Thousands of Airbnb units are returning to the Dutch rental market — but internationals won't get them

Amsterdam has been tightening the screws on short-term rentals for years, and the results are already visible. Airbnb listings in the city dropped 54% between 2019 and 2024 as enforcement ramped up. Now the EU is stepping in with Regulation (EU) 2024/1028, effective May 20, 2026, which forces every short-term rental host across the bloc to register their property, obtain a unique identification number, and display it on every listing.

Platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com will have to verify those registration numbers and share granular booking data with national authorities every single month. That data pipeline is what changes everything. Dutch cities will finally have the infrastructure to enforce rules they've been writing for years but couldn't actually police.

Berlin already ran this playbook and returned 8,105 apartments to the long-term market. Florence saw 20–30% of short-term rental listings vanish after introducing mandatory registration codes. Amsterdam is about to do the same — and from April 1, 2026, the city is halving its annual cap from 30 nights to just 15 nights per year, with a maximum of four guests at a time.

Fines for violations are brutal: up to €87,000 for a first offense, €131,000 for repeat violations. At those numbers, the math for hosts changes overnight. Many will simply conclude that long-term rental is the safer bet.

Here's what nobody is spelling out clearly enough: the units coming back from Airbnb into the long-term market will overwhelmingly sit at or above the liberalisation threshold — currently €879.66 per month for independent housing in 2026. These are apartments that were pulling in €150–€200 per night on Airbnb in Amsterdam's canal belt, de Pijp, or Oud-West. They're not going to be rented out at €900/month to someone on the waiting list.

They'll enter the free-sector rental market, where landlords can set whatever price the market will bear. No huurcommissie oversight on the initial rent. No huurprijscheck applicable. The units will be priced at what the market supports — which in Amsterdam means €2,000–€3,500 for a one-bedroom in the centre.

Some landlords may also pull properties entirely rather than deal with long-term tenant protections under Dutch law. A tenant in a liberalised lease is far harder to remove than an Airbnb guest checking out on Sunday. The Woningwet gives tenants strong security of tenure, and landlords know it. A portion of these returning units may never reach the rental market at all.

This is where it gets uncomfortable. Amsterdam's explicit policy goal is to prioritize housing for "students, teachers, police, healthcare workers, shop retailers, taxi drivers, and many other residents that contribute to the social fabric of our cities". That language is deliberate. It means registered residents.

Access to social housing and many regulated private rentals requires registration in the BRP — the Basisregistratie Personen, the Dutch municipal personal records database. If you're not in the BRP, you're effectively invisible to large segments of the housing system. No BRP means no access to the social housing waiting lists that, in Amsterdam, currently stretch to 13 years. No huurtoeslag eligibility. No path into the regulated rental sector at all.

The internationals I hear from every day — the PhD researchers arriving at TU Delft, the engineers starting at ASML in Eindhoven, the recent graduates who found a job in Rotterdam but haven't secured a BSN yet — they're the ones who need housing most urgently. They're also the ones the system is structurally designed to deprioritize.

Even for free-sector rentals above the liberalisation threshold, landlords almost universally require proof of Dutch income, a Dutch employer contract, and often a Dutch guarantor. A BSN is table stakes. Without it, you're not getting a viewing, let alone a lease.

The EU regulation is genuinely good news for Dutch-registered tenants. More supply entering the long-term market — even at free-sector prices — puts downward pressure on rents overall. Amsterdam's housing shortage is acute enough that any addition to the long-term stock helps. Dutch tenants with BRP registration, stable income, and the right paperwork will see slightly more options and marginally less competition over the next 12–18 months.

But for internationals, the situation could actually get worse before it gets better. As the legal short-term rental market contracts, the informal channels that many newcomers rely on — extended Airbnb stays, informal sublets, Facebook housing groups — will shrink too. Enforcement against illegal rentals is intensifying, and the same data infrastructure that helps cities track compliance also makes it easier to identify and penalize landlords renting outside formal channels.

There's also a real risk of a shadow market emerging. Some landlords won't go through the hassle of proper long-term rental with all its tenant protections, but they also won't risk the fines for illegal short-term lets. The result is an unregulated grey zone — cash deals, off-book arrangements, exploitative terms — that preys precisely on the people who can't access the formal market.

For internationals arriving in the Netherlands, the practical reality is unchanged: you need a BSN, you need proof of income, and you need to be in the BRP before the housing market will open up to you in any meaningful way. The EU's new rules don't change that equation. They just make the gap between insiders and outsiders more visible.

If you're an international moving to the Netherlands in 2026 or 2027, don't count on the Airbnb crackdown to solve your housing problem. The units coming back to the market won't be priced for you, and the landlords holding them won't be looking for tenants without Dutch registration.

Get your BSN appointment booked before you arrive. Register in the BRP the moment you have a fixed address — even a temporary one. Without that, you're locked out of huurtoeslag, locked out of social housing, and locked out of the regulated rental sector entirely.

And set up alerts on every platform that matters — Funda, Pararius, Kamernet — because the competition for the units you can actually access isn't getting easier. It's getting harder. The EU just made the Dutch rental market more efficient for Dutch residents. For everyone else, the door is the same width it's always been.