Most people renting out a flat in Copenhagen are neither cheats nor experts. They are ordinary owners who want to earn something from a home that would otherwise sit empty, and who have heard rumours about inspections, fines and a new housing patrol. The rumours are partly true, but they get mixed up with rules that are about something else entirely.
You may rent out your year round home for holiday purposes for 30 days a year if you do it privately, and for 70 days a year if you use a platform such as Airbnb or Booking.com that reports your income to the Danish tax authority. That is written on the City of Copenhagen's own page about the residency requirement. At the same time, the home must still be used as a year round home. Those are the two rules that have to fit together.
The residency requirement, bopælspligt, does not mean you can never have guests. It means the home has to be lived in all year. The city treats a home as covered by the requirement if it has been used as a year round home within the past five years, either through registration in the national register or through more than 180 nights a year of use by a household.
That last point is worth reading twice. If you bought an extra flat in the city and use it only for rentals plus the odd weekend yourself, you are on thin ice no matter how few nights you rent out.
Arnor ApS, H.C. Ørsteds Vej 63, 1879 Frederiksberg. +45 71 33 82 53. info@arnor.dk