Amsterdam slashing home holiday rentals to 15 nights per year in two popular areas
Amsterdam’s city government has announced plans to further restrict short-term vacation rentals in the entire city center district and in the De Pijp neighborhoods in the Zuid district. Residential property owners and residents in these areas will only be allowed to rent their homes to tourists a maximum of 15 days per year, down from 30, the city’s coalition leaders said in a statement on Tuesday. The city threatened to further cut off all holiday permits in these areas for longer periods of time.
The changes will take effect from April 2026 once the measure is approved by the full City Council. This decision is part of the city’s further efforts to tackle vacation rentals as a means to address issues cased by over-tourism, and to make popular neighborhoods more livable for local residents. The move comes in response to continued claims of tourist congestion and related disturbances in these areas.
This latest restriction builds on previous efforts to regulate short-term rentals in Amsterdam. Since 2014, the city has implemented various measures, including reducing the maximum rental period, introducing reporting and permit requirements, and establishing a registration process. “Although these steps have led to a reduction in nuisance, it has not yet decreased sufficiently in a number of neighborhoods,” the city leadership wrote in a statement.
“If this does not help enough, the municipality can take the next step by stopping the permitting of holiday rentals for three years in the neighborhoods with the most nuisance.”
With the move, the city’s political leadership wants to implement its “Holiday Rental Escalation Ladder,” a series of steps increasingly severe which can be utilized to address the problems. The three-year freeze on permitting holiday rentals would be the culmination in the step-by-step approach to tackling issues related to short-stay vacation rentals, allowing the city to adjust regulations based on ongoing monitoring and feedback.
In the coming months, the city plans to discuss the implementation of the “escalation ladder” with stakeholder organizations. Amsterdam residents and other interested parties will then have an opportunity to provide feedback on the plan during a public consultation period, that will be folded into the spring debate on the Housing Ordinance.
The City Council is expected to make a final decision on the reduced holiday rental nights by December 2025. The new rules would then go into effect in April 2026.
