The figures do not support Soproni's conclusion

Tamás SoproniOn 15 September 2026, he wrote that since the Airbnb ban came into force in January, the supply of flats available for long-term rental in Terézváros had increased by 32%, while the average rent had fallen from 300,000 to 280,000 forints. From this, he concluded that the ban had already improved the district's rental market.

Within a few hours, the post had become national news. TheHVGwrote that “there are more and cheaper rental flats in Terézváros since the Airbnb ban”. ThePortfoliosaid that the restriction had brought “a noticeable change”, whileBlikkwas already writing of a “huge turnaround” and “clear evidence”. None of the articles examined whether the selected periods and data from other districts actually supported this causal claim.

The problem is not necessarily that the two published figures are false. Rather, they do not prove Soproni's conclusion. Data collected for the same period and using the same methodology show that rents had already begun to fall in several districts before the ban. Terézváros also moved almost in tandem with Józsefváros, where there was no ban.

Three facts against the causal claim

The effect of the ban could only be isolated by comparing identical indicators from the same period with a district where there was no ban. The mayor's post does not do this. It links figures from different points in time and different indicators into a single narrative.

1. Rents were already falling before the ban

According to ingatlan.comdata from 13 October 2025, between late July and mid-October, advertised rents fell by10,000 Ftin Districts VI, II, XI and XII as well. In District IX, they fell by 15,000 Ft; in Districts XIV and XXII by 20,000 Ft; and in District III by 35,000 Ft. This was a Budapest-wide market movement affecting several districts, and in several places it brought a larger decline than in Terézváros. In October, the rent in District VI was 290,000 Ft/month, and ingatlan.com's January chart later showedthe same 290,000 Ft/monthfigure. Soproni's comparison of 300,000→280,000 therefore does not measure the fall before and after the January ban. It compares the summer peak of 300,000 with the following September, making the pre-ban decline and seasonal fluctuation appear to be the result of the ban.

2. The decline in Józsefváros was almost the same

Even if we disregard the points above: on an annual basis, the median advertised price fell by6.7%in District VI and by6.5%in neighbouring District VIII. The difference is only0.2 percentage points. The rental markets of the two inner-Pest districts moved virtually in tandem, while the zero-day rule is in force only in District VI.

The0.2 percentage-point differenceindicates a shared inner-Pest market movement rather than a separate price effect from the ban introduced only in Terézváros.

Median: the middle price of rental-flat listings posted by private individuals. Each row shows the same annual time window, and the figures are nominal advertised rents.

3. Supply did not increase only in Terézváros

According to Zengadata from July 2026, more flats available for rent appeared in most Budapest districts. Supply increased bynearly 25%in both Districts V and VI, and by14%in District XIII over one year. There is no Terézváros-style zero-day ban in District V, yet growth was roughly the same as in Terézváros.

Fresh Zenga data also show no break in Terézváros

TheZenga analysis of 9 Septemberreveals three trends:

• District VI:for flats of 40–60 m², the average advertised rent for January–August 2026 is above 300,000 Ft and higher than the 2025 average. According to them, rents have therefore not fallen but risen. Moreover, Terézváros is the second most expensive district in Zenga's list, directly after District V, even though the ban is in force only here.
• Inner districts:in Districts V, VI, VII, VIII and IX, the 2026 bar is nowhere lower than the 2025 one. In Districts VI, VIII and IX, there is an increase, while in Districts V and VII advertised rents have remained essentially unchanged.
• Budapest:the 2026 monthly average rose until the summer peak, then fell by a few thousand forints by September. The same happened in 2024 and 2025: compared with the summer level, the averagefell by 8,000–10,000 Ft.

Zenga reports the average for a defined range of flat sizes, whereas ingatlan.com calculates a median from all private listings. The two datasets are based on different samples and use different indicators, so they cannot be combined.

According toZenga's research of 14 January 2026, the ban had not yet reduced rents in District VI. In the capital, rental flats became most expensive inDistricts IV and VI.

The average advertised price of new or nearly new, typically two-room flats in District VI was352,000 Ft/month, even higher than in District V. This is a January snapshot: it shows the price increase at that time, not the September price level.

The price per square metre of flats for sale continued to rise in Terézváros

The market for flats for sale is different, so no conclusion about rents can be drawn from this alone. Nevertheless, for the full picture, it is worth noting that in Terézváros the average advertised price per square metre of second-hand flatsrose from 1.585 million to 1.622 million Ft/m²between December 2025 and August 2026. The+2.33%is the largest increase among the selected controls, and it is important to stress again that this happened despite short-term letting being banned only here. During the same period, this indicator fell in Districts V and IX, while it barely changed across Budapest as a whole.

Nominal average advertised price per square metre for second-hand flats and houses. The period and definition are identical in every row. The data come from ingatlan.com's December and August district publications.

Soproni drew the wrong conclusion

The mayor assembled a causal success story from three separate measurements, but the data do not support it.The 20,000-forint difference does not compare price levels before and after the January ban. Similar or larger rent decreases also occurred in districts without a ban. Supply in District V expanded similarly to District VI, Zenga still showed rising prices in Terézváros in January, and advertised sale prices increased in Terézváros.

None of this proves that the ban definitely had no effect whatsoever. It does, however, prove that the figures presented cannot isolate this effect from Budapest market and seasonal changes. Based on the publicly available control data, Soproni's causal conclusion does not hold up. Yet the press repeated this unverified claim as fact.

The effect of the ban is more visible in guest nights

The independent effect of the ban cannot be demonstrated from changes in rents, but it can in the case of guest nights. According to NTAK data, in the first half of 2026 the number of guest nights in District VI fell from 1,432,084 to 983,923. This representsa loss of 448,161 nights, down 31.3%.

During the same period, nearby districts with high visitor traffic all grew: District V by 4.6%, District VII by 10.0%, District VIII by 7.0%, and District IX by 6.2%. Budapest's aggregate change was therefore only +0.1%, even though the city hosted a Champions League final in May. If District VI is excluded from the calculation, the other 22 districts together achieved growth of 7.3%. Terézváros's decline therefore pulled down the capital's aggregate figure by around 7.2 percentage points. This is not a general Budapest trend, but a striking change running counter to trends in surrounding districts, which appeared after the ban came into force.

According to the Magyar Vendéglátók Ipartestülete, meanwhile, turnover at restaurants, cafés and bars in District VIfell by an average of 30%. The 31.3% decline in guest nights and the 30% decline in hospitality turnover coincide in time and are similar in scale. This strongly suggests that the absence of tourists may be one of the main reasons for declining turnover at hospitality venues. The MVI projected mass business closures and job losses. If the decline persists, it will probably lead to redundancies, which could also worsen the housing security of those affected.

Moreover,one third of Budapest Airbnb properties operate unlawfully, yet they are unaffected by any ban or tightening of rules. We wrote about this in detail in thehttps://guest.guru/feketezokdossier.

Update: Alberlet.hu data show that rents rose in Terézváros

Two days after the post was published,Alberlet.hu publishedits analysis of the nine months since the ban in Terézváros. The figures come from its own listings database, making this a third, independent dataset. According to it,rental flats in Terézváros became more expensive after the ban, even more than the average.

According to the analysis, district rents rose by roughly 7% year on year in the completed months after the ban. The Budapest average was 4.7% over the same period, while in Erzsébetváros, used as a control and with no ban at all, it was 2.6%. The typical price also moved upwards: the median price rose by nearly 4.5% in Terézváros and by 2.4% in District VII.

The control district reveals the same flaw as our point 1

The analysis specifically addresses the September news coverage and finds the same methodological error in it as we described above in point 1. The average price in Terézváros did indeed fall by 5–6% from the summer peak to August, but Erzsébetváros, where there was no ban, also saw a decline of around 5% over the same window. If this late-summer fall were the work of the ban, it should not appear in the control district. It does appear, to nearly the same extent, so this is a seasonal movement.

In one respect, the analysis goes further than we do. It states that the additional price increase which cannot be explained by the city trend and the control district is most likely attributable to the ban itself, meaning that the ban alone also raised prices because of a composition effect. We remain more cautious than this: district samples are small, and a wave of renovations or a transformation of supply may also play a role. For the purposes of the debate, however, this difference is secondary.

What can certainly be stated is that whether the ban raised prices or the market carried the district along with it, the claim “we banned it, so it became cheaper” does not follow from any dataset. If, moreover, numerous other data and analyses contradict it but these are withheld, that is almost misleading.

The Alberlet.hu analysis was also picked up byIndex, under the headline “Airbnb was banned in Terézváros, yet rental flats are becoming more expensive faster”.

Sources and downloads

All external sources used in one place:

• Conclusion repeated in the press: HVG·Portfolio·Blikk
• Guest nights:NTAK Accommodation Compass, BPDB monthly district data, retrieved on 15 September 2026 ·KSH Budapest control data
• Hospitality and projected employment consequences: Turizmus.com article quoting the statement by Magyar Vendéglátók Ipartestülete
• The verified claim: Tamás Soproni's post·the Terézváros regulation
• Ingatlan.com – rental market: district comparison from October 2025·original October district chart·January 2026 publication·original January district chart·September 2026 publication·original September district chart
• Zenga: rental supply data from July 2026·September 2026 analysis·Budapest monthly trend chart·district comparison chart·January 2026 research
• Alberlet.hu – nine months after the ban: the original analysis·the Index coverage
• Ingatlan.com – sales market: data from December 2025·original December chart·data from August 2026·original August chart
• Downloadable verification material: data (CSV)·calculated results (JSON)·source notes