The Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens also ruled that the owner would face a fine of €1,000 for each violation if the apartment were used for purposes other than as a residence.

The ruling may serve as a precedent in similar cases. The court found that individually owned apartments used for short-term rentals are not, in practice, private residences but are instead converted into tourist accommodation.

The case began after the manager of an Athens apartment building, who also owns an apartment in the property, brought legal action against another owner. He argued that she had listed her apartment on short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com the previous summer, in breach of the building’s regulations and deed of horizontal ownership.

According to the manager, short-term rental guests ‘on a daily basis cause disturbance both during their stay in the apartment and in the common areas, even during quiet hours’. He also alleged that the constant turnover of visitors resulted in excessive use and unusual wear and tear of communal areas.

The manager further argued that the indiscriminate entry of third parties raised security concerns and disrupted residents’ peaceful enjoyment of their homes.

He asked the court to order the owner to remove all short-term rental listings from online accommodation platforms, remove the lockbox placed outside the building for access to the main entrance and cease renting the apartment through Airbnb or similar platforms, using it solely as a residence.

He also requested that any breach of the ruling carry the threat of a fine and personal detention.

Court’s reasoning

In its reasoning, the court noted that the building regulations state that the apartments ‘are intended to be used as residences, and any use other than residential use is prohibited’. That provision has not been amended.

The judges found that the owners’ intention, as reflected in the regulations, was to prohibit apartments from being used ‘as a hotel or hotel-type accommodation, or for the provision of services that result in a large number of visitors or unusual noise’.

The court therefore held that short-term rentals were prohibited because ‘individually owned properties used for short-term rentals are not actually considered private residences, but are in fact converted into tourist accommodation’. It also cited a ruling by the Athens Court of Appeal in a similar case.

The first-instance court acknowledged that the regulations did not expressly prohibit short-term rentals because such arrangements could not have been foreseen when they were drafted.

However, it ruled that ‘this gap should be filled by taking into account the principles of good faith and fair dealing, and by interpreting the presumed intention of the contracting parties had they been aware, at the time the regulations were drafted, of the possibility of such use of the properties’.

The ruling added that accommodation in which tourists stay temporarily during short holidays ‘undoubtedly constitutes hotel-type tourist accommodation’.

It also noted that short-term tenants, unlike tenants under conventional residential leases, are generally not informed of the building regulations governing the rights and obligations of owners and residents.

The court accepted the building manager’s requests and ordered the owner ‘to temporarily cease violating the building regulations and, specifically, to cease and refrain in future from the commercial use of her property under the short-term rental regime’.

It imposed a fine of €1,000 for each breach of the ruling.

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