Italy: As anticipated, the Tuscan city of Florence has passed fresh legislation that will ban new short-term rental properties in the historic city centre from listing on platforms such as Airbnb.
Under the newly approved bylaw, current short-term rental hosts and property owners will not be affected as it will not be retroactive. However, to encourage a reduction in short-term rentals, owners and landlords will be granted a three-year tax break from second home municipal taxes if they switch to longer-term residential rentals.
The bylaw is designed to free up affordable housing for local residents who claim they are being priced out of the historic centre, which is also a designated Unesco World Heritage site. Dario Nardella, the mayor of Florence, said that the number of properties listed on Airbnb in the centre had more than doubled to 14,378 since 2016 while average monthly residential rents in the same area had shot up by 42 per cent over that period.
In June, it was estimated that over 70 per cent of the 11,000 short-term rentals in Florence were listed within the World Heritage Site, which the council said had led to a reduction of housing stock and a subsequent “emptying out of historical centres”.
The Unesco World Heritage site in the historic centre of Florence already covers the Santa Maria del Fiore [a thirteenth-century cathedral], the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti.
On a national scale, the Italian government is working to implement legislation that would restrict short-term rental operations across Italy but authorities in a number of cities with historic sites, including Florence, Milan and Bologna, have grown increasingly agitated over perceived inaction on the matter.
In March, the mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, doubled down on plans to introduce strict controls on short-term rentals. Last July, the Italian government placed a cap on the the annual basis that properties in Venice can be rented out at 120 days per year.
Meanwhile, students in Florence, Milan and Rome have camped out in tents to protest against a shortage of affordable housing in the cities.
Nardella says that a 120-day annual cap on short-term rentals is not sufficient and has repeatedly pledged to introduce more radical measures.
In 2021, authorities in Florence and Venice sent out a joint ‘Decalogo‘ – translated as the Ten Commandments – to the Italian government with a proposal to restrict short-term rental activities and “reset” the tourism industry that had been so badly hit during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the time, the cities urged Italy’s government to qualify ‘holiday rentals’ as those being rented out for less than 30 days at one time and to impose a 90-day annual limit on how long short-term rentals can be rented out for tourism purposes. Owners would also be restricted from operating more than two holiday rentals in the same city, otherwise they would need to register as a business and pay higher taxes as a result.
Other initiatives that were suggested as part of the Decalogo included regulating guided tours, imposing harsher punishments on those who damage historical artefacts and property, creating so-called “smart control rooms” to monitor the flow of tourists entering the two cities, and raising the prices for public transport.
There are suggestions that a potential national bill would require properties in historic city centres and municipalities with a high density of tourists in Italy to be rented out for a minimum stay of two nights, while each residential property rented out to tourists would have to have its own national identification code to monitor rental stays. Those who fail to comply with the rules would reportedly face fines of up to €5,000.
Marco Celani, president of AIGAB [Associazione Italiana Gestori Affitti Brevi], argued that the ‘Nardella Resolution’ would not lead to a repopulation of the historic city centre in Florence. He added that “the contestable provision that violates the rights of owners and managers will instead bring a stable increase in prices for both hotels and short-term rentals that are already active in the historic centre”.
The bylaw in Florence somewhat mirrors regulations being introduced in Portugal, which put an end to its contentious ‘golden visa’ scheme and introduced a ban on new licences for short-term rentals in February. Ranked as one of Western Europe’s poorest countries, Portugal has seen rents and house prices shoot up in recent years, while its high per cent inflation rate has also exacerbated issues.
