'My flat was listed twice — and I had no idea': Barcelona renters caught out by duplicate property listings

A duplex in the Carrer de Verdi, a ground-floor studio near the Rambla del Poblenou — the same photographs, the same floorplan, two different listings at two different prices. This is the increasingly common experience reported by renters, landlords and housing advocates across Barcelona as the city's accelerating crackdown on short-term tourist flats pushes properties back onto the long-term rental market, often with their Airbnb-era photo libraries still attached.

The problem is specific: when a property transitions from platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com to traditional rental portals such as Idealista or Habitaclia, the original listing images frequently survive — copied, scraped or simply reused — creating duplicate entries that mislead prospective tenants about availability, price and even the physical condition of the property. Apartments that have been renovated, subdivided or recombined since their tourist-rental days can appear on portals under image sets that no longer reflect reality.

Why it matters now

The timing is not accidental. Mayor Jaume Collboni's administration announced in June 2024 that Barcelona would not renew any of the roughly 10,000 short-term tourist rental licences set to expire by November 2028, a policy designed to return housing stock to long-term residents. That process is already underway, and property managers say the volume of flats migrating between platforms has spiked sharply in the past twelve months.

Barcelona's average long-term rental price reached approximately €1,300 per month for an 80-square-metre flat in early 2026, according to data from the Cambra de la Propietat Urbana de Barcelona, the city's urban property chamber. In neighbourhoods like Gràcia and Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera, where tourist flat concentration was historically highest, the mismatch between outdated listing photos and current reality has become a routine frustration. Tenants arrive for viewings to find kitchens ripped out, walls repositioned, or a one-bedroom flat that the photographs show as two.

The affected community is not only renters. Small landlords who converted flats out of the short-term market describe finding their own property images recycled on competitors' listings — sometimes for units in entirely different postcodes — as unscrupulous operators bulk-upload photo sets to generate enquiry volume. The Associació de Gestors de Rendes Urbanes, a Barcelona landlord management association, has fielded complaints from members who discovered their property photographs had been attached to fictitious listings used in advance-rent scams.

Residents describe the confusion

In Poblenou's Rambla, a neighbourhood that has absorbed significant housing flux as the 22@ innovation district expands, housing advocates at the Sindicat de Llogateres — the Barcelona tenants' union, which operates an advice office on Carrer de Provença — say duplicate imagery complaints have become a distinct category in their caseload since the beginning of 2026. The union has called on both Idealista and Habitaclia to implement mandatory licence-number verification before any long-term listing goes live, a step neither platform has publicly committed to.

The practical damage compounds quickly. A family responding to a listing illustrated with photographs of a sunny, renovated flat near the Mercat de l'Abaceria in Gràcia signs a contract, pays two months' deposit under Catalunya's rental law framework, and arrives to find the images were taken before a 2023 renovation that divided the property. Recovering a deposit in those circumstances requires a formal complaint through Barcelona's Oficina Municipal d'Habitatge i Rehabilitació, a process that housing advisers say routinely takes between three and six months to resolve.

Catalunya's housing law, Law 11/2020, gives tenants specific protections against misrepresentation, but enforcement depends on the tenant having documented the discrepancy on signing — something first-time renters rarely think to do. The Oficina d'Habitatge, which operates neighbourhood branches including one at Carrer de Bisbe Laguarda in Nou Barris, offers free pre-contract advice sessions where staff can flag listing inconsistencies before money changes hands.

Housing advisers recommend that anyone responding to a long-term rental listing in Barcelona cross-check the property's tourist licence status through the Ajuntament's online register, request a current set of dated photographs from the landlord before any viewing, and submit a written record of the property's condition — ideally with photographs — at the point of key handover. Those steps will not stop duplicate images from circulating, but they create the paper trail that makes any later dispute recoverable.