NTAK numbers and Budapest restrictions in the podcast

Several districts of Budapest are preparing further restrictions on short-term apartment letting. Meanwhile, one of the market’s biggest problems remains unresolved: thousands of Airbnb and Booking listings have no NTAK number, have an invalid one, or display one belonging to an entirely different accommodation.

Krasser Tamás and Antos Péter, co-owners of GuestGuru, discussed this in the latest episode of the Négy Fal Között Podcast.

Watch the full discussion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8GaziU_hXY

Restrictions primarily affect those operating lawfully

VIII. kerület would introduce area-based and condominium restrictions on short-term apartment letting. A ban is already in force in VI. kerület, while the future of Budapest’s permit moratorium has yet to be clarified.

There is a difficult-to-avoid contradiction in the rules: they apply only to those included in the register. Anyone letting out an apartment without registering it will not be restrained by district-level restrictions either.

As a result, the room for manoeuvre of registered, tax-paying operators is reduced, while accommodation operating on the black market can remain in the market unchanged.

Nearly one in three listings may have an issue with its NTAK number

Budapest Database compares Airbnb and Booking listings with official NTAK data. It classifies problematic listings into four groups:

• invalid NTAK number,
• incomplete NTAK number,
• foreign NTAK number belonging to another accommodation,
• suspicious NTAK number.

A foreign NTAK number is when the identifier shown on a listing actually belongs to another accommodation. The same number may appear on multiple apartment listings.

Some form of irregularity arises in almost 30 per cent of the Budapest listings examined. This is no longer just a handful of isolated errors, but a proportion that may distort the overall picture of the market.

Irregular listings should be filtered out first

The state already has the necessary data. NTAK and VIZA record daily who accommodates guests, where, and how many guests they receive.

Therefore, filtering out irregular accommodation would not necessarily require new regulations. The existing data should be compared with the information visible on listing platforms.

Until this happens, part of the tourist tax and declared revenue will continue to remain on the black market. Illegal accommodation also distorts district-level data, meaning that decisions on restrictions can easily be made on the basis of incomplete information.

VI. kerület received a list containing 700 suspicious listings. The discussion reveals what happened to this list and why the district’s position changed in the meantime.