Is Airbnb still allowed in São Paulo condos?

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Is Airbnb still legal in São Paulo condos today?

Yes, Airbnb is still legal in São Paulo condos today, but owners can no longer assume that every ordinary residential apartment can be used for frequent short stays.

São Paulo has no citywide ban covering normal privately owned apartments, and the short-term-rental market is still huge. AirDNA's latest completed-month data counts 40,162 active short-term-rental listings in the city. Inside Airbnb counted 42,378 Airbnb listings in its June 2026 dataset, including 41,710 classified as short-term rentals.

The difficult part is what happens inside each condominium. The Superior Tribunal de Justiça, Brazil's highest court for federal non-constitutional law, has become much clearer about frequent, professionalized short stays in residential buildings. In its 2026 decision in REsp 2.121.055, the court said that repeated economic exploitation of an apartment for brief stays can stop qualifying as residential use. In a residential condo, that type of use requires authorization backed by two-thirds of the owners.

There is also a completely separate rule for São Paulo's subsidized HIS and HMP apartments. Short-term rental of those units is prohibited by municipal law.

So Airbnb remains very much alive in São Paulo. The old assumption that owning the apartment automatically gives someone the right to run it as a high-turnover Airbnb is the part that no longer holds up.

What changed for Airbnb in Brazilian condos recently?

Airbnb became harder to operate in residential condos after the STJ gave a much sharper answer on repeated short stays in 2026.

The court had already been moving in this direction. In REsp 1.819.075, decided in 2021, the STJ dealt with an apartment divided among unrelated short-term guests and accepted the condo's restrictions. Another 2021 case, REsp 1.884.483, reinforced the ability of residential condominiums to control short-stay use that clashes with the building's residential purpose.

REsp 2.121.055 pushed the issue further. The STJ's Second Section ruled that short-stay contracts involving repeated economic exploitation or professionalization can change the effective use of an apartment. If the condominium is residential, two-thirds of the owners must approve that different use.

The judges also made clear that Airbnb itself is not what decides the case. A platform can be used for a legitimate seasonal residential rental. What the court looks at is how the apartment actually operates.

Then came Tema Repetitivo 1443, which the STJ accepted shortly afterward. That case asks an even more precise question: when a condo convention simply says that apartments are for residential use, is that clause by itself enough to prevent short rentals through digital platforms even when Airbnb is never expressly mentioned?

That issue remains unresolved. It is the main reason we should not pretend that Brazilian condo law has already reached one perfectly clean Airbnb rule.

Did the STJ effectively ban Airbnb in residential condos?

No, the STJ did not impose a general Airbnb ban on residential condos, although its latest ruling makes frequent commercial short stays much harder to defend.

The court focused on what it calls contratos atípicos de curta estadia: atypical short-stay contracts. These sit somewhere between a traditional residential lease and hotel accommodation.

Several facts can make the activity look less residential. The STJ specifically pointed to frequent availability, very short bookings, repeated economic exploitation, renting different rooms to unrelated people and services such as daily cleaning, laundry, meals, reception or concierge.

That creates a real difference between two apartments advertised on Airbnb. A furnished apartment rented to one family for two months can still look like temporary residential occupation. An apartment changing guests every two or three nights throughout the year looks much closer to a professional accommodation business.

The platform name adds very little to that analysis. Airbnb, Booking.com, a property manager or even a conventional classified ad can be used to arrange different kinds of contracts.

For São Paulo owners, the practical change is clear: courts are looking much more closely at the operating model behind the listing.

Does Brazil's 90-day seasonal-rental law protect Airbnb hosts?

Brazil's 90-day seasonal-rental law can protect genuine temporary residential rentals, but it does not create a 90-day Airbnb safe zone.

Article 48 of the Lei do Inquilinato recognizes locação para temporada, a temporary residential lease lasting no more than 90 days. The law gives examples such as leisure, temporary work, courses and medical treatment.

The important part is the residential purpose of the stay. The 90-day figure is the maximum duration of this legal category. It does not mean that every reservation below 90 days automatically becomes a protected seasonal lease.

We can see why from a simple example. One apartment rented to the same household for 60 days has one occupant cycle. Another apartment could accumulate the same 60 occupied nights through 20 separate three-night bookings. Those two businesses have completely different levels of turnover even though every individual contract stays below 90 days.

The STJ's recent reasoning allows courts to look at exactly those differences.

Calling every reservation a "seasonal rental" also does little if the operation itself shows constant turnover, commercial organization and hotel-like services. Judges can look through the label to the actual use.

So the 90-day law still matters, especially for medium-term furnished rentals. It gives far less comfort to someone running a stream of weekend bookings in an exclusively residential building.

Can a São Paulo condo ban Airbnb just because the building is residential?

A residential-only clause already creates serious Airbnb risk in São Paulo, but whether that clause automatically blocks every short rental is still being settled by the STJ.

This is where the law is least tidy.

REsp 2.121.055 gives residential condos a strong position against frequent, professionalized short stays. The STJ concluded that this kind of activity can depart from the building's residential purpose and therefore needs approval from two-thirds of the owners.

Tema 1443 asks a broader question. The court will decide whether a convention stating only that units are for residential purposes can prevent short-period rentals through digital platforms even without an explicit Airbnb or short-stay prohibition.

That distinction could have a large practical impact.

If the STJ ultimately decides that "residential use" alone is enough, many condos will already have the wording they need. If the court demands something more explicit for at least some forms of short rental, buildings wanting certainty will have more reason to amend their conventions.

For now, a buyer should be cautious when someone says, "The convention doesn't mention Airbnb, so it's allowed." That conclusion goes further than the law supports.

How much power does a São Paulo condo have over Airbnb?

São Paulo condos now have substantial power over Airbnb-style short stays, and a two-thirds vote can be decisive when the proposed use conflicts with the building's residential purpose.

Brazil's Civil Code requires owners to respect the destination assigned to the building. Article 1.351 now sets a two-thirds threshold for changing the destination of a building or individual unit, following a legal change made in 2022.

The STJ applied that threshold directly in REsp 2.121.055. When repeated short stays amount to a different use from the residential purpose stated in the convention, the court says that use must be approved by two-thirds of the condominium owners.

That threshold makes one common sales pitch pretty weak: "Airbnb isn't approved yet, but the owners can vote on it later."

Getting two-thirds of an entire condominium behind a controversial short-stay business can be difficult. Owners who live in the building may have very different priorities from investors focused on nightly revenue.

A building where the legal documents already accommodate short stays is therefore worth treating very differently from one where owners merely hope to win a future vote.

What makes an Airbnb look too much like a hotel to the STJ?

Frequent guest turnover and professionalized operation are currently the clearest signs that a short-term rental has moved away from ordinary residential use.

The STJ has given unusually concrete examples. Courts can look at how often the unit is offered, whether there is any meaningful minimum stay, whether different rooms are rented separately to strangers, and whether the operator provides daily cleaning, laundry, food, reception or concierge-type services.

No single factor automatically decides the case. The combination is what matters.

Length of stay is especially useful because it changes the scale of turnover so dramatically. A unit occupied through 60-night rentals could change occupants around six times in a fully booked year. Thirty-night rentals imply roughly 12 possible turnovers. Seven-night stays push that above 50. Two-night stays can theoretically create more than 180 guest cycles.

Actual occupancy will of course be lower, but the order of magnitude explains why permanent residents react differently to monthly furnished rentals and weekend accommodation.

Professional management adds another layer. Hiring a cleaner does not suddenly make an apartment commercial, but a unit managed year-round with dynamic pricing, automated check-in, continual guest turnover and hospitality services fits much more closely with the professionalization the STJ has highlighted.

Is Airbnb still a big business in São Paulo right now?

Yes, São Paulo still has one of the largest short-term-rental markets in Latin America, so legal tightening has clearly not killed Airbnb demand or supply.

Inside Airbnb counted 42,378 Airbnb listings in São Paulo in June 2026. Some 41,710 were classified as short-term rentals, and 36,396 — about 86% — were entire homes rather than rooms.

The professional side of the market is also hard to miss. Inside Airbnb classified 30,910 listings, or roughly 73% of the city's total, as belonging to hosts with more than one listing. The largest identified host, Tabas, managed 496 properties.

AirDNA's latest completed-month snapshot gives a slightly lower count because its methodology is different: 40,162 active short-term-rental listings across the platforms it tracks. It reports average occupancy of about 60%.

The two databases should not be combined as though they were measuring exactly the same thing. They do agree on the order of magnitude: São Paulo has around 40,000 active or listed short-term rentals, with a large share operated as entire apartments and many controlled by multi-listing hosts.

AirDNA also shows active supply down 24.1% year over year while occupancy is up 16.5% and RevPAR is up 11.7%. We would be careful about attributing the whole fall in listings to legal restrictions because platform coverage and active-listing definitions can move these numbers. Still, São Paulo looks more like a market being filtered than one disappearing.

Is São Paulo actually cracking down on Airbnb now?

São Paulo is actively removing illegal short-term rentals from subsidized housing, but the city is not running a general crackdown on every Airbnb apartment.

The enforcement story has become much more concrete lately.

São Paulo's Decree 64.244/2025 expressly prohibited short-term rental in Habitação de Interesse Social and Habitação de Mercado Popular units, better known as HIS and HMP. These apartments receive urban-planning benefits because they are supposed to serve specific housing groups.

In May 2026, the municipal housing department, SEHAB, said it had asked Airbnb, Booking.com and QuintoAndar to remove offers involving 60,922 HIS/HMP units identified in developments across the city.

The wording around that figure needs care. It does not prove that 60,922 separate illegal Airbnb ads existed. The city was working from units in affected developments and found offers replicated across platforms.

The more useful update came in August. SEHAB reported that digital platforms had started removing irregular HIS/HMP short-term-rental listings following the city's enforcement work.

That moves the story beyond rules sitting on paper. São Paulo has shown that it is willing to identify restricted units, contact platforms directly and get listings taken down.

The scope remains targeted at protected housing. Owners of ordinary unrestricted apartments should not read this as evidence of a municipal Airbnb ban.

Can HIS and HMP apartments in São Paulo be rented on Airbnb?

No, HIS and HMP apartments in São Paulo cannot legally be offered as short-term Airbnb rentals under the rules currently in force.

This is the cleanest legal answer in the whole article.

Decree 64.244/2025 expressly prohibits short-term rentals in these subsidized housing categories. São Paulo's own housing department answers the question directly in its public guidance: short-term rental through services such as Airbnb is not allowed.

The restriction is particularly relevant to property investors because HIS and HMP units can exist in desirable central or transit-oriented developments. A small apartment near a metro station or major employment area may look perfect for nightly rental from a purely commercial perspective while being legally unusable for that strategy.

SEHAB has also made clear that responsibility can reach developers, real-estate agencies, digital platforms and owners. The city has strengthened income verification, contract tracking and enforcement around these units.

A buyer therefore needs to identify the legal classification of the apartment before looking at Airbnb revenue projections. In this part of the market, condo tolerance cannot cure the problem. Even a building willing to accept temporary guests cannot override the municipal prohibition attached to an HIS or HMP unit.

If a São Paulo condo already has Airbnbs, does that prove they're allowed?

No, seeing several active Airbnbs in a São Paulo condo does not prove that the building legally allows short stays.

Existing listings are useful evidence of what happens in practice, but practice and legal permission can diverge for years.

A building may have owners who started renting before anyone challenged them. The reception desk may register temporary guests. Property managers may operate several units. None of that tells us whether the registered convention authorizes the activity.

The same problem applies to apartments marketed as "Airbnb-friendly." That phrase has little value on its own.

The strongest version of an Airbnb-friendly condo has documents that clearly accommodate short stays, guest-access procedures designed for temporary occupants and no conflicting restriction on the individual unit.

The weak version relies on a broker pointing to existing Airbnb listings and saying that nobody has complained yet.

Given the STJ's current position, we would put far more weight on the registered convention and later assembly decisions than on today's listing count inside the building. Informal tolerance can disappear quickly once residents decide to enforce the residential-use clause.

Can hosts avoid the problem by requiring 30-night Airbnb stays?

A 30-night minimum can make a São Paulo Airbnb much easier to defend as residential use, but it does not automatically override the condo rules.

There is no national rule saying seven nights is illegal, 30 nights is legal or any similar threshold.

Still, the operating model changes considerably when the minimum stay rises. A fully occupied apartment with 30-night bookings would have around 12 guest cycles a year. A two-night model could theoretically have more than 180.

Monthly stays therefore reduce one of the main facts the STJ worries about: constant rotation of strangers through a residential building.

They can also look much closer to the kind of temporary residential occupation already recognized by the Lei do Inquilinato, particularly when one household uses the entire furnished apartment for work, study, treatment or another temporary reason.

That makes medium-term rental a sensible fallback for some investors whose condo does not want nightly tourism.

But a 30-night rule still cannot rescue an HIS/HMP unit, defeat an explicit condo prohibition or guarantee how a disputed contract will be classified.

The useful distinction is between reducing the legal risk and eliminating it. Longer stays clearly help with the first. They do not achieve the second.

What should you check before buying a São Paulo condo for Airbnb?

Anyone buying a São Paulo condo for Airbnb should verify the unit's legal classification and the condominium convention before putting a single real of projected nightly income into the investment case.

Start with the apartment itself. We need to know whether it is an ordinary unrestricted unit or an HIS/HMP property. If it is HIS or HMP, short-term rental is already off the table.

Then read the registered condominium convention. The important language concerns residential destination, short stays, temporary accommodation, digital platforms, guest access and commercial use.

Later amendments and assembly minutes matter too. An old convention may look permissive while a newer decision has changed how the building handles short rentals.

Internal rules show how the policy works day to day. Some buildings require advance guest registration, limit access to amenities or impose minimum stays. Others have effectively built their operations around temporary guests.

Only after checking those documents would we use existing Airbnb listings as supporting evidence.

The broker's description should come last. A verbal claim that "Airbnb is allowed here" is weak unless someone can show exactly where that permission comes from.

Could São Paulo regulate ordinary Airbnbs more aggressively next?

Broader Airbnb regulation in São Paulo is becoming easier to imagine, but there is still no solid evidence that a citywide ban on ordinary short-term rentals is around the corner.

The market has reached a scale where regulation is hard to ignore. São Paulo has roughly 40,000 short-term-rental listings depending on the dataset, and Inside Airbnb shows that almost three-quarters of listings belong to multi-listing hosts. This is now a professional property market as much as a home-sharing market.

The municipality has also learned how to work directly with platforms. Its HIS/HMP enforcement shows that São Paulo can identify restricted units, demand action and get listings removed when it has a clear legal basis.

At the federal level, lawmakers have continued proposing different approaches to short-term rentals. Some proposals would strengthen the position of seasonal rentals, while others would give condominiums or public authorities more explicit control. None of those proposals should be treated as current law.

The more realistic risk for owners is gradual tightening rather than one dramatic Airbnb ban. Building rules, court decisions, protected-housing restrictions and platform enforcement can steadily reduce the number of apartments that work safely for nightly rental.

For investors, that is already enough to change the buying strategy. Regulatory certainty at the building level has become much more valuable than it was when hosts could simply list first and deal with objections later.

So, is Airbnb still allowed in São Paulo condos?

Yes, Airbnb is still allowed in São Paulo condos, but the answer now depends heavily on the specific apartment, the condo documents and the way the short-term rental is operated.

São Paulo still has around 40,000 short-term-rental listings, so describing Airbnb as banned would be plainly wrong. Ordinary seasonal residential rentals also remain recognized under Brazilian law.

At the same time, the legal room for high-turnover Airbnb operations has narrowed considerably.

The STJ now treats repeated, professionalized brief stays in residential buildings as potentially incompatible with residential use. Two-thirds approval can be required when the activity changes the unit's effective destination. Tema 1443 still has to settle how far a simple residential-only clause can go when the convention never expressly mentions Airbnb.

As seen above, HIS and HMP apartments sit outside that grey area because São Paulo has expressly banned short-term rentals in those units and has already pushed platforms to remove irregular listings.

So we would call the statement "Airbnb is still allowed in São Paulo condos" true, but with one major qualification: permission has become property-specific.

The attractive Airbnb purchase today is a normal unrestricted apartment in a building whose documents genuinely support short stays. Buying first and assuming that the condo will continue tolerating constant guest turnover has become a much weaker bet.

Fact-checked and reviewed by our local expert

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Laura Beatriz de Oliveira 🇧🇷

Commercial, Vokkan

Laura is a trusted real estate expert specializing in São Paulo’s competitive and fast-paced property market. With an in-depth understanding of the city’s commercial and residential sectors, she assists clients in securing prime investments, from luxury apartments in Itaim Bibi to high-yield commercial spaces on Avenida Paulista. Her expertise in São Paulo’s financial and business hubs makes her a key resource for investors seeking growth in Brazil’s economic powerhouse.

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