A grain of intelligence has inserted itself into the government's plans for the short-term lettings market as booking sites such as Airbnb and Booking.com soon will be obliged only to list properties that are 'Alojamento Local' licensed.
This simple move will wipe out a major part of the illegal lettings economy, to which the government has pretended to object but in fact has encouraged by allowing illegal lettings to operate with only token State interference.
From July, properties whose owners are unable to demonstrate that they are legally able to be rented out, will be asked to remove them from lettings sites and it will be clear to browsers which properties are legal and which owners are tax evaders.
The new measure is included in a decree-law to simplify the Tourist Licence process and was approved by the Council of Ministers on Thursday. The new legislation covered clandestine lettings and has now gone off to the President for signature.
The Ministry of the Economy stated today that with this amendment, electronic platforms will "only to be able to list properties registered in the National Registry of Tourism," although this is not quite the case, yet.
Speaking to Jornal de Negócios, the Secretary of State for Tourism, Ana Mendes Godinho, said that the measure is intended to "ensure the competition rules are followed."
The new rules are due to take effect on July 1st, 2017, and allow a short period for the site owners to obtain property registration numbers from owners or ask owners to remove their unlicensed property from the site.
Airbnb already has started asking owners for the license or registration number of the property advertised on the platform.
One area of continuing concern is Airbnb’s comment today that it was "the property owner who would have to remove unregistered properties, not the company."
Currently, there are under 40,000 properties registered in the national register as Local Accommodation, or Alojamento Local, of a universe estimated at over 120,000 rental properties.
Ana Mendes Godinho has been in post for nearly 18 months and has done nothing to frustrate illegal rentals during this period. The Council of Ministers now has passed some nearly perfect legislation and it remains to be seen how the market reacts.
Without agreement from the rental platforms to remove illegally rented properties, the game of cat and mouse will continue - but the cat has just woken up.
