Poland's Building-Level Bans: A 50% Vote and Six Months to Wind Down

Two bodies can close a building to short lets, and they don't count votes the same way. The difference decides whether your apartment is exposed.

Last updated: October 19, 2026

Poland's lower house passed the reform on 8 October 2026, and it hands two different owner bodies the power to shut a building to short lets. They don't count votes the same way. A housing cooperative needs more than half of everyone entitled to vote. An owners' association counts shares. Same word — majority — and two completely different sums.

Key Takeaways

• Two routes, two denominators. A cooperative counts people; an owners' association counts shares in the common property, as passed by the lower house on 8 October 2026.
• "More than half" means all members, not the room. The cooperative test is absolute, and an attempt to lower it to those present was rejected.
• A ban covers all or part of a building. It doesn't need your consent to start letting, and it doesn't need your consent to stop either.
• Six months runs from adoption. Not from 2028, and not from the first notice you receive.
• The power itself starts on 1 January 2028. Between now and then is when the mapping gets done.

Two bodies, two voting rules

The first body is a housing cooperative. Its general meeting can resolve to ban hotel-type services in the premises of a given property, in whole or in part. The threshold is more than 50% of all members entitled to vote — not 50% of those who turn up, as passed by the lower house on 8 October 2026.

The second is an owners' association, the body that manages a building of separately owned units. There, voting weight follows shares in the common property. A resolution passes on a majority of those shares, so the size of your unit matters as much as the number of hands.

Two details sit underneath both rules, and hosts tend to miss them. In a cooperative, each member usually holds one vote regardless of how many units they own. And in both bodies, the decision is taken by the body's own meeting, not by the residents of one staircase.

What that means in practice: a ban can arrive through a vote you were entitled to attend but didn't, on a motion you never saw drafted. Nothing in the text requires a landlord's prior consent to start letting. The vote is the obstacle, not the permission.

Why the cooperative threshold is harder to reach

Turnout decides the cooperative route, and turnout at cooperative meetings is often low. When a few percent of members attend, an absolute majority of all members becomes a different kind of campaign: it needs people who don't normally come to a meeting to sign, travel or send a proxy.

That's the arithmetic, and it's why the threshold survived. An amendment to count only those attending was put forward and rejected, as passed by the lower house on 8 October 2026. The rule you read is the rule that was argued over.

The owners' association route behaves differently, because shares concentrate. In a building bought largely for letting, the same shares that make short lets common also make a ban hard to pass. In an older building of long-term residents, those shares sit with people who live there.

None of that predicts your building. It tells you which sum to compute, and roughly what it would take to move it. Two numbers do most of the work: how many members or how much share is needed, and how much of either is already on your side.

There's a second lever worth knowing about. Residents, associations and cooperatives can trigger inspections of units used for short lets, covering technical condition, fire safety, safety and public order. Those inspections feed a separate mechanism: three confirmed findings within six months of the first one put a unit out of the register. A building doesn't need a ban to make a letting operation uncomfortable. Check the current text with the competent authority.

The six months you get to wind down

Once a ban is adopted, operators already letting in that building get six months to stop. The clock starts at adoption, not at the 2028 date and not at the letter that eventually reaches you.

Six months sounds generous until you price it in bookings. A stay booked for month seven is a stay you can't honour, and the guests who find out last are the ones who write the review.

Three things need dates beside them. The last night you can sell, which is adoption plus six months. The point after which you stop taking new bookings, which should sit earlier than that. And the point where existing bookings either move, cancel or get handed to another unit — a conversation that goes better in month one than in month five.

Then there's the calendar itself. Close the dates across every channel at once, not in the order you happen to remember them. A single channel left open after the wind-down produces exactly the booking you can't service.

And there's the part nobody enjoys: the honest conversation with whoever holds the mortgage or the lease on that unit. Six months is long enough to model a switch to longer lets, and short enough that starting in month four isn't a plan.

Mapping your exposure before 2028

Do this on one page, per unit, while the power is still a date rather than a vote. The mapping isn't legal work and it doesn't need a consultant; it needs documents you should already hold.

Row one: which kind of body governs the building. Cooperative or owners' association. That single answer decides everything below it.

Row two: your weight in it. One vote as a member, or your share of the common property as a percentage. If you don't know the percentage, that's the first thing to find.

Row three: where the votes currently sit. Not a prediction — a count. How many members, how many shares, and how much of each belongs to people who let short term.

Row four: the documents. The building's rules, the last set of meeting minutes, and the notice arrangements for calling a meeting. If you'd be relying on a proxy, know the deadline now.

Row five: the fallback. What the unit earns on a 30-day-plus let, and whether that number covers the mortgage. A wind-down plan that assumes you'll find another short-let building is a hope, not a plan.

Keep the page beside the calendar you let from. LOCALSBNB holds the four connected channels — Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda and Trip.com — in one calendar. Each channel's source rate and status shows beside the dates. That's what you need on the day a building's dates have to close everywhere at once. More on that at localsbnb.com.

FAQ

Does a ban need my agreement to take effect?

No. A resolution passed by the body is enough, and starting a short let never required a neighbour's consent in the first place. What the vote changes is whether the use is allowed afterwards. Check the current text with the competent authority.

Is the six months counted from 2028?

No. It runs from the date the ban is adopted. The power to adopt one starts on 1 January 2028, as passed by the lower house on 8 October 2026, so the earliest wind-downs begin around then.

What if my building is mixed — some owners, some long leases?

The body that governs the building sets the route. A cooperative and an owners' association in the same street can reach the same ban through different sums, on different timelines, and with different notice. Read which one holds your unit before you count anything.

The reform can still change in the senate, and the president hasn't signed it. What won't change is the arithmetic underneath it: one route counts people and one counts shares, and both need a number on your side of the line. Finding out which number applies to your building is an afternoon with three documents. Finding out in 2028, with guests booked, is a different kind of week. The letting side, meanwhile, stays where it already lives — localsbnb.com is where the calendar, the channels and the units sit together while the paperwork gets sorted.

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This article is general guidance for hosts and isn't legal, tax or insurance advice. Who may vote, how votes are counted and when a resolution takes effect differ by building and by jurisdiction, and the text can change before it takes effect. Confirm the current position with the competent authority and the building's own rules.