Germany short-term rental regulation and SDEP status

What this means

Germany is a local-rule-heavy implementation case with a visible national SDEP area-data publication.

Berlin requires a registration number for temporary holiday-apartment rental of a self-used main or secondary residence, and broader Zweckentfremdung rules protect housing from conversion into holiday accommodation.

Implementation status

Berlin service guidance covers applying for temporary holiday-apartment rental and issuance of a registration number.

Other cities and municipalities, including Hamburg, Munich, Freiburg, Konstanz, Stuttgart, and Mannheim, operate local housing-use restrictions or registration/permit models.

Technical interface

The Federal Network Agency operates the national SDEP from 1 July 2026 and publishes an official available-areas download. On 7 October 2026 its current official page stated that no new registration procedures were currently planned; the previously listed 1 October municipal rollout is no longer presented as a current plan. Its workbook, updated 26 October 2026, lists twelve active regulated areas: Aachen, Bonn, Brühl, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Frechen, Köln, Münster and Wesseling, plus Berlin, Hamburg and Tübingen. Berlin is listed again after being absent from the 1 October 2026 edition, which had added Frechen and Tübingen. The agency states that platforms transmit occupancy data in general monthly, first from 1 September 2026 retroactively for July and August, and that random sample checks of host data are planned from October 2026. The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy records in its October 2026 economic-policy publication that the monthly data exchange moved into regular operation on 1 October 2026, with platforms sending overnight-stay and guest figures through the agency data hub to Länder and municipal authorities and to statistical offices.

Area identifiers are not uniform: NRW municipalities use readable IDs while Berlin, Hamburg, Frechen and Tübingen use UUIDs. Integrations should treat area IDs as opaque and retain an area-to-competent-authority mapping.

The Federal Network Agency publishes a public SDEP API description and all data endpoints as an OpenAPI 3.1 specification through a public Swagger interface, with an application version of 1.0.13. It exposes the EU-harmonised STR v1 regulated-area and bulk-activity endpoints alongside country-specific competent-authority, statistics, authentication, and health services; the competent-authority service includes registration-number endpoints. No public source code, sandbox, or platform onboarding process is currently available.