Airbnb and short-term letting management in Dublin
We manage short-term lets in Dublin the compliant way — planning position established first, registration in order, everything above board. Then the listings, the pricing, the guests, the turnovers and the money.
Most hosts we meet are not trying to cut corners. They have simply never been told plainly which rules apply to their property. From 31 December 2026 that stops being survivable.
Free compliance review
Half an hour on your property, at no charge and with nothing to sign. Can you let it short-term at all? Does it need planning permission? What do you have to do before 31 December? And is short-letting still the better of your two options?
You get a straight answer in writing, whether or not it points to us.
First question: are you actually allowed to?
This is where nearly every host gets caught, and it has nothing to do with the platform. Under the Planning and Development Act, short-term letting is a use of the building, and three very different sets of rules apply depending on whose home it is.
A room in the home you live in
No planning permission needed. You live there, the guest stays alongside you, and home-sharing of this kind sits outside the planning rules entirely. This is the one case that is straightforwardly fine.
Your own home while you are away
You can short-let your whole principal residence for under 90 days a year without permission — the days need not run consecutively. But it comes with paperwork to your local authority: a start-of-year notification, an end-of-year return in January, and a further notification if you cross the 90 days. Cross it without permission and you are in breach.
A second property
Letting all or part of a property that is not your own home for short stays requires planning permission for change of use. This is the hard one: in areas of high housing demand it is rarely granted, and operating without it is enforceable by the planning authority.
Where the exemptions sit
Stays of 15 days or more at a time fall outside the current short-term letting rules, as do properties that already hold tourism or short-term letting permission, corporate and executive lets, and purpose-built student accommodation. Several of the hosts we take on are perfectly legal and did not know it — and a few are not, and would rather hear it from us than from an enforcement notice.
We are a licensed letting and management agency, not planning consultants or solicitors. We will tell you clearly where we think your property stands and what the rules say, and where the answer turns on a planning judgement we will tell you that too and point you to the right person. The planning authority decides, not us.
What changes on 31 December 2026
A national short-term letting register, run by Fáilte Ireland, opens on 1 December 2026. If you let for short stays, you must be registered by 31 December 2026.
The threshold moves
Short-term letting currently means stays of under 14 days. The register uses 21 nights or less — which pulls in a large number of corporate and medium-stay arrangements that sit outside the rules today.
A number on every advert
Your registration number must be displayed wherever the property is advertised. Owners and the platforms themselves face fines where a listing shows no valid number.
You declare your planning position
Registration requires you to confirm that you comply with national planning requirements. This is the part that matters: the planning question you may have left unanswered for years becomes a declaration you have to sign.
What is still unsettled
The Short-Term Letting and Tourism Bill has not yet been enacted, and the annual registration fee has been described as nominal but not published. We will not pretend to know figures that do not exist yet.
Registration asks for the host's own details — name, PPSN, date of birth, address — or the company's registration details, plus the unit type, bed places and guest capacity. None of it is difficult. It is the planning declaration sitting underneath it that needs thinking about first, and the time to do that is before the register opens, not in the last week of December.
The free compliance review, step by step
No charge, no obligation, and no attempt to talk you into a management agreement at the end of it.
We establish which case you are in
Your own home, your home while you are away, or a second property. Everything else follows from that, and it takes about two minutes to settle.
We check the planning position
Whether permission is needed, whether any already exists on the property, and what the realistic prospects are if it does not. Including the answer nobody wants, where that is the honest one.
We walk the property
Bed places and guest capacity as the register will want them recorded, and the practical safety and condition items any property taking paying guests should have in order.
We map your registration
What you will need to hand on 1 December, which notifications your local authority expects and when, and a date to have it all finished by.
We price both routes
What the property realistically earns short-term after commission, cleaning, laundry, consumables and voids — against what it would achieve on a long-term letting. Same property, both sets of numbers.
Then you get it in writing
A short written note you can act on yourself, give to your accountant, or hand to whoever manages the property now. Yours either way.
Book the review →And if you want the whole thing run for you
Compliance is where we start, not what we sell. For owners who want the property to simply work without them, we take the full 360 — and because we manage long-term tenancies across Dublin as well, nothing here depends on short-letting being the right answer for you.
Listing and pricing
Listings built and maintained across Airbnb, Booking.com and corporate channels, with your registration number carried on every one of them, and pricing moved to match demand rather than left on a flat nightly rate.
Guests, start to finish
Enquiries answered, guests screened, check-in and check-out handled, and problems dealt with while the guest is still in the property rather than in the review afterwards.
Turnover and upkeep
Cleaning and laundry between every stay, consumables restocked, and maintenance picked up before it becomes a cancelled booking and a one-star review.
Compliance, kept up
Registration kept current, local authority notifications filed on time, day counts tracked where the 90-day limit applies, and the rules watched as they change — because they are still changing.
Reporting and payments
One statement a month: what came in, what it cost, what lands in your account, and the figures your accountant will ask for at the end of the year. No platform logins to reconcile.
Or the other way entirely
If short-letting does not stand up for your property — on planning, on the numbers, or on the hassle — we let and manage long-term. We would rather have you as a long-term client than as a short-term problem.
Property management →Dublin, and only Dublin
Short-letting is the part of this business where being in the city actually matters. A good deal of Dublin stock is run from a desk somewhere else entirely — London, or a call centre, or an app — by people who have never stood in the property and never will.
We have seen your property
Every property we take on gets walked before a single booking is accepted. You are not handing your keys to someone working off photographs and a floor plan.
When something goes wrong, someone goes
A guest locked out at eleven at night, a leak, a boiler, a key safe that will not open. Our people are in Dublin, so the answer is someone at the door — not a ticket raised and an apology to the guest in the morning.
We know how Dublin actually works
Which buildings' management companies will not allow short lets, how the local authority handles this in practice, what a given street does for rates and for the kind of guest it draws. That is local knowledge, and it is not in any dataset.
Our cleaners are ours
The same teams, who know your property, your linen and your standard — not whoever a platform could find at short notice on a Sunday changeover.
Compliance is local too
The planning position, the register, the notifications: all of it is decided here, by Irish rules and an Irish local authority. An operator who is not in the country is not the one carrying that for you.
And we are accountable in person
You can call us, and you can come and see us. We are a licensed Irish agency with our name on this — not a management fee collected from a distance.
01 525 2353 →Across the city
We let and manage right across Dublin, and a review this week is a short drive rather than a flight.
Common questions
Can I legally do Airbnb in Dublin?
It depends entirely on whose home the property is. A room in the home you live in needs no planning permission. Your own home while you are temporarily away is fine for under 90 days a year, with notifications to your local authority. A second property needs planning permission for change of use, and in areas of high housing demand that is rarely granted. The free compliance review tells you which of the three you are in and what follows from it.
Do I need planning permission for short-term letting?
If the property is not your own principal residence, yes — permission for change of use is required. If it is your principal residence, no permission is needed to let rooms while you live there, or to let the whole house for under 90 days a year while you are away. Stays of 15 days or more at a time fall outside the current rules altogether.
What happens if I short-let without permission?
The planning authority can take enforcement action under the Planning and Development Act. Separately, from 31 December 2026 your listing must show a Fáilte Ireland registration number, and registration itself asks you to confirm you comply with planning requirements — so the position gets considerably harder to leave unresolved.
When do I have to register, and what does it cost?
The register opens on 1 December 2026 and you must be registered by 31 December 2026 if you let for stays of 21 nights or less. The annual fee has been described as nominal but has not been published, and the underlying Bill has not yet been enacted. We are not going to quote you a figure that does not exist.
Is short-term letting taxed like rent?
No. Short-term letting income is not treated as rental income — Revenue treats it as trading income if you are running it as a business, or other income if it is occasional, declared on your annual return. Rent-a-room relief has its own conditions and does not automatically cover short guest stays. Your accountant should confirm your own position.
Does short-letting still earn more than a long-term tenancy?
Sometimes, and less often than it used to. The comparison that matters is not nightly rate against monthly rent — it is what reaches your account after commission, cleaning, laundry, consumables, voids and management, set against a long-term rent that arrives every month with no turnover. We run both, so we can put your property through both sets of numbers.
Will you take on a property that is not currently compliant?
We will look at it and tell you what it would take to put right. What we will not do is list a property we know should not be listed — our PSRA licence and your exposure both sit behind that.
Find out where your property actually stands
A free compliance review: whether you can short-let at all, what planning applies, what you must do before 31 December, and what the property would earn short-term against long-term. In writing, with no obligation.