Residency rules and short-term rentals: what the city actually checks

Updated 12 July 2026. Written by Nico Rossetti, Arnor.

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.

Here is how it fits together in 2026, and what you should actually do to stay on the right side of it.

The short answer

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, and that is the part people miss.

What the residency requirement really means

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. Once it is covered, some clear rules apply:

• The home must be reported as empty no later than six weeks after the last resident moves out. You do that by writing to boligregulering@kk.dk.
• The home may not be used for occasional living, meaning a kind of weekend flat you drop by a few times a month.
• The home may not be used for business purposes.
• One household may not use more than one home in the greater Copenhagen area and the neighbouring municipalities.

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.

The two limits: 30 days and 70 days

The rules that took effect on 1 May 2019 let you rent out your full year round home for holiday and leisure purposes for:

• 30 days per calendar year if you rent privately, without a platform that reports to the tax authority.
• 70 days per calendar year if the rental goes through an intermediary such as Airbnb or Booking.com.

A municipality can choose to raise the cap to 100 days. Copenhagen has not. Here the number is 70, so do not let articles that mention 100 days confuse you.

Then there is a third rule, which is not the state's but your building's. Housing associations, owner associations and cooperatives can adopt stricter rules than the law. The bylaws beat the law. You can have a legal right to 70 nights and still get an order from your own association. Check the bylaws, whether you are an owner, a cooperative member or a tenant.

Who checks what

This is the part almost everyone gets wrong, and it matters because it tells you where a case actually starts.

The City of Copenhagen checks whether the home is used as a year round home. That is the housing law. The city can look into whether your home stands empty, whether it is used as a commuter flat without approval, or whether it has effectively been taken out of the housing stock.

The Danish Planning and Rural Districts Agency checks the holiday rental itself, meaning the 30 and 70 day limits. The city says so plainly on its own page: it has no legal authority to regulate holiday rentals, but it passes reports on to the agency. That detail matters right now, because it explains why enforcement has been so loose so far. It is also about to change, as the next section explains.

Neighbours and associations are, in practice, what starts most cases. Anyone can report a home by writing to boligregulering@kk.dk with the address, a reason and ideally a link to the listing. The city notes that anonymity cannot be guaranteed if someone later requests access to the documents, but that rarely stops an annoyed neighbour.

What is new in 2026

Two things have changed the picture.

The political agreement from January 2026. On 22 January 2026 the government and a broad majority in parliament agreed to strengthen control of short-term rentals. The Planning and Rural Districts Agency describes what it contains: authorities will be able to order rental platforms to hand over information, to have illegal listings removed, and fines will go up. The agreement also lets municipalities take over supervision of the 30 and 70 day limits themselves, which is what really changes the picture in Copenhagen.

The guideline fine levels in the agreement, if you exceed the cap, look like this:

On top of that there is a guideline level of 50,000 kr per home per year for so called shadow hotels, meaning homes effectively run as a commercial hotel operation.

The agreement does not change your right to rent out within the existing rules. And note the most important caveat: it still has to be turned into a bill, which is expected to go out for consultation during the first half of 2026. The fines and the new powers do not apply until the law is passed.

The housing patrol in Copenhagen. The city has set aside just under 4 million kr for a housing patrol of around 15 staff whose job is to find homes rented out in breach of the rules. The patrol can only police the 70 night cap itself once the state hands that task to the municipality, meaning once the new law is in place. What the city can already do today is investigate whether the home is being used as a year round home, and that is often where a case begins.

The real change is the combination: more inspectors plus better access to platform data. It used to be hard to prove how many nights a flat had been rented. It will not stay that way.

The four mistakes that start a case

1. You forget to report the home as empty. If you are away for more than six weeks without something in place, the city needs to know.
2. You use the home as a weekend flat. Occasional living is precisely what the rules forbid.
3. You go over the 70 nights. With platforms reporting, this becomes visible on its own.
4. Your association has stricter rules than you think. Plenty of cooperatives allow subletting for only three weeks a year, or require board approval every single time. See our guide to the Copenhagen Airbnb rules.

If you are going to be away for a long time

If you are posted abroad, studying abroad, ill, or doing military service, you can get approval for temporary absence from your home for up to four years. You apply by writing to boligregulering@kk.dk with the address, how long you expect to be away, and why. It is a short email, and it removes the problem before it starts.

The route many people overlook: letting for residential use

This is worth understanding properly, because it is explained wrongly almost everywhere.

The 30 and 70 days apply to renting for holiday and leisure purposes. It is the purpose of the stay that decides, not its length. A guest who stays with you for 35 days on holiday still counts towards the cap. Length alone does not get you off the hook.

If instead you let the home on a normal lease to someone who is going to live there, say a relocating employee on a six month contract or a visiting researcher, that is not holiday rental. It is ordinary residential letting under Danish tenancy law, and it does not count towards the 70 nights.

That is often the better answer when you are away for a longer stretch. The home is being lived in, which is exactly what the residency requirement is about, and you do not burn your short-term allowance. In return, tenancy law applies, with rules on contracts, deposits and notice, your association may still have rules on subletting, and it has to be a genuine residential letting. If what you are really running is a hotel with a rotating cast of guests, it can be treated as commercial letting, which is the harsh end of the rules. Read more on our page about mid-term rental management in Copenhagen.

Also, do not mix up the three thresholds. They are not the same thing:

• 30 and 70 days is holiday rental under the holiday home act.
• 4 months is the tax authority's dividing line between short-term and long-term rental, and it decides how you are taxed.
• 1 year is the limit in the holiday home act, beyond which letting for holiday purposes requires permission.

Tax, briefly

If you rent through a platform that actually reports to the Danish tax authority, your tax free allowance in 2026 is 35,100 kr. If you rent privately, it is 13,800 kr. Of whatever is left above the allowance, only 60 percent is taxed, and it is taxed as capital income.

Two details that cost people money: from income year 2026 it is no longer enough that the platform is required to report. It must actually have reported. And these rules cover short-term rental, meaning less than four months with the same tenant. Our guide to Airbnb tax in Copenhagen walks through the full calculation.

Checklist before you rent out

1. Check your association's bylaws, not just the law.
2. Use a platform that reports if you want the 70 nights and the larger allowance.
3. Track your nights and keep the documentation.
4. Report the home as empty if it stands empty for more than six weeks.
5. Apply for approval of temporary absence if you will be away for a long period.
6. Consider a proper residential lease if you will be away for months.
7. If you are unsure about the holiday rental rules, ask the Planning and Rural Districts Agency, not the city.

Want this handled for you?

We run Airbnb and short-term rentals for owners in Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, and a large part of the job is exactly this: keeping track of the nights, the paperwork and the association's rules so you can earn from your home without losing sleep. We also arrange mid-term rentals when that makes more sense than the 70 nights.

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Frequently asked questions

Official sources: City of Copenhagen, "Regler for bopælspligt i København" (kk.dk). Danish Planning and Rural Districts Agency, "Ny politisk aftale om styrket tilsyn med korttidsudlejning" (26 January 2026, plst.dk), and its list of municipalities with a 100 day cap, which does not include Copenhagen. The 22 January 2026 agreement from By-, Land- og Kirkeministeriet, Table 1 with guideline fine levels. The Holiday Home Act, LBK no. 400 of 12 April 2024, and the rules from 1 May 2019. Skattestyrelsen for the 2026 allowances of 35,100 kr (reporting platform) and 13,800 kr (private), and the rule that 60 percent of the excess is taxed as capital income. Housing patrol: around 15 staff and just under 4 million kr, 2025-2026 budget carry-over. This is general information, not legal or tax advice.