Lisbon, Oct. 9, 2026 (Lusa) - Lisbon currently has 11,704 registered short-term rental accommodation properties, 37% fewer than in 2025, mainly due to the removal of inactive listings, but these properties have not entered the housing market, the Vizinhos em Lisboa residents' association revealed on Friday.
This is one of the conclusions of the "Snapshot of Short-Term Rental Accommodation in Lisbon 2023–2026", published by the residents' association, an analysis that cross-references four data extracts from the National Register of Short-Term Rental Accommodation (RNAL) with the 2021 Census data from Statistics Portugal (INE).
Earlier this year, Lisbon city council (CML) cancelled 6,765 short-term rental accommodation (AL) registrations – representing around 40% of the total – due to a lack of compulsory third-party liability insurance.
«Lisbon has 11,704 short-term rental properties and 69,070 beds. This is 37% and 36% fewer, respectively, than in 2025», noted the analysis, concluding that «the decline is primarily a purge of inactive registrations: 81% of active properties were registered between 2015 and 2019, and only 332 new ones have been added since 2023».
However, the association checked a random sample of properties with cancelled tenancy agreements in the parish of Santa Maria Maior and found that only 11% had been advertised for sale or rent on the Idealista property platform in the last year, whilst in the parish of Ajuda, where all properties were checked, the percentage ranged between 6% and 8%.
«On the other hand, and perhaps even more revealing: the overall number of listings in Lisbon is now in line with that of a year ago,» it emphasised, which means that «these properties did not reach the housing market».
The data collected reveals that the capital's historic centre remains saturated, with the parishes of Santa Maria Maior and Misericórdia recording more rental beds than residents and, together with the parishes of São Vicente and Santo António, accounting for 61% of the city's short-let properties.
In the case of Santa Maria Maior, the ratio is 69 short-let properties for every 100 occupied homes, whilst the city average is five, the analysis noted.
The association pointed out that the 2021 Census recorded 48,018 vacant homes in Lisbon – four times the current number of short-let properties – which «could accommodate around 105,000 people».
Furthermore, the association reported evidence of holiday lets operating without registration, following a test involving booking requests, in which at least 4% of the cancelled holiday lets continued to accept guests.
In this regard, the association proposed to Lisbon city council (CML) that it maintain restrictions on short-let accommodation in saturated parishes, monitor the «new frontier of expansion in Penha de França, Campo de Ourique and Alvalade», mobilise the vacant housing stock and restore «the transparency of the tourism board open data by reinstating the email addresses and adding the tax identification numbers of the companies operating short-term rental accommodation".
MPE/AYLS // AYLS
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