Brussels plans to combat “illegal” Airbnbs in the city center. The Brussels Times reports that city officials want to clamp down on the commercialization of Airbnbs and return properties to the rental market:

Airbnbs have become big business, but they are often run by professionals who buy a large number of properties and rent them through the site. Some neighborhoods are left with fewer and fewer apartments available to rent and the balance between residents and tourists is threatened. Most of the Airbnbs in Brussels are illegal and don’t respect Brussels legislation on tourist accommodation. We want to avoid becoming like Paris or Amsterdam, where the site is even more popular. We don’t want just tourists living in the city center.

There are around 7,400 properties in the Brussels region on Airbnb, with 2,200 of them in Brussels. Inside Airbnb, an independent website that gathers Airbnb data, reports that 64.5% of the listed properties in Brussels were entire homes. About 38.7% of the hosts had multiple listings. Generally, hosts with multiple listings are professionals who are not living in the property and are running the short term rentals as a business. A host under the name Serenia has 80 listings, the largest on the list compiled by the website.



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