Quick answer: Florence closed the door on new short-let activity in its historic core. A municipal regulation approved on 5 May 2025 and in force from 31 May 2025 caps the core’s short-let units at those already regularly operating during 2024, and no new authorisations are issued in the UNESCO area. A buyer arriving with a tourist-letting plan has arrived after the decision.
For fifteen years the standard foreign purchase in Florence was a small central apartment bought to let to visitors. The city has spent the last three years dismantling the conditions that made that work, and the position now is materially different from the one described in most material written before 2025.
What the rules say
The city council approved a new regulation on short letting on 5 May 2025, and it entered into force on 31 May 2025. Its operative elements are specific.
| Measure | Effect |
|---|---|
| Cap in the historic core | Short-let activity limited to units already regularly used for it during 2024 |
| UNESCO area | No new authorisations, across a radius of roughly 2 kilometres |
| Key boxes | Installation on building facades prohibited from 2025 |
| Minimum size | Let apartments must be at least 28 square metres |
| Extension | A block on new authorisations beyond the UNESCO area approved at council level in 2026 |
The earlier planning resolution restricting the conversion of new property to tourist letting in the UNESCO core was litigated, and proceedings against it were declared inadmissible by the Tuscan administrative court. The city has continued to legislate since, which is why the current municipal text rather than the litigation history is what a buyer should be reading.
Why this matters more than a licensing detail
Because it converts a permission into an asset. Where new authorisations are not available, the ability to operate lawfully in the core attaches to specific existing units and cannot be obtained by buying a different flat and applying.
That has three consequences a purchaser should hold clearly.
Verification replaces assumption. A seller describing a flat as a successful short let is describing a business. Whether the position is lawful, current and capable of continuing under the new regime is a matter of documents, and it should be established before an offer rather than after.
The premium is real and it is specific. A unit with an established position carries something a comparable unit across the street may not. That is a genuine value difference and it is not visible in a price per square metre.
The boundary moves. The restriction began with the UNESCO area and the administration has moved to extend it. A buyer relying on being just outside a line should confirm where the line currently runs, because it has moved before.
The national framework, including the registration code and the reporting duties, is set out in the short-let rules. What Florence has done sits on top of that, and municipal restriction is the layer that decides whether the national permission is usable at a given address.
The keybox rule is smaller and more disruptive than it looks
Prohibiting key boxes on facades reads like street furniture policy. In practice it removes the mechanism on which a large share of remotely managed short lets depended, since a box on the wall is how a guest arriving at midnight gets in without anybody meeting them.
The alternatives all cost something. A local key holder is a person to pay. A smart lock is a capital item that needs the building’s consent and does not suit every door in a protected facade. A reception arrangement shared between several units is only available at scale.
For an owner modelling returns, that is a management cost that did not exist before and should be in the spreadsheet. For a buyer assessing a going concern, it is a question to ask: how do guests currently get in, and is that arrangement still lawful.
What the restriction is for
Florence’s stated concern is the residential population of its centre, and the mechanism it is addressing is straightforward. Where tourist letting yields more per square metre than residential letting, stock migrates from one use to the other until the centre has few residents left. Capping the first use is the direct response.
Whether that succeeds is a policy question rather than a property one. What matters to a buyer is the direction, which has been consistent across several instruments and several years, and the reasonable expectation that it continues.
- Assume municipal restriction tightens rather than loosens over a holding period
- Assume the geographic scope widens rather than narrows
- Do not underwrite a purchase on a regulatory position being restored
- Read any pre-2025 analysis of Florence letting as historical
How to verify a position that is being sold to you
Where a permission has become scarce, misrepresentation becomes profitable, and a buyer should assume nothing about a unit’s status from the way it is presented.
The checks are specific. Establish what activity was actually carried on at the address during 2024 and on what basis, since the cap is defined by reference to that year. Obtain the registrations and communications that evidence it, in the operator’s name, for that unit. Confirm with the comune that the position is recognised, rather than relying on a listing history or a set of platform reviews. And establish what happens to the position on a transfer, which is a question for a local lawyer and not one to be answered by the seller’s agent.
A going concern that survives those four checks is a genuinely different asset from a flat that has been let to visitors informally. The second is more common than the first, and the price difference between them is large enough to justify the professional fees several times over.
- Ask for the evidence in writing, and for it to be produced before the deposit is committed
- Verify with the comune rather than with the seller
- Take advice on transferability specifically, in this comune, under the current text
- Where any of the four checks fails, price the flat as residential
What the restriction means for the rest of Tuscany
Florence is the largest and most restrictive Tuscan market but it is not an isolated case, and buyers displaced from it should be careful about assuming that a nearby town is unregulated.
Municipal restriction of tourist letting has been spreading across Italian cities with heavy visitor pressure, and the towns most likely to attract a buyer leaving Florence are precisely the towns most likely to legislate next. The safer approach is to check the current municipal position for any specific comune under consideration, and to prefer a purchase that works residentially even if the tourist option remains available.
Who the residential tenants actually are
The demand exists and it is more varied than the tourist narrative suggests.
Universities and study-abroad programmes bring students and visiting academics on terms of a semester or a year, at rents that are reliable and paid by institutions or families. Teaching hospitals bring medical staff on rotations. International organisations and a professional services economy bring households on relocation, who take good stock at good rents and stay. And the city’s own professional population, which has been steadily displaced from the centre by the conversion of housing to tourist use, is the demand that municipal policy is explicitly trying to bring back.
For an owner, the practical implication is that a well-located, well-equipped flat in or near the centre has several distinct tenant pools rather than one, and that letting to any of them requires nothing more than an ordinary contract and a working boiler. That is a far less fragile business than one whose viability depends on a municipal register, and it is available at every address in the city rather than at the few that hold a grandfathered position.
The residential thesis, which is the one that still works
There is a genuine investment case in Florence and it is the opposite of the usual one. The city has universities, teaching hospitals, a professional economy and a concentration of international institutions and study programmes, and its long-term letting market had been squeezed for years by the conversion of stock to tourist use.
Policy is now pushing stock back the other way. An owner buying to let residentially is operating with the grain of municipal policy rather than against it, is not exposed to the next restriction, and serves a tenant base that lives in the city rather than visiting it.
The returns are lower per square metre than tourist letting was, and they are steadier, cheaper to manage and not contingent on a permission. For many foreign owners that trade is better than the one they came for, and the rental yield guide sets out how to compare the two honestly.
The arithmetic of the switch
For an owner already holding a central Florence flat, or a buyer weighing one, the comparison between tourist and residential letting has changed and it is worth setting out plainly rather than in general terms.
Tourist letting produced a higher gross and a much higher cost base: cleaning between stays, platform fees, linen, utilities, management, and a vacancy pattern that follows the season. Residential letting produces a lower gross, a far lower cost base, and a tenant who pays their own utilities.
The gap between the two nets was always narrower than the gross figures suggested, and it narrows further once the new rules add a check-in solution and remove the smallest units from eligibility. For a remotely managed flat with a professional operator taking a share, the two can converge to the point where the residential route wins on risk alone.
| Consideration | Tourist letting | Residential letting |
|---|---|---|
| Gross | Higher | Lower |
| Operating cost | Substantial and recurring | Minimal |
| Management | Continuous | Periodic |
| Regulatory exposure | High and increasing | Low |
| Transferability of the position | Now restricted | Unrestricted |
An owner running the numbers should do so on net, after management, and with an honest occupancy assumption rather than a peak-season one.
What a buyer should ask a Florence agent
Four questions, none of which a well-informed agent will find unreasonable, and all of which distinguish a serious buyer from a hopeful one.
Is this address inside the UNESCO area, and where does the current boundary of the restriction run? The answer should be specific, and it should be checkable.
What activity was carried on here during 2024, and can it be evidenced? This is the question the cap turns on and it has a documentary answer.
How do guests currently enter the property? If the answer involves a box on the facade, the arrangement needs replacing.
Is the unit at least 28 square metres, measured how? Floor area conventions differ between a listing and a plan, and the difference matters at the margin.
An agent who answers all four precisely is worth working with. One who treats the questions as obstacles is telling you something about the property.
Where else to look
The city’s wider market, its districts, prices and demand drivers, is covered in the Florence investment guide; this page deliberately holds only the regulatory subject.
A buyer whose thesis was specifically tourist letting should look at how three neighbours regulate: Siena has no fallback when a short let fails, Rome hides its restrictions in the deed chain, and Bologna has been building competing supply rather than banning it. Siena and Chianti are the nearby alternatives, and they carry their own constraints rather than being unregulated versions of the same thing.
The summary for Florence is short. It remains one of the most desirable cities in Europe and one of the least available for the specific use most foreign investors want it for. Buying it as a home, or as a residential letting asset, is a coherent decision. Buying it as a short-let business in 2026 requires acquiring a position that the city has stopped issuing.
Florence apartments compete directly with short lets, which is visible in the asking prices on property for sale in Tuscany.
Frequently Asked Questions
The city council approved a new municipal regulation on 5 May 2025, in force from 31 May 2025. In the historic core the number of short-let activities is capped at the units already regularly used for that purpose during 2024, and no new authorisations are granted inside the UNESCO area, which covers a radius of roughly 2 kilometres around the centre.
Existing lawful activity in the core is the reference point for the cap rather than a target of it, which is a very different position from being banned. It also means the right to operate has become a scarce and identifiable attribute of specific units, and a buyer should verify its existence rather than assume it transfers.
From 2025 the installation of key boxes on building facades is prohibited, with particular force inside the UNESCO area. It is a small rule with a real operational consequence, because a remote-managed short let that relied on a box attached to the wall now needs a different check-in arrangement.
Let apartments must be at least 28 square metres, which excludes the smallest units from the market. That figure mirrors the national housing minimum for a one-room dwelling for one person and has the practical effect of removing micro-units from short-let use in the city.
The administration has moved in that direction. A proposal extending the block on new authorisations beyond the UNESCO area to further zones of the city was approved at council level in 2026, which means the boundary a buyer should be checking is a moving one and has to be confirmed at the time of purchase.
The measures have been litigated. Proceedings against the earlier planning resolution restricting new short-let use in the UNESCO core were declared inadmissible by the Tuscan administrative court, and the city has continued to legislate. A buyer should treat the current municipal text as the operative position and check it directly.
It splits the market. A unit with an established, lawful short-let position in the core carries something new entrants cannot obtain, which supports its value. A unit without one is a residential asset in a city where residential rents are lower than tourist revenue, which is a different and lower valuation.
Yes, but it has to be a residential one. Florence has universities, hospitals, a professional economy and international institutions, and a long-term letting market that had been squeezed by the conversion of stock to tourist use. Policy is now pushing in the other direction, which is a real thesis and a different one from the one most foreign buyers arrive with.
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