Press background

Booking.com solved in six days what five Hungarian authorities could not in three months

Background material for newsrooms on unlicensed rentals in Budapest

GuestGuru Kft.August 2026

What this material is about

A third of short-term rental listings in Budapest are unlicensed. They pay no tourist tax, issue no invoice, and if there is trouble in the building there is no one to hold responsible. While the inner districts ban and tighten one after another, this third remains untouched, because tightening only affects those who registered in the first place.

We measured this, and we tried to report it. This material is about what happened next.

Every figure can be checked, every quotation is verbatim, and the correspondence with the authorities is available.¹ At the end we have collected what is worth following up.

For readers in a hurry there is also a short summary: the story, the key figures and the proposals, in two pages.

What is in this material

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1. The story

In May it emerged that our client's identifier had been stolen

In May 2026 we noticed in our own database that a client's NTAK number — deleted in January 2025 because the permit was transferred within the family — was being used by four listings by strangers. One on Airbnb, three on Booking. None of them was entitled to use the number.

For three of the four this is still the case today. In the fourth, on Airbnb, it later turned out to be a typing error: we write about that in point 9.

An NTAK number is like a licence plate. It is unique to each property, and every tax return is tied to it. Anyone advertising with someone else's number not only avoids tax: in the eyes of the guest and the authorities, someone else is responsible for the accommodation.

We assumed this must obviously be reportable somewhere.

Four authorities, one direction

On 13 May we wrote to four places: the district clerk, NTAK, the accommodation classification body and the tax authority. We asked all of them the same question: what should be done, what is the procedure, what happens in the end.

The accommodation classification body replied the next day:

"Supervising accommodation service activity, investigating the unauthorised use of NTAK identifiers, and initiating the removal of unlawful listings appearing on online platforms do not fall within our organisation's remit or competence."

They forwarded us to NTAK and the district clerk.

NTAK also replied the next day:

"NTAK is essentially a data reporting platform which has no regulatory power to sanction abuses directly or to have listings removed. Supervision of accommodation service activity is exercised by the clerk of the local council."

They forwarded us to the clerk and to the platforms.

The tax authority five days later:

"We also draw your attention to the fact that investigating abuses relating to accommodation services or NTAK identifiers does not fall within NAV's competence."

They forwarded us to the council. They also stated that the email address we had used "does not serve to receive or process public-interest reports to the National Tax and Customs Administration", and that the report must be submitted on the form "I report another party's infringement/omission".

By this point the pattern was clear. Everyone pointed in the same direction.

The district clerk

On 5 June we wrote to the district clerk's office for the second time, now noting that all three authorities had sent us there. On 9 June they asked for the detailed list. On 10 June we handed it over: the background of the deleted NTAK number, the links to the four listings, the listing IDs where available, the exact address, and screenshots showing the unlawfully entered identifier.

The answer came on 17 June. One sentence:

"I inform you that the NTAK numbers listed in your letter have been corrected on the advertising sites."

We were given no information about whether proceedings had been opened or a fine imposed. The same letter stated that they do not accept submissions by email; from a business entity only via ePapír, through the Company Gateway.

The next day we submitted it formally as well, with questions: was anyone penalised? Does the authority have its own control mechanism for filtering out false identifiers? If we hand over a list, will it open proceedings? We have had no substantive answer to these to this day.

NTAK spells out what the clerk could do

On 25 June NTAK sent a second, detailed opinion. That letter describes precisely what the clerk's room for manoeuvre would be:

"Under commercial legislation, where an infringement is established in commercial regulatory proceedings, the clerk may, among other things: impose an administrative fine, and order the temporary — or in serious cases even immediate — closure of the accommodation."

And also that there is no formal obstacle:

"The legislation does not prescribe a separate form or mandatory content for reports of this kind."

But the same letter states the system's fundamental problem:

"We inform you that the clerk has no power to have listings removed directly from online platforms."

In other words, whoever can penalise cannot remove. Whoever can remove (Airbnb and Booking.com) is a platform for which no single district clerk is a large enough counterpart.

A resident of a condominium showed the way

On 17 July we received a letter from someone who had read one of our posts. At their residents' meeting it was said that there is more illegal accommodation than legal. They did not turn to an authority:

"after the May rules they were reported on booking one by one, and they were removed in about 10 days"

In their report they cited the EU regulation applicable from 20 May 2026 and the platforms' increased responsibility. This is Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 of the European Parliament and of the Council on data collection and data sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services.²

Six days

On 24 July we too reported the two Booking listings on the platform's own form. On 30 July, six days later, the answer arrived for both:

"the property you reported is in breach of our Terms and Conditions and has been removed from Booking.com"

In plain terms: the reported property breaches our terms and conditions, so we have removed it from Booking.com.

Both listings removed. No case number, no hearing, no Company Gateway. A web form and six days.

The Airbnb listing ended differently, and that is worth setting out too. There it turned out to be a typing error: the operator had mistyped the last digit of their own identifier, which is how our client's ended up in the listing. It has since been corrected and the number now appears valid. That listing was therefore not an abuse.

This does not make the problem smaller, though — it makes it sharper. A single mistyped digit meant a property ran for months under someone else's identifier, and neither the platform nor the authority noticed. We noticed, because we have a system of our own.

So we could not test the Airbnb side, and there is a specific reason for that. Booking has a public reporting form for non-compliant listings; Airbnb does not. There is a neighbourhood reporting interface, but that is for noise and nuisance, not for a property operating without a permit. We approached them through our own Airbnb account contact; no substantive answer has arrived yet. We could report several hundred unlicensed Airbnb listings as soon as there is somewhere to do it.

Three months, five authorities, and to this day we do not know whether proceedings were opened. In the end the listings were removed by Booking.com, in six days, on the basis of a public web form.

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2. The case is not unique: a third of the market is like this

The four listings above came from our own database. We call the system BPDB, and it merges three public sources:³ the district councils' accommodation registers, the NTAK register, and the listings on Airbnb and Booking.

Position as at September 1, 2026:

How can this happen? Because neither Airbnb nor Booking verifies the property data given in the listing. The field has been mandatory since 2023, but the platform does not check it against the NTAK register. That is how a non-existent number, someone else's number, or nothing at all can end up in a listing.

Important: a listing is not a home. One home may be advertised on both platforms, and one home may contain several units. We estimate that the 15,825 listings correspond to 10,000–12,000 unique units.

It is also important that this is a conservative figure. There are a further 1,402 listings that have an identifier but no valid classification.

Accommodation classification is a mandatory procedure: the Hungarian Tourism Quality Certification Body classifies the property on the basis of an on-site inspection, and it must be renewed every three years. Without it, the property could not operate lawfully. The absence of classification may, however, mean an expired certificate or proceedings still in progress, not necessarily deliberate non-compliance. That is why we did not count them among the unlicensed. If we did, the share would be 42 per cent.

Breakdown by district:

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3. Who loses when properties are banned or restricted: families, not big investors

One of the main arguments of those opposed to short-term letting is that it is the terrain of big investors. The district councils' own registers show otherwise: 15,062 permits are spread across 9,495 providers.⁴

97.5 per cent of operators have at most three properties, and they provide 73.6 per cent of all properties. Every second property belongs to an operator who has exactly one. This is a market of families and one-person businesses.

1 property2-34-1011-50Above 50

The burden and the benefit of a restriction are therefore not symmetrical. Those who lose are several thousand small, unconnected players with no common representation or lobbying power. The winner is a concentrated, organised industry. The peer-reviewed study of the New York ban documents this too: the hotel industry spent an order of magnitude more on political contributions than the platforms, especially before the ban.⁵ The ownership background of the Hungarian hotel market is tracked by the civic database nerhotel.hu: it collects owners linked to the governing circle between 2010 and 2026, and lists 32 hotels in Budapest.⁶

And the damage does not stop at the hosts. A lost property also takes demand away from the businesses nearby. An average Budapest listing is let for 16.8 nights a month; with two guests that is 33.6 guest nights, which at the HCSO's average daily spend comes to roughly HUF 1.1 million of visitor spending a month. Of this the measured accommodation revenue is HUF 482,000, so about HUF 610,000 stays elsewhere: in restaurants, cafés, shops and taxis.⁷⁸ This number explains why turnover at Terézváros restaurants fell by 30 per cent.⁹

The guest count here is an assumption, and a conservative one: the average capacity of a listing is 4.28. The HCSO figure is a national average and includes the accommodation charge, which is why we deduct the measured accommodation revenue from it.

4. Terézváros: the balance sheet of the ban after seven months

The Terézváros decree entered into force on 1 January 2026 and cut the number of lettable nights for private and other accommodation to zero, that is, banned letting entirely. The council communicated the intervention as a successful measure.

According to BPDB, 864 listings are running in the district today, 661 of them unlicensed. Of these, 498 have an invalid, missing or false identifier, while a further 249 hold a valid permit but could not operate as private or other accommodation. Roughly 144 properties operate lawfully: guesthouses, hotels, hostels.

Those who followed the rules closed. Those who did not are still open today, and now also enjoy a tax advantage over the legal host in the next district.

What the ban took away

Guest nights. The Office of the National Assembly's own publication, Infojegyzet 2026/6,¹⁰ publishes the HCSO's data on District VI, between January and March, in thousands of guest nights:

HotelsPrivate and other accommodation

Hotels grew by 22.7 thousand nights. 94.9 thousand were lost from private accommodation. Hotels absorbed less than a quarter of the loss. The other guests did not move to a hotel: they went to another district or another city.

This refutes the most common argument made in favour of the ban. These are two separate demands, not one. Only a small share of those who choose private accommodation would take a hotel instead. Private accommodation therefore does not draw demand away from hotels: it is a different market.

Note: the Infojegyzet publishes this figure but does not draw this conclusion from it, nor does it link it to the ban. The figure belongs to Parliament, the conclusion is ours.

Visitor spending. According to the HCSO, a foreign visitor on a multi-day trip spends an average of HUF 32,600 a day in Hungary.⁸ Applied to the 72,200 lost guest nights, that is roughly HUF 2.35 billion of visitor spending, in a single quarter, in a single district. An order-of-magnitude estimate: the HCSO figure is a national average, includes the accommodation charge, and the first quarter is the weakest season, so the annual loss is larger than this.

Two peer-reviewed studies answer the question of where this money would flow. In Madrid, fourteen additional Airbnb rooms in a neighbourhood mean roughly one more hospitality venue, and eleven new tourism jobs at district level.¹¹ In New York, a one percentage point increase in Airbnb activity brings about a 1.7 per cent rise in restaurant employment in previously non-touristic neighbourhoods.¹²

And it matters where that money is spent. A significant part of a hotel guest's spending stays inside the hotel: according to the HCSO, 23.7 per cent of Hungarian hotels' gross revenue is food and drink, and more than 40 per cent of revenue is not room revenue at all.¹³ That is food and drink not bought in the shops and hospitality venues of the neighbourhood.

For a short-term rental guest it is the other way round. There is a Hungarian peer-reviewed study on this, with a Budapest sample: of Airbnb guests' non-accommodation spending, 74.08 per cent goes on local goods and services, against 47.41 per cent for hotel guests.¹⁴ And according to a study from Granada, someone staying in a short-term rental (that is, not in a hotel but in a flat booked on Airbnb or a similar platform) spends 29 per cent more per day on food and drink, while their total daily spending is practically identical to a hotel guest's: the difference is in the composition, not the amount.¹⁵

Two limitations must be stated. The Hungarian study measures a proportion, not an amount, and its sample is 103 people. The Granada one is 2018 data from a single city. So we are not claiming that a short-term rental guest spends more; we are claiming that a larger share of their spending stays with the small businesses of the neighbourhood.

Tax revenue. The district's tourist tax revenue in the first half of 2026 was HUF 949.2 million, against HUF 1,228.9 million in the same period of the previous year. The shortfall is HUF 279.7 million, minus 22.8 per cent. Had the earlier growth rate continued, the difference would be around HUF 520 million. This figure also includes hotels, which grew in the meantime.

Hospitality. According to the Hungarian Hospitality Employers' Association, turnover at District VI restaurants, cafés and bars fell by an average of 30 per cent.⁹ The owner of a local restaurant put it this way: "Nearly a third of our turnover has gone, but the bills and the district taxes have not fallen by 30%."

The Terézváros measurement does not stand alone. First let us clarify where the 24 per cent comes from, because the table shows different numbers.

Hotels grew by 16.7 per cent, that is true, but that is not the question. The question is how much of the 94.9 thousand nights lost from private accommodation the hotels absorbed. The hotels' increase was 22.7 thousand nights. 22.7 divided by 94.9 is 23.9 per cent, rounded to 24. That is, of every four lost nights roughly one turned up in hotels and three did not. This is why we do not use the 16.7 per cent: that is the hotels' own growth relative to themselves, not the extent of the shift.

If hotels absorbed 24 per cent of the loss, then 76 per cent of guests did not move to a hotel. Farronato and Fradkin's 2022 study in the American Economic Review measures exactly this with a structural model: between 49 per cent (Austin, Portland) and 70 per cent (New York) of Airbnb guests would not have booked a hotel had Airbnb not existed. In peak season this is 87 per cent.¹⁶ The 76 per cent in Terézváros falls exactly within that range.

The same study also states that in peak season the number of room nights sold by hotels is unchanged without Airbnb: at such times hotels are full, and there is nowhere to shift the guest. Under a complete Airbnb ban, hotels' room nights sold would rise by a mere 1.4 per cent.

From the other direction, the 2017 study by Zervas, Proserpio and Byers reinforces the same point: where a loss of hotel revenue was measured, it affected lower-priced hotels and those not serving business travellers, not the upper segment, and the effect came through price, not occupancy.¹⁷

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5. New York played this out to the end, on a large scale

In September 2023 New York effectively banned short-term letting.¹⁸ Supply fell by more than 90 per cent: 38,500 units disappeared, around 3,000 remained.¹⁹

Rents did not fall. Median rent in Manhattan was a record USD 4,700 in July 2025, with vacancy at 2.45 per cent. According to the available market data, rents grew faster in the neighbourhoods that previously had the most Airbnbs.²⁰

Hotel prices, on the other hand, rose. According to a peer-reviewed 2025 study (European Journal of Political Economy), hotels' average daily rate rose by USD 14–19 per night, and hotel industry revenue by USD 2.1–2.9 billion in the first eighteen months after the ban. The number of room nights sold barely changed: the surplus is almost entirely a price effect. The same study documents that the hotel industry spent an order of magnitude more on political contributions than the platforms.⁵

Restaurant turnover fell. According to a working paper by researchers at Emory and USC, restaurant spending fell by roughly 10 per cent relative to comparable US cities, most strongly at those not serving a local clientele.²¹

Nor was it eased. The only substantive reform proposal stalled at committee stage and died at the end of the session, in December 2025.²²

Several cities, however, turned back. In 2018 Berlin eased the restrictions introduced two years earlier and in exchange made displaying the registration number mandatory.²³ In Amsterdam the court ruled that the blanket ban imposed on three inner-city neighbourhoods was unlawful, and the city withdrew EUR 400,000 in fines.²⁴ Lisbon eased its rules in December 2025,²⁵ Edinburgh in January 2025.²⁶

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6. If housing is the goal: nine times as many empty homes

The usual justification for bans is the housing crisis. Set against that, the numbers look like this: of Budapest's 961,061 homes, 10,703 go to short-term rental, 1.1 per cent of the entire stock. In the same city 95,320 homes stand genuinely empty and unused: nearly nine times as many as are let short-term.²⁷²⁸²⁹

(The figure of 170,000 empty homes often quoted in the press is the HCSO's 2023 preliminary release; the final census database gives 160,723 unoccupied dwellings, from which the 95,320 genuinely empty can be derived.)

Two comparisons that say more about the housing shortage than short-term letting does:

• More homes house an office than there are lawful short-term rentals. 13,000 homes operate as offices, surgeries or shops, while 6,703 homes are lawfully let short-term. The modern office space standing empty today is on its own equivalent to 8,400 homes: two-thirds of the home offices would fit into the empty office buildings.³⁰³¹
• Prices are rising even where there is virtually no Airbnb — in fact more so. According to the HCSO house price index, in Q4 2025 the annual increase was lowest in Budapest (21 per cent), 24 in county seats, 23 in smaller towns and 37 per cent in villages, even though short-term supply is concentrated practically in the inner city of Budapest.³²

International research measures the same order of magnitude. According to a peer-reviewed study (Marketing Science, 2021), a 1 per cent increase in the number of listings raises rents by 0.018 per cent.³³ A New York model (a working paper under review at the American Economic Review) puts the total rent effect at 0.71 per cent: USD 125 a year for the median tenant.³⁴ And New York's own ban demonstrated it in practice (chapter 5): 90 per cent of supply disappeared, yet rents did not fall.

In fairness: for one district the argument does not hold. In Erzsébetváros 9.1 per cent of homes go to short-term letting, and there it is a real factor. But even there the non-short-let empty homes are twice as many as those let short-term.

The quotable sentence: a city-wide housing crisis is not explained by a 1.1 per cent segment concentrated in a few inner-city blocks, while nearly nine times as many homes stand genuinely empty. Acting against unlicensed accommodation is not a housing question but one of fair competition and paying tax.

The full derivation, with every source and downloadable, freely usable charts: /feketezok/ures-lakasok

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7. How much money is at stake

According to AirDNA's estimate⁷, the last twelve months' revenue of active Airbnb listings flagged as unlicensed is EUR 45.25 million, roughly HUF 16.5 billion.

The two most easily calculated taxes, the tourist tax and the tourism development contribution, come to about HUF 660 million each. Together, HUF 1.3 billion a year. That is the measured base: every element of it traces back to data.

The full order of magnitude

The measured base is deliberately narrow: it covers only the Airbnb side, and only two of the five taxes. It leaves out the Booking side's revenue, VAT, the itemised flat-rate tax and building tax. Of these, we have enough data to estimate two: the Booking side and the itemised flat-rate tax. The other two, VAT and building tax, we still do not count.

The Booking side, without double counting. We do not measure the revenue of Booking listings, but we do measure their number, and the system can tell which Booking listing is the same home as an active Airbnb listing.

Of the unlicensed Booking listings, 2,276 have an invalid, missing or foreign identifier. The remaining 80 are in District VI with a valid NTAK number but operate despite the ban; they presumably pay tax, so they are left out of the shortfall estimate. (The same on the Airbnb side is 169 listings; together the two make up the 249 Terézváros item.)

Of the 2,276, 295 have such a match, and we do not count these twice. That leaves 1,981 stand-alone listings. These are on average smaller than the Airbnb ones, so we do not apply the Airbnb average to them but the average of one-bedroom listings.⁷ On that basis the Booking side is about HUF 8.8 billion, and the two together around HUF 25.3 billion in annual revenue.

Itemised flat-rate tax. HUF 150,000 per habitable room per year.³⁵ The unlicensed listings account for 7,016 bedrooms in total.

Over three years that is roughly HUF 9 billion, over four about HUF 12 billion, on top of the fines.

What has to be added: the Booking side is an estimate, not a measurement. Airbnb's bedroom count is not the same as NAV's concept of a habitable room. A private individual may elect the itemised flat-rate tax for at most three properties, and companies are taxed differently, so this shows what the most common form of taxation would have yielded. And it still does not include VAT, building tax, fines, or the 1,402 listings without classification.

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8. What a council can do today, and what it cannot

A council can document an irregularity through a test purchase. That establishes the tourist tax on a single booking, which is a few thousand forints. The maximum fine is HUF 200,000 for private accommodation and HUF 400,000 for other accommodation.³⁶ The cost of the inspection is often more than that.

This is why inspecting does not pay. Nothing happens not out of negligence, but because this is how the numbers stand.

That turns around when the platform releases an unlicensed property's booking data for the past three to four years. Then the unpaid taxes add up and the procedure becomes self-financing. EU Regulation 2024/1028, applicable since 20 May 2026, provides exactly this legal basis: platforms must verify that the registration number is genuine and report data monthly, while the member state must operate a single digital entry point.²

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9. Józsefváros: HUF 381,000 every six months

Through a freedom-of-information request we established that since 2025 the Józsefváros council has had listings screened by a contracted partner, Webharvest Big Data Szolgáltató Kft. The fee for the service is HUF 381,000 gross every six months.³⁷

According to BPDB, 812 unlicensed listings are running in the district in the meantime, 31 per cent of local supply.

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10. We offered the system free of charge. It was not wanted

When we saw the scale of the problem, we did not stop at measuring. BPDB was not built as a demonstration: it is a working tool that shows on a map what is wrong with each listing, broken down by district and by operator, and produces an exportable list. It does exactly the work a clerk's office has no capacity for.

So we offered it. Free of charge, with access for the authorities, for nothing in return. We did not submit a tender and we did not make an offer: we said, here it is, use it.

Two districts replied.

One turned it down because it has a live contract with an outside company. That is the Józsefváros council, and the contracted partner is Webharvest Big Data Szolgáltató Kft. Through a freedom-of-information request we established that the service costs HUF 381,000 gross every six months.³⁷ In that same district, by our measurement, 812 unlicensed listings are running, 31 per cent of supply.

The other said it does not negotiate with market players.

That sentence is the most telling in the whole story. They did not say our data are wrong, nor that our method is flawed, nor even that they do not need it. They said that they do not negotiate with us as a market player.

We understand that an authority has to be careful with an interested company, and we know that we have a business interest in a clean market. But the tool works nonetheless, and the authority has nothing else in its place. As long as this remains so, unlicensed listings will continue not to be taken down by those who have the power to do it.

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11. What is worth following up

These are the questions we have no means to answer, but a newsroom does.

1. Where does Hungary stand on implementing the EU short-term rental regulation? Regulation 2024/1028 has been applicable since 20 May 2026 and prescribes a single digital entry point. Has it been set up? Who operates it? Does it receive monthly data from the platforms?
2. How many fines have the inner districts imposed on unlicensed accommodation in the past three years, and for what amounts? This is public-interest data.
3. Has any Budapest council approached Airbnb or Booking with a formal data request, and what was the answer? Both platforms have a dedicated interface for authorities.
4. How much do the districts pay for listing screening, and what do they get for it? The Józsefváros figure of HUF 381,000 came from a freedom-of-information request. The same can be asked in the other districts.
5. Did District VII impose a fine on the listings we reported that used a stolen identifier? We received no answer to this.
6. By how much did District VI's local business tax revenue fall in 2026? We know the tourist tax figure but not the business tax one, even though the 30 per cent drop in hospitality must show up there too.
7. What do the hospitality operators of Terézváros say? The Hungarian Hospitality Employers' Association wrote to the mayor. What was the reply?
8. Why do thousands of council-owned homes stand empty? Átlátszó's 2020 freedom-of-information request found 3,698 empty council-owned homes across the 23 districts.³⁸ What is the figure today, and what is the plan for them?

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What we offer a newsroom

• The complete correspondence with the authorities, verbatim, with dates.
• BPDB data broken down by district, operator or street, according to your own question.
• Concrete, verifiable example listings where the irregularity can be checked in public databases within minutes.
• A demonstration of the system, in person if you wish.

What we do not release: the names and addresses of individual hosts. Some of those concerned are victims whose identifier was stolen, and everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Their data belongs in the hands of the authorities, not in the press.

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Contact

GuestGuru Kft. · Révay utca 6. fszt. 7, 1065 Budapest · hello@guest.guru

180 managed homes in Budapest, six in Malta. With Airbnb and Booking account contacts, membership of Hungarian professional bodies, and a free knowledge base for hosts. In this matter our partner is the Hungarian Apartment Letting Association.

We are not an authority and we do not want to play volunteer police. We are defending our own market. Our interest goes only this far: that operating lawfully should not be a competitive disadvantage, and that regulation should not punish compliant accommodation instead of the non-compliant.

All figures come from the BPDB measurement of September 1, 2026 unless otherwise stated.

Sources

Links were checked on 13 August 2026. The academic publishers' sites (ScienceDirect, Wiley, Emerald) may require a subscription for the full text; the citation and the DOI identify the study without them.

1. Correspondence between GuestGuru Kft. and the authorities, between 13 May and 30 July 2026. The complete verbatim material is available on request.↩
2. Regulation (EU) 2024/1028 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on data collection and data sharing relating to short-term accommodation rental services. Applicable from 20 May 2026. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32024R1028↩
3. BPDB (Budapest Database), GuestGuru Kft.'s own market database. A merge of the district councils' accommodation registers, the NTAK register and listings on Airbnb and Booking.com. Queried on 12 August 2026.↩
4. The public accommodation registers of the Budapest district councils, loaded into BPDB. 12,445 permits, assigned to 8,081 named providers. Queried on 13 August 2026.An aggregation based on provider names. It groups by identical names, so it cannot see ownership links: actual concentration may be higher than this, not lower.↩
5. Anastasi, S. C.; Marsella, A.; Melo, V.; Stephenson, E. F.; Wagner, G. A. (2025): Short-term rental bans and the hotel industry: Evidence from New York city. European Journal of Political Economy, vol. 89. Article ID: PII S0176-2680(25)00085-0. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0176268025000850↩
6. nerhotel.hu, "Kinél cseng a kassza?" [Whose till is ringing?]. A civic database of accommodation and hospitality venues attributed to owners linked to the governing circle, with ownership links citing K-Monitor's public database. The database holds 455 entries, of which 149 are in Budapest and, within those, 32 are hotels. Queried on 13 August 2026. https://www.nerhotel.hu/A database built by a civic organisation, not official statistics. The ownership links are journalistic and public-data identifications, not official findings. It should be cited accordingly.↩
7. AirDNA estimated last-twelve-months revenue (revenue_ltm) for the active Airbnb listings flagged as unlicensed in BPDB. Queried on 12 August 2026.AirDNA estimates rather than measures; the error of the estimate is unknown.↩
8. HCSO STADAT 27.2.1.2: Number of foreign trips to Hungary and the related expenditure by length of stay, quarterly. Q1 2026, multi-day trips: 1,492 thousand trips, 4,496 thousand days spent, HUF 146,787 million of expenditure, i.e. HUF 32,600 per day. Updated on 5 June 2026. https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_files/tur/hu/tur0043.htmlA national average across all foreign multi-day visitors, and it includes accommodation charges. Q1 is the weakest season. A visitor day and a guest night in commercial accommodation are not the same concept, so the value derived from this is an order-of-magnitude estimate.↩
9. Eltűntek a turisták, bajban vannak a terézvárosi éttermek [The tourists are gone, Terézváros restaurants are in trouble]. Turizmus.com, 24 June 2026, based on a statement by the Hungarian Hospitality Employers' Association. https://turizmus.com/cikk/vendeglatas/terezvaros-ettermek-fprgalomcsokkenes-airbnb-tiltas-mvi-eltuntek-a-turistak↩
10. Csorba György: Rövid távú szálláskiadás 2 [Short-term rental 2]. Infojegyzet 2026/6, Office of the National Assembly, Information Service for Members of Parliament, 1 June 2026. Data source for Figure 2: HCSO Dissemination database, GB2012. https://www.parlament.hu/infoszolgThe Infojegyzet publishes the figure but does not link it to the Terézváros ban, and does not draw this conclusion from it. The data belongs to Parliament; the interpretation is ours.↩
11. Alberto Hidalgo – Massimo Riccaboni – Francisco J. Velázquez: The effect of short-term rentals on local consumption amenities: Evidence from Madrid. Journal of Regional Science, 64(3): 621-648, 2024. DOI: 10.1111/jors.12685. https://doi.org/10.1111/jors.12685↩
12. Mohammed Alyakoob – Mohammad S. Rahman: Shared Prosperity (or Lack Thereof) in the Sharing Economy. Information Systems Research, 33(2): 638-658, 2022. DOI: 10.1287/isre.2021.1076. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.1076↩
13. HCSO STADAT 27.8.1.9: Gross revenue of commercial accommodation establishments by type. Hotels, 2019: accommodation charges 291,852, food and drink 117,583, other 86,029, total 495,464 million HUF. Food and drink is 23.7 per cent. https://www.ksh.hu/stadat_files/tur/hu/tur0023.htmlAn archived table covering 2001–2021, no longer updated. We use 2019 because the 2020–2021 data are distorted by the pandemic; the ratio, however, is stable, at 23.5 per cent in 2021 as well.↩
14. Karimov, A. – Kamann, D-J. F. – Gyurácz-Németh, P.: Local spending patterns of tourists in Greater Budapest and the Lake Balaton tourism regions. An exploratory study on the non-accommodation budget across Airbnb and hotel guests. Turizmus Bulletin, vol. XXV, no. 4 (2025), pp. 4–13. DOI: 10.14267/TURBULL.2025v25n4.1. Student's t-test: t = −6.775, df = 101, p < 0.001. https://doi.org/10.14267/TURBULL.2025v25n4.1The study measures a PROPORTION, not an amount: what share of non-accommodation spending goes on local goods and services. The authors themselves note that a smaller share of a larger budget may still be more in absolute terms. The sample is 103 people; it is exploratory research.↩
15. Guaita Martínez, J. M. – Martín Martín, J. M. – Salinas Fernández, J. A. – Ribeiro Soriano, D.: Tourist accommodation, consumption and platforms. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 47(3): 1011-1022, 2023. DOI: 10.1111/ijcs.12881. Granada, 1,343 questionnaires. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12881A single city, 2018 data. The authors themselves flag the risk of endogeneity: someone who would stay longer and spend more variously is more likely to choose platform accommodation in the first place.↩
16. Chiara Farronato – Andrey Fradkin: The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry: The Case of Airbnb and the Accommodation Industry. American Economic Review, 112(6): 1782-1817, 2022. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180260. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20180260 https://andreyfradkin.com/assets/airbnb_welfare_paper.pdf↩
17. Georgios Zervas – Davide Proserpio – John W. Byers: The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry. Journal of Marketing Research, 54(5): 687-705, 2017. DOI: 10.1509/jmr.15.0204. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.15.0204The earlier 2015 working-paper version reported a 13% effect in Austin; the published study reports 8–10%. We always cite the published value.↩
18. Local Law 18 of 2022, New York City (Short-Term Rental Registration Law). Enforcement began on 5 September 2023. The law is applied by the city's Office of Special Enforcement. https://www.nyc.gov/site/specialenforcement/index.page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Law_18_of_2022The second link is a summary article, not a primary source. The official text of the law is available in the New York City Council's legislative records.↩
19. New York City short-term rental market after Local Law 18. Hospitality Net, 2025. https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4124666.html↩
20. NYC's Airbnb ban failed to lower rents. AOL / The Wall Street Journal analysis based on CoStar and Miller Samuel data, September 2025. https://www.aol.com/news/nyc-airbnb-ban-failed-lower-212121367.htmlA press analysis based on market data, not a peer-reviewed study. We found no peer-reviewed causal study of the effect on rents.↩
21. Kaihang Zhao – Tal Shoshani – Davide Proserpio: How Short-Term Rental Regulations Reshape Urban Spending: Evidence from New York City's Restaurant Sector. SSRN, 6 January 2026. Method: propensity score matching and difference-in-differences, SafeGraph transaction data, 3,220 restaurants, July 2022 – July 2024. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6065366 https://www.realab.blog/p/when-airbnb-leaves-town-how-new-yorksA working paper, not peer-reviewed. The second link is a summary produced with the authors' involvement; the detailed methodological figures come from there.↩
22. Int. 1107-2024, New York City Council. The proposal stalled at committee stage; its status is "Filed (End of Session)", 31 December 2025. https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7019728↩
23. Änderung des Zweckentfremdungsverbot-Gesetzes (ZwVbG). GÖRG, 11 April 2018. The amendment entered into force on 20 April 2018; displaying the registration number has been mandatory since 1 August 2018. https://www.goerg.de/de/aktuelles/veroeffentlichungen/11-04-2018/aenderung-des-zweckentfremdungsverbot-gesetzes-zwvbg↩
24. Raad van State, judgment in cases 202102768/1/A3 and 202102675/1/A3, 31 May 2023. The housing act did not authorise the blanket ban imposed on three inner-city neighbourhoods. https://www.raadvanstate.nl/@137502/202102768-1-a3-202102675-1-a3-en/↩
25. Changes to the Lisbon Municipal Regulation on Local Lodging. PLMJ, December 2025. The amendment entered into force on 6 December 2025. https://www.plmj.com/en/knowledge/informative-notes/Changes-to-the-Lisbon-Municipal-Regulation-on-Local-Lodging/34253/↩
26. Councillors agree changes to Edinburgh's short-term lets licensing policy. City of Edinburgh Council, January 2025. https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/news/article/14148/councillors-agree-changes-to-edinburgh-s-short-term-lets-licensing-policy↩
27. HCSO 2022 census database, table WBL018, HU11 (Budapest): 961,061 dwellings, of which 800,338 occupied and 160,723 unoccupied (16.7%). Queryable without authentication. https://nepszamlalas2022.ksh.hu/adatbazis/The figure of 170,000 circulating in the press is the HCSO's 2023 preliminary release; the final database gives 160,723. Nationally the same correction went from 599,000 to 571,997.↩
28. BPDB, measurement deduplicated to unique NTAK identifiers, August 2026. The 14,602 dwelling-type Airbnb and Booking listings map to 9,415 unique properties (on average 1.55 listings per dwelling); at dwelling level there are 10,703 units let short-term, of which 6,703 are compliant and about 4,000 unlicensed (39%).The difference between the listing-level numbers (15,825 active listings, 5,374 unlicensed, 34%) and the dwelling-level ones is deduplication: the same dwelling may advertise on several platforms. The two levels must not be mixed.↩
29. GuestGuru: Budapest's empty homes. The full derivation of the housing-stock breakdown, its methodology and downloadable charts. /feketezok/ures-lakasok↩
30. HCSO 2016 microcensus, volume 7 (Housing conditions), table 3.3.2. Unoccupied dwellings in Budapest by use: 78,973 standing empty, 15,418 seasonally or secondarily occupied, 13,025 used for other purposes (as an office, surgery or shop). https://www.ksh.hu/mikrocenzus2016/docs/tablak/07/07_3_3.xlsThis is the only official survey of the use of unoccupied dwellings; the 2022 census no longer publishes this breakdown, so we carry the measured level forward.↩
31. Budapest Research Forum, Q4 2025: 4,461,680 m² of modern Budapest office stock, 12.5% vacancy (557,710 m² of vacant office space). https://www.portfolio.hu/ingatlan/20260121/meglepo-adat-erkezett-a-budapesti-irodapiacrol-csokkent-az-uresedes-812538↩
32. HCSO: Housing market prices, house price index, Q4 2025. Annual increase: Budapest 21, county seats 24, smaller towns 23, villages 37 per cent. https://www.ksh.hu/s/kiadvanyok/lakaspiaci-arak-lakasarindex-2025-iv-negyedev/index.html↩
33. Kyle Barron – Edward Kung – Davide Proserpio: The Effect of Home-Sharing on House Prices and Rents: Evidence from Airbnb. Marketing Science, 40(1): 23-47, 2021. DOI: 10.1287/mksc.2020.1227. In the median US zip code a 1 per cent increase in the number of listings raises rents by 0.018 per cent and house prices by 0.026 per cent. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2020.1227↩
34. Sophie Calder-Wang: The Distributional Impact of the Sharing Economy on the Housing Market. Airbnb took 0.68 per cent of New York's rental stock; if every such home returned to the long-term market, rents would change by 0.71 per cent. The median tenant's loss is USD 125 a year. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3908062A working paper under review at the American Economic Review; not a peer-reviewed publication, and it should be cited as such.↩
35. Act CXVII of 1995 on Personal Income Tax. From 1 January 2025 the itemised flat-rate tax for private individuals providing paying-guest accommodation is HUF 150,000 per habitable room per year in municipalities where the number of guest nights exceeded 2 million in the second year preceding the tax year. Budapest is such a municipality. https://njt.hu/jogszabaly/1995-117-00-00 https://nav.gov.hu/ado/szja/A_fizetovendeglatokat_erinto_valtozasokSection 57/A(4c) of the Act obliges the tax authority (NAV) to publish the list of affected municipalities by 31 January each year. In 2025 Budapest is the only entry on that list. A private individual may elect the itemised flat-rate tax for at most three properties; companies are taxed differently. The definition of a "habitable room" differs between NAV, NTAK and some district councils.↩
36. Act CLXIV of 2005 on Trade, and Government Decree 239/2009 (X. 20.) on the detailed conditions for pursuing accommodation service activities. https://njt.hu↩
37. Freedom-of-information request to the Józsefváros council, summer 2026.↩
38. Átlátszó: freedom-of-information request to all 23 Budapest district councils, 2020: 3,698 empty council-owned homes out of 38,114 (9.7%). https://atlatszo.hu/kozpenz/2021/01/21/az-onkormanyzati-lakasok-kozel-tiz-szazaleka-uresen-all-a-fovarosban-a-legtobb-a-8-keruletben/↩