disappears immediately when occupancy drops or when regulatory compliance costs are added, a high nightly rate is a weak basis for a multi-year decision.

First you have to count the right thing

The most important effect of the new regulations will not be the number on the advertisement itself, but the possibility of linking the platforms’ activities with a specific premises. Only then will local governments see where tourist rentals actually take apartments off the market and where they only supplement the accommodation base.

Therefore, the register is not the final stage of regulation. It is the beginning of data-driven policy. Its effectiveness should not be measured by the number of blocked offers, but by whether the supply of ordinary rentals in deficit districts increases, rents stabilize and the number of neighborhood conflicts decreases.

– Only such a balance will show whether the state and cities have found not only a good counter, but also the right brake – summarizes the expert of the RynekPierwotny.pl portal.

Jarosław Jędrzyński, expert of the RynekPierwotny.pl portal