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Is Medellín banning Airbnb?

Is Medellín actually banning Airbnb right now?

No. Medellín is currently making short-term rentals harder to operate in the wrong buildings and neighborhoods, but Airbnb remains legal across the city.

That distinction clears up most of the confusion around this subject. Medellín still recognizes viviendas turísticas as a legitimate part of its tourism industry. The city's latest guidance explains how owners can operate these properties legally, and Medellín recently launched a tourism-security plan covering 2026–2030 that explicitly includes tourist homes.

There is also a large formal market still operating. Medellín reported 8,951 tourist accommodations registered in the Registro Nacional de Turismo, or RNT, earlier this year. AirDNA's latest completed market data counted 14,021 active short-term-rental listings across Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com.

What has changed is how much freedom owners have. Medellín is inspecting residential buildings, checking whether tourist use is actually allowed, working with Migración Colombia to identify undeclared stays and proposing new zoning rules that would concentrate tourist accommodation in specific parts of the city.

Calling this an Airbnb ban overstates what Medellín has done. The city is building a much tighter short-term-rental system, and some apartments that operated comfortably a few years ago may no longer fit inside it.

What is happening in Medellín?	Current status	Citywide Airbnb ban?	What changes for owners?
RNT required for tourist accommodation	Already required	No	Informal operators face enforcement
Building rules checked more closely	Already happening	No	Some apartments cannot legally host tourists
Land-use controls increasing	Already happening	No	Residential properties can face closure or investigation
El Poblado receiving targeted inspections	Already happening	No	Enforcement risk is higher
New zoning proposed for tourist housing	Under POT revision	No	Many residential locations could become unsuitable
Airbnb prohibited throughout Medellín	No	—	Airbnb remains legal

Why does it suddenly feel like Medellín is cracking down on Airbnb?

Medellín's Airbnb crackdown has become much more visible because the city is now enforcing rules that many short-term rentals previously managed to operate around.

The shift has happened in layers. During 2025, Medellín inspected 135 tourist homes and found problems in 51 of them, according to the city government's tourism-security reporting. That works out to roughly 38% of the homes inspected. Those inspections were targeted rather than random, so we cannot say that 38% of all Medellín Airbnbs break the rules. Still, finding problems in more than one out of every three inspected properties gives authorities a pretty obvious reason to keep digging.

The territorial-control department then compiled 93 technical reports involving possible planning violations at short-term rentals. The problems included prohibited land uses, unauthorized changes of use, construction without the proper licence and breaches of propiedad horizontal rules. Thirty-four locations were identified without the required licence.

El Poblado has since become a particular focus. Authorities have responded to 71 requests involving disturbances or short-term rentals in residential buildings and another 18 requests to investigate possible land-use violations.

Meanwhile, the city's proposed revision of the Plan de Ordenamiento Territorial, or POT, would formally treat tourist housing as an accommodation service and limit it to specific mixed-use areas.

Put together, this is a clear break from the earlier environment. Medellín is no longer comfortable letting thousands of apartments function as tourist accommodation simply because nobody challenged them.

Can you still legally run an Airbnb in Medellín?

Yes. Running an Airbnb in Medellín is still legal today, but the property now needs to pass several tests that owners sometimes treated as optional in the past.

The first is the Registro Nacional de Turismo. Colombian law requires tourist-service providers to register before beginning operations. The RNT therefore remains the basic legal entry point for an Airbnb, Vrbo or other tourist accommodation.

An apartment inside a propiedad horizontal building has another requirement. Colombia's Decreto 1836 says an operator registering a tourist home must declare that the building regulations authorize the unit to provide tourist accommodation.

Medellín is also looking at urban-planning rules. A property can have an RNT and still create problems if its approved use, building licence or location does not allow the activity being carried out there.

Guest registration matters as well. Tourist-accommodation providers must record guests through Colombia's accommodation-registration system, while stays involving foreigners create additional reporting obligations.

The platform itself makes little difference. Moving a property from Airbnb to Booking.com, Vrbo or direct bookings does not change the nature of the activity. Authorities care about what the apartment is actually being used for.

Test	Who sets or enforces it?	What the host needs	Can it stop the Airbnb?
Tourism registration	Colombian tourism authorities	Active RNT	Yes
Property-horizontal rules	Building regulations / national law	Tourist accommodation expressly allowed	Yes
Land use	Medellín	Compatible use	Yes
Building or adaptation licence	Medellín	Correct licence where required	Yes
Guest reporting	National authorities	Proper accommodation records	Yes

Can a residential building in Medellín simply ban Airbnb?

Yes. A Medellín apartment building can prevent short-term tourist rentals when its propiedad horizontal regulations do not authorize that use.

This is one of the biggest practical constraints on Airbnb in Medellín today, and it existed before the latest crackdown. Colombian tourism rules require tourist accommodation inside a propiedad horizontal property to be expressly allowed by the building regulations.

Medellín is now paying much more attention to whether that requirement is actually respected. The city has reminded administrators of residential buildings that they should report and prevent short-term accommodation that violates internal regulations or the authorized use of the property.

That creates a situation many buyers still underestimate. An apartment can sit in the middle of El Poblado, have obvious tourist demand and appear perfect for Airbnb while being unusable for short stays because the building rules prohibit them.

A visible Airbnb listing also proves very little. Platforms can show properties before anyone has established whether the building, RNT and planning rules all line up.

For someone considering an apartment specifically for short-term rentals, the building regulations now deserve to be checked before the revenue projections.

Why is Medellín targeting Airbnb in El Poblado so heavily?

El Poblado is currently receiving the hardest Airbnb scrutiny because nowhere else in Medellín combines tourism demand and ordinary apartment living at the same intensity.

The concentration is easy to understand. Provenza, Parque Lleras, Manila, the Milla de Oro and nearby areas attract huge numbers of foreign visitors, while much of El Poblado remains composed of residential apartment buildings. Tourist demand therefore spills directly into properties that were never necessarily designed to function like hotels.

Medellín said the recent El Poblado operations followed repeated complaints about coexistence and apartments being turned into temporary accommodation. Authorities have handled 71 requests involving disturbances and short-term rentals in residential buildings, alongside 18 requests for checks on possible irregular land use.

The enforcement method is also getting more serious. Medellín has been discussing data exchanges with Migración Colombia so officials can identify buildings where foreign visitors are staying and check whether those properties are properly registered.

Authorities have even flagged contracts supposedly lasting more than 30 days when they suspect the paperwork is being used to hide much shorter tourist stays.

El Poblado is basically showing what tighter regulation looks like in practice. Short-term rentals are still everywhere, but operating inside an ordinary residential building now attracts much more attention than it used to.

Is Medellín actually getting better at finding illegal Airbnbs?

Yes. Medellín is currently moving beyond basic licence checks and building a much stronger paper trail around short-term rentals.

Earlier enforcement depended heavily on inspections and complaints. Those still matter, but Medellín now has several datasets that can be connected.

The RNT tells authorities which tourist providers are registered. Urban-planning records show the approved use of properties. Building administrators can flag apartments that breach propiedad horizontal rules. Guest-registration systems show accommodation activity. Migración Colombia can provide another clue when foreign visitors repeatedly appear at addresses supposedly functioning as normal homes.

That makes informal operation harder to hide.

The city's recent El Poblado campaign shows the change particularly well. Officials said they were examining what activity actually takes place inside properties and had identified cases where longer lease contracts might be masking short stays.

That is a bigger change than another inspection campaign. A city with thousands of short-term rentals will never inspect every apartment manually. Connecting existing records gives Medellín a way to narrow the search.

As seen above, 51 of the 135 tourist homes inspected in 2025 had some form of non-compliance. Better targeting should make it easier to decide which properties are worth inspecting in the first place.

How big is Medellín's Airbnb market today?

Medellín still has a huge short-term-rental market, with about 14,000 active listings in AirDNA's latest completed dataset and almost 9,000 formally registered tourist accommodations reported by the city.

Those two figures measure different things. AirDNA tracks active properties across Airbnb, Vrbo and Booking.com and attempts to de-duplicate homes listed on several platforms. Medellín's 8,951 figure comes from the Registro Nacional de Turismo and refers to registered tourist accommodations.

We therefore should not subtract one from the other and conclude that the remaining properties are illegal. Some categories, timing differences and definitions do not line up cleanly enough for that calculation.

The point is scale. Medellín's short-term-rental economy is measured in thousands of properties, making it a meaningful part of the city's housing and tourism landscape.

Medellín's own latest public communication also says short-term rentals have grown particularly strongly in El Poblado, Laureles-Estadio and La Candelaria.

That scale helps explain the harder regulatory approach. Occasional home-sharing can be handled as a small tourism activity. A market containing roughly 14,000 active rentals starts raising questions about land use, permanent housing, neighborhood rules, safety and enforcement capacity.

Are Medellín Airbnb listings finally falling?

Yes. Medellín's latest AirDNA data shows a striking drop in active short-term-rental supply, although regulation should not automatically get credit for the entire decline.

AirDNA currently counts 14,021 active Medellín listings, down 41.6% year over year. Working backward from that percentage puts the comparable earlier level at roughly 24,000 listings.

At the same time, occupancy has climbed to 63%, up 25.9% year over year. Average daily rates have fallen 16.9% to $71, while RevPAR has increased 8.3% to $45.

That does not look like a simple Airbnb collapse. Supply has contracted sharply, yet the remaining listings are filling a much larger share of their available nights. Guests are still coming; they are simply paying less per booked night on average.

AirDNA also reports $15,500 in trailing annual revenue for the average active listing, up 92.4% year over year. We should treat that increase carefully because a large change in which listings remain active can move the average substantially. It does, however, reinforce the idea that surviving supply is being used more intensively.

Regulation is one plausible contributor to the shrinking listing count, alongside host exits, platform changes and market consolidation. We do not have enough evidence to assign a clean percentage of the decline to Medellín's crackdown.

Medellín short-term-rental metric	Latest completed data	Year-over-year change	What we learn
Active listings	14,021	-41.6%	Supply has contracted sharply
Occupancy	63%	+25.9%	Remaining listings are filling more nights
Average daily rate	$71	-16.9%	Nightly pricing has weakened
RevPAR	$45	+8.3%	Higher occupancy is outweighing lower rates
Average annual revenue	$15,500	+92.4%	Revenue is concentrating among active properties

Is Medellín's new POT going to ban Airbnb?

No. Medellín's proposed POT would keep tourist rentals legal while making location much more important than it is today.

The proposal gives vivienda turística a clearer planning definition by treating it as an accommodation service. Medellín says stays below 30 days fall within this category and require an RNT.

The major change concerns where these properties can operate. The proposed rules would restrict tourist housing to specific high-mixed-use areas and selected medium-mixed-use areas, including certain special-treatment zones and transit-oriented-development areas.

A change in the approved use of a property could also require an adaptation licence.

This could be much more consequential than another registration requirement. An owner can fix missing paperwork. Location is harder to fix.

The POT revision is still going through the formal planning and approval process, so those proposed zoning restrictions should not be presented as if they already apply everywhere today. Medellín has published the proposed planning documents and is advancing the wider revision, which covers a large share of the city's urban rules.

If the tourist-housing provisions survive that process, the Medellín Airbnb market could become far more geographically concentrated.

Could Medellín's zoning rules effectively kill Airbnb in some residential areas?

Yes. Medellín could make short-term rentals practically unworkable in some residential areas without ever announcing a citywide Airbnb ban.

This is probably the biggest regulatory risk for owners now.

Under Medellín's proposed POT approach, tourist accommodation would be steered toward selected mixed-use zones. An apartment outside those zones could have strong tourist demand and a willing owner yet still struggle to obtain the planning basis required for short-term accommodation.

The effect would be very different across the city. Tourist-oriented corridors could keep a large professional short-term-rental industry, while ordinary residential streets could lose much of their Airbnb inventory.

That would also change property values inside the investor market. Two comparable apartments near each other could command very different prices if one sits in a tourist-compatible building and zone while the other can realistically serve only long-term residents.

For Airbnb buyers, Medellín's land-use map may end up mattering more than Airbnb's heat map.

Property situation	Risk today	Risk under proposed zoning	Likely Airbnb outlook
Tourist-oriented building in compatible mixed-use area	Lower	Lower	Strongest regulatory position
STR-friendly building with uncertain zoning	Medium	Higher	Depends heavily on final POT
Residential building with unclear STR rules	High	High	Increasingly difficult
Building expressly prohibiting tourist stays	Very high	Very high	Poor Airbnb asset
Property outside future tourist-compatible areas	Varies	Potentially very high	Could lose short-stay viability

Is the 30-day rule an easy Airbnb loophole in Medellín?

No. A 31-day contract is currently a weak strategy if the property still behaves like tourist accommodation.

Medellín generally uses stays below 30 days when discussing viviendas de renta corta, which naturally creates the temptation to push bookings just beyond that threshold.

Authorities are already looking for that behavior. During the recent El Poblado controls, Medellín said it had identified possible cases where contracts longer than 30 days were being used to conceal short-term accommodation that lacked the required authorizations.

What happens inside the property therefore matters alongside what the contract says.

A genuine medium- or long-term residential lease remains different from repeatedly rotating tourists through an apartment. Problems begin when an operator keeps essentially the same short-stay business model and relies on paperwork to make it look like something else.

For an investor, "we can always switch to 31 days" should not be treated as a reliable backup plan.

Is Medellín cracking down because Airbnb has become too big?

Yes, size is clearly part of it. Medellín's short-term-rental industry has become large enough that the city now sees it as an urban-planning issue rather than only a tourism business.

The 8,951 registered tourist accommodations reported by Medellín already show a substantial formal industry. AirDNA's latest data puts the active short-term-rental universe at roughly 14,000 properties.

At the same time, Medellín has a housing shortage. The city has cited a deficit of about 38,000 homes while discussing the current POT revision. Council debates around that revision have also focused on rising housing costs, gentrification and the pressure created by changing patterns of urban use.

Airbnb did not create those problems by itself. Medellín also faces population growth, constrained supply in desirable areas, informal urban development, construction economics and broader demand for housing.

But thousands of apartments moving through the tourist market can matter a great deal in neighborhoods where visitors concentrate. The effect is much more plausible in El Poblado or Laureles than in a part of Medellín with little short-term-rental activity.

Medellín's proposed response is revealing: tourist housing can remain, but the city wants much clearer limits on where it operates.

Does Medellín still want Airbnb tourists?

Very much so. Medellín is still spending heavily to attract visitors, and its current tourism policy assumes that legal tourist apartments will remain part of the city's accommodation supply.

The economic incentive is enormous. Medellín's tourism intelligence system measured about COP 4 trillion in tourist card spending during 2025 across roughly 16 million transactions. Because Credibanco processes an estimated 45% of card transactions in the city, Medellín estimated total tourist spending could have been close to COP 9 trillion even before counting cash.

International travelers are particularly important. They represented only 21.6% of the transactions in the city's analysis but generated 49.1% of measured tourism spending. U.S. visitors alone accounted for COP 906 billion, almost nine times the spending attributed to the second-largest international market.

The city has also invested roughly COP 10.5 billion since 2025 in promoting Medellín across international and Latin American tourism markets.

At the same time, Medellín recently released a new guide aimed specifically at operators of tourist homes and created a tourism-security plan running through 2030.

A government preparing to eliminate tourist apartments would have little reason to keep building operating standards around them while spending heavily to attract the customers who use them.

Medellín still wants tourism. These days it wants more control over the properties serving that tourism.

Recent tourism indicator	Scale	What it tells us
Measured tourist card spending in 2025	~COP 4 trillion	Tourism already supports major local spending
City's estimate after adjusting for processor coverage	~COP 9 trillion	True tourism spending is likely much larger
International share of measured tourism spending	49.1%	Foreign visitors are economically important
Spending attributed to U.S. visitors	COP 906 billion	The U.S. market is unusually important
Recent tourism-promotion investment	~COP 10.5 billion	Medellín is still actively seeking visitors

Which Medellín Airbnbs are most at risk now?

The most exposed Medellín Airbnbs today are apartments operating like hotels inside ordinary residential buildings where short-term tourist use was never clearly authorized.

Several risk factors can pile up on the same property. An owner might lack an active RNT, have building regulations that do not permit tourist accommodation, operate in a location with incompatible land use and rely heavily on frequent stays by foreign visitors.

Those are exactly the types of situations Medellín's current enforcement tools are becoming better at finding.

By contrast, a unit inside a purpose-built or clearly tourist-friendly building, with an active RNT and compatible land use, sits in a much stronger position. The final POT could strengthen that divide further if tourist housing becomes concentrated into clearly defined zones.

This makes legal status increasingly part of the real estate asset itself. A one-bedroom apartment with permission to run short stays may eventually be a different product from an almost identical one across the street that cannot.

For Airbnb investors, the premium attached to compliant buildings could therefore become more important than small differences in finishes, views or amenities.

Is Airbnb still worth investing in after Medellín's crackdown?

Yes, but Medellín's Airbnb market currently rewards the right property much more than the simple idea of owning an apartment in a tourist neighborhood.

Demand is still there. AirDNA's latest completed data shows 63% occupancy, and RevPAR is up 8.3% year over year even after average nightly rates fell.

At the same time, active supply has dropped 41.6%. If that contraction persists, legally compliant properties could benefit from having fewer competitors.

The bigger risk now sits on the regulatory side. Historic Airbnb revenue cannot tell us whether a property will still be allowed to produce that revenue several years from now. Buyers need to understand the building regulations, the RNT position, current land use and how the address could fit under Medellín's revised POT.

Properties specifically designed for tourist accommodation look much more defensible than generic residential apartments that happen to perform well on Airbnb today.

This changes the Medellín investment thesis quite a bit. A few years ago, investors could focus heavily on occupancy, nightly rates and location. Today, legal durability belongs in the same conversation.

So, is Medellín banning Airbnb?

No. Medellín is not banning Airbnb, and the evidence currently points toward a regulated, geographically concentrated short-term-rental market rather than the disappearance of Airbnb from the city.

The legal market is still large. Medellín recently counted 8,951 registered tourist accommodations, while AirDNA tracks roughly 14,000 active short-term rentals. The city has just produced fresh operating guidance for tourist homes, incorporated them into its 2026–2030 tourism-security strategy and continues spending heavily to grow tourism.

The tougher side of the story is equally clear. Medellín is checking residential buildings more aggressively, using land-use rules against unauthorized accommodation, involving building administrators, looking at migration data and proposing a POT that would restrict tourist housing to selected areas.

For travelers, Airbnb should remain a major part of Medellín's accommodation market.

For compliant operators in buildings and locations designed to accept tourists, the business is still very much alive.

Owners relying on a residential apartment whose rules were always ambiguous face a much less forgiving environment now. Some of those properties could effectively lose their short-term-rental use even though Airbnb itself remains legal.

That is the clearest answer to the original question: Medellín is keeping Airbnb, but the era when almost any well-located apartment could be treated as an Airbnb is starting to close.

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