Only 42% of vacation homes registered in the Canary Islands have requested their new registration number to be able to rent them legally. It should be remembered that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda of the Government of Spain activated the obtaining of the rental registration number on January 2, which will be mandatory from this July 1 to be able to operate on online tourist or seasonal rental platforms, differentiating whether it is rental by rooms or complete housing.
Since then, according to provisional data from the Ministry as of June 30 at 7:00 a.m., 30,060 tourist homes and 1,246 seasonal homes have requested their identification number. In contrast, the General Tourist Registry of the Canary Islands, dependent on the regional government, has 71,000 vacation homes registered in the archipelago.
Now that its effects come into force, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda will begin this Tuesday, July 1, to issue resolutions to require platforms to remove those ads that do not have a registration number, whether it is incorrect or has been canceled by the College of Registrars, among others.
Spain, through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda, has been the first country in the European Union to apply the community regulations regarding short-term rentals, whose effects are fully deployed from this Tuesday, after a provisional period of six months in which accommodations have been able to register gradually.
Minister Isabel Rodríguez has defended the need to regulate this type of accommodation to "end illegal tourist apartments that expel families from their neighborhoods," as well as fraud in seasonal rentals that some landlords use to "speculate" with the price of housing.
The registration system began operating on January 2, 2025, and since then, 215,438 applications have been made (data as of June 30 at 08:00). Of these, 94,209 are definitively active, 102,732 are provisional, that is, pending verification by the College of Registrars, which has a period of fifteen days to do so, and 18,497 have been revoked.
In the case of the Canary Islands, 31,306 applications have been carried out, most of them (30,060) for tourist rentals and, to a lesser extent, for seasonal rentals (1,246). Of these applications, 37% have been definitively approved, while 53.8% have been provisionally approved. In addition, 9% of these requests have been revoked.
In order, the autonomous communities of Andalusia, Catalonia, Valencian Community, Canary Islands and Balearic Islands are the ones that have requested the most registrations. Thus, these regions accumulate 82% of tourist rental applications approved definitively and 69% of provisional ones. This means that more than three out of every four applications for registration numbers for tourist rentals are concentrated in these five autonomous communities.
Three out of four applications are for tourist rentals. 78.87% of the applications are for tourist rentals (169,908) and the rest, 21.13%, for seasonal rentals (45,529). Of the applications already active definitively, tourist rentals represent 76.78%. Likewise, 80.11% are provisional and 82.58% of those revoked.
More than 130,000 applications in the last month
Since June 1, a total of 134,364 new applications have been made throughout the country in the short-term rental registry. This represents a growth in the last month of 165.73%.
The record since the registry exists was on June 27, when a total of 10,084 applications were accumulated.
How does the Digital Single Window work?
Operation of the Digital Single Window and the registry. The Digital Single Window for Leases is a digital gateway for the electronic transmission of data between online short-term rental platforms and the competent authorities, as well as to inform about the different uses, regulations and destinations of the units dedicated to short-term rentals throughout the national territory.
Likewise, the procedure to request the registration number is carried out through the electronic headquarters of the College of Registrars or in the competent Property Registry.
The application contains different identifying elements of the home that is going to be rented: whether it is to be used for tourist or seasonal purposes or whether it is to be rented by rooms or not. In addition, if the destination activity is subject to any prior administrative authorization or registration regime, the document that proves it must be included. For example, the license for the exploitation of a home for tourist use.
Once the application is registered, a provisional registration number is granted that allows operating on online platforms and that must be shown in each ad. That number will be active definitively once certified by the Registrar of compliance with the requirements, and revoked in case they are not met and are not corrected in a timely manner.
Rural tourism accommodations subject to their own regulations that require additional services to those of simple stay (breakfasts, for example) will not be required to obtain the registration number as they are services assimilated to those of hotel accommodation.
