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EU Commission proposes Affordable Housing Act with new powers to limit short-term rentals

On Wednesday 9 September 2026 the European Commission presented the Affordable Housing Act, a proposed EU regulation that lets national, regional and local authorities designate "areas under housing stress". An area normally qualifies where an average home costs at least eight times disposable income per person, that ratio has risen over ten years and pressure is unlikely to ease within three; at ten times or more, the ten-year test is dropped. The European Parliament and the member states must still approve it. In such areas, authorities must show a "significant adverse effect" from short-term rentals over at least three years. They may then introduce authorisation schemes, quantitative limits or bans on short-term letting of homes that are not the host's primary residence, and limit purchases of homes for short-term letting (for future purchases only). Restrictions are capped at five years, renewable after review. Hosts renting their own primary residence are exempt. "Housing has become too expensive for many people in the EU," the European Commission said. Industry groups counter that short-term rentals are about 1.2% of EU housing stock. In Sardinia the criteria have not yet been applied to any comune. In 2025 the island counted 46,024 private lodgings, 15,926 of them in Gallura Nord-Est Sardegna around Olbia and Golfo Aranci. Banca d'Italia puts the average home price at €1,587 per square metre in tourist comuni against €714 elsewhere. For visitors nothing changes now: since 20 May 2026 platforms already verify Italy's CIN registration numbers under the EU Short-Term Rental Data Regulation.

13 September 2026

Source: European Commission

EU Commission proposes Affordable Housing Act with new powers to limit short-term rentals

What it could mean for Olbia, north and south Sardinia

No official body has run the Commission's test on a Sardinian comune, and the Act itself is two to three years from adoption. What can be said today rests on three public inputs: asking prices (Idealista and Immobiliare.it, August 2026), declared income per taxpayer (Ministry of Economy data for tax year 2023, published April 2025) and Banca d'Italia's June 2026 report on the Sardinian economy. Two warnings apply. Asking prices are not the transaction prices the Commission will use, and Italian taxable income per taxpayer is not disposable income per person; both push a home-made ratio upwards. The figures below are indicative, not the Commission's method.

Olbia. Idealista lists Olbia at €3,810 per square metre in August 2026, an all-time high, up 8.4% in a year and 70% since August 2016 (€2,234). Immobiliare.it shows €3,669. Declared income per taxpayer is €21,215. On an 80-square-metre home those inputs give a multiple of 14 or more, far above the eight-times line. Yet the same city looks very different on official values: Banca d'Italia, using Revenue Agency data, finds that the price-to-income ratio fell between 2015 and 2024 in almost all Sardinian comuni, and most sharply in tourist ones, because incomes grew faster than assessed prices. Olbia is also demographically unusual: 61,739 residents on 1 January 2026, the only Sardinian city projected to keep growing to 2030. The ISTAT census counts 41,370 dwellings in the comune, of which 10,777 (26%) stand empty, against roughly 3,128 short-term rental listings (7.5% of the stock); a Sardinian survey by the operators' association AIGAB found that only 2.2% of the island's short-term lets were converted from long-term rentals, and classes Olbia with Cagliari and Alghero as a high-residency urban hub. Those are the numbers a comune would have to overcome to prove a three-year "significant adverse effect" from short-term rentals specifically. On price alone Olbia could pass the screening; on the evidence of harm it starts from a weak position.

North Sardinia. The coastal Gallura comuni carry the island's highest multiples: Arzachena €6,035–6,150 per square metre (Porto Cervo €7,721), Golfo Aranci €4,598–4,750 (up 11% in a year), San Teodoro €3,692–4,437, against declared incomes of €21,000–23,000. Alghero sits at €2,935–3,107 with a shrinking population (41,765, down 0.5% in a year). Santa Teresa Gallura and La Maddalena are still below their 2012–2013 price peaks, which weakens the ten-year deterioration leg for them. The structural fact in the north is not short-term letting but second homes: Banca d'Italia counts 38% of dwellings in tourist comuni as not occupied by residents (26% elsewhere), while tourist accommodation is 7.5% of the stock. AIGAB's typology says Arzachena, La Maddalena, Palau and Santa Teresa combine a very high share of unoccupied homes with a short-term rental share below the regional average. For these places the Act's sharper tool would be the forward-looking limit on buying homes to let short-term, not a ban on existing hosts, and primary-residence hosts would be exempt either way.

South Sardinia. Cagliari is the south's most plausible candidate on trend rather than level. Asking prices are €2,606–2,716 per square metre, still 4% below the January 2012 peak, but declared income per taxpayer is the island's highest at €29,094 (tax year 2024), so the indicative multiple lands at seven to nine, right at the eight-times boundary. Immobiliare.it's affordability index for Cagliari fell six points in a single year, one of the sharpest drops in Italy, while the population has slipped to about 146,600, some 5,000 below 2019. The city counts about 2,400 registered B&Bs and guesthouses. Villasimius (€3,467–3,709) and Pula (€2,800–2,870) show Gallura-style multiples driven by second homes. Sant'Antioco (€1,306, down 3.4%) and Carloforte (€1,801–2,009) remain below their 2014–2015 peaks, and Sassari, at €1,319–1,353 and 27% below its 2012 peak, is nowhere near the threshold.

Timeline and reactions. The proposal now goes through the ordinary legislative procedure; AIGAB does not expect final adoption before 2028. Even then, a comune would need a three-year evidence file before any restriction, and restrictions expire after five years unless renewed. Regional tourism assessor Franco Cuccureddu said in March 2026 that no Sardinian comune has more short-term rental dwellings than resident dwellings, that Sardinia is "not yet in overtourism", and that the Region is not drafting its own short-term rental law. AIGAB president Marco Celani asked: "Come può esserci stress abitativo dovuto agli affitti brevi dove questi pesano l'1,3% a fronte del 29% di abitazioni vuote?" ("How can there be housing stress caused by short-term rentals where they weigh 1.3% against 29% empty homes?"). Federalberghi president Bernabò Bocca, by contrast, called the framework "un passaggio importantissimo" for cities under pressure.

Cross-check: what the Gallura data already says

RENTAL12's fact-check of May 2026, The Gallura Paradox Exposed, reached the same structural conclusion from the Olbia side before the Act existed: 10,777 empty homes against 3,128 listings, a 36% population rise since 2001 with almost no new construction, and renovation costs of €1,800–2,500 per square metre that explain most of the centro storico price rise. Its figures are consistent with the inputs above (Olbia asking price €3,756 in March 2026 versus €3,669–3,810 in August 2026; Sardinia 312,423 vacant homes, 30.2% of stock, versus AIGAB's 319,211). The one point that has moved is scale: that article cited AIGAB's 37,094 online listings (3.5% of Sardinian homes), while the Region's 2025 tables now count 46,024 registered private lodgings and Banca d'Italia 47,217 short-term rental dwellings, different definitions rather than a contradiction. The Act, if adopted, would turn that evidence question into a legal one: a comune could restrict short-term lets only after proving they, and not empty second homes, are what squeezes residents. RENTAL12's broader review of the research is in Debunking the STR housing myth and its analysis of Italy's rental law in Italy's rental law and the housing crisis.

Further sources

Banca d'Italia, L'economia della Sardegna (June 2026) · Idealista Sardegna price report (August 2026) · Immobiliare.it, Mercato immobiliare Olbia · La Nuova Sardegna, declared incomes in all 377 comuni (18 April 2025) · ANSA, AIGAB survey (11 April 2026) · Sardiniapost, Cuccureddu interview (30 March 2026) · idealista/news, AIGAB and Confedilizia reactions (7 September 2026) · Gallura Oggi, Olbia population (22 August 2026) · Regione Sardegna Osservatorio del Turismo, 2025 tables · Skift (9 September 2026)