Bavaria's short-let law carries two fines, and both of them need your council to have passed a by-law.
Munich and Nuremberg have passed the one that carries 500,000 euros. Neither has passed the one that carries 50,000.
Start with the 50,000. Bavaria's change-of-use act lets a council introduce a registration scheme in a by-law. Where it does, article 2a(2) makes the host register a unit before offering it on a platform and article 2a(5) makes them show the number in the listing, with article 4(2) points 2 and 3 setting the ceiling at 50,000 euros for either failure, negligence included.
But the duty is conditional. Article 2a(2) applies the duty only in areas where a council has introduced a scheme, and article 4(2) penalises only a breach of that conditional duty. No scheme, no duty, no fine.
Munich has not introduced one. Its own service page, read this morning, says no registration procedure applies there and therefore no registration duty for holiday flats either, and that the by-law amendment and the IT portal are both still in preparation. Nuremberg agreed its by-law change on 22 July and its page, updated on 7 October, says you cannot yet apply for a number. The federal data hub's area list, dated 1 October, shows 11 connected areas: nine in North Rhine-Westphalia, one Hamburg, one Baden-Wuerttemberg. None in Bavaria.
I got this wrong on 29 September and said Munich's duty was in force. It is not.
Now the one that is already sitting on you. Both cities have had change-of-use by-laws for years, Nuremberg's since 2019, and article 1 makes putting housing to non-residential use subject to the council's permission. Article 4(1) then makes doing it without that permission an offence, and Munich states the ceiling on its own page as up to 500,000 euros per breach. Munich also says, flatly, that letting a flat or house in the city permanently and exclusively as a holiday flat is forbidden.
And the eight-week allowance is narrower than it looks. Munich's wording: your own flat or your own house, offered while you are away, up to a total of 56 calendar days in a calendar year, with the property otherwise lived in by you. A home-sharing carve-out, not an allowance a letting business can run on.
Two limbs worth knowing. The information duty at article 3(1) names managers and agents alongside owners, where there are concrete grounds to suspect a breach. And under article 3(3) a challenge to an enforcement act has no suspensive effect, so you comply first and argue afterwards.
In Bavaria the registration number is the headline and the change-of-use permission is the risk.
Which of the two are you actually missing?
