Dutch municipalities’ Airbnb registration requirement easily bypassed with fake number

The registration obligation that many Dutch municipalities implemented on people who want to rent out their homes on Airbnb is laughably easy to bypass, according to research by NRC. The newspaper found that fraudulent landlords can simply post an ad on the house-sharing platform with a fake registration number.

A law implemented in 2021 made it possible for municipalities to obligate people who rent out their homes on house-sharing platforms to register with the municipality. That way, the landlord's identity is known, and fraudsters or people violating the local holiday rental rules can be addressed more easily. Currently, 26 Dutch municipalities, including Amsterdam, use the registration obligation. Airbnb ads for homes in these municipalities must state the registration number.

But this obligation is easy to circumvent by using an incorrect registration number, NRC found in figures on 49,894 apartments offered on Airbnb in July from Inside Airbnb, an independent project that collects information about the rental website. Landlords can just put in any number where the registration number should be. Airbnb isn’t obliged to check registration numbers - it is up to the municipality to notice problems and then request that Airbnb remove the ads.

NRC found at least 142 advertisements with obviously incorrect registration numbers. In more than 100 of them, the mistake is definitely not a typo. The registration number must start with the municipality code - 0363 for Amsterdam, for example. These ads’ registration numbers start with 0000, 1234, or ABCD. The actual number of incorrect ads is probably higher. More careful fraudsters could copy actual registration numbers from other ads and only change a digit or two.

Despite this issue, the municipality of Amsterdam is satisfied with the registration obligation. “The registration requirement works quite well thanks to the municipality’s own checks and reports we receive from locals,” alderman Dirk de Jager told NRC. The municipality now has “a better picture of the size and nature of tourist rentals” thanks to the law, he said.

Amsterdam reports all incorrect ads it encounters to Airbnb but no longer keeps track of how many there are. The municipality also fines fraudulent landlords when it encounters them. In 2023, Amsterdam imposed 18 fines for various violations related to holiday rentals.

Airbnb told the newspaper that it supports “good regulations” and “works closely with municipalities.”