Hi kwarbritton79
There's no problem with AirB&B in Barcelona... the problem, as in anywhere else, is when one rents an "illegal" apartment. The background of some misinformed comments is that in Barcelona -like in any other market economy- all commercial ventures need to comply with certain rules and regulations. In order to preserve both, "the way of life" of Barcelonians and also to control under-the-radar operations to prevent abuses and deceptions, the Catalan government issued some regulations a few years ago regarding the use of private apartments for short term rentals (a.k.a. "tourist apartments") in the whole of Catalonia.
Among these, whoever wants to offer these type of services needs to have a permit and be registered in an official registry (Tourist Dwellings), have a commercial license and pay taxes on this venture. Since many did initially not comply and it became difficult to control these "pirates", additional measures were decreed to identify them, one being the sources where they advertised, both online and offline. Thus, it has become law that all advertisers (ie. AirB&B, Homeaway, etc) have to include the HUT number (number of the apartment's registry) in the ad. Failure to do so carries penalties to the advertiser, namely AirB&B for example. In fact, AirB&B and others received a 600.000€ penalty a few months ago for repeatedly ignoring the requests of the government to obey the Law. Renting an apartment without a HUT number does not necessarily mean it's a scam, more likely it's an owner that's simply not complying with the law. To the renter it could result in having the flat he rented unavailable if so happens the offender has previously been warned and failed to comply so a closure order has been issued. While until now closure orders have been scarcely issued, the latest news are that they're going to start tackling the issue more seriously, not only is a loss of revenue in taxes but also a source of potential problems with customers: if your apartment doesn't officially exist, it's harder to prosecute you or to place a formal complaint if you don't honour your commitments.
Something else, of course, are the problems that might or might not arise during the normal course of a business transaction, as in any other type of business, and have little to do with the intermediaries (AirB&B and the like), such as the overbooking (rare, but occasionally it has been heard of) or other bad business practices, such as closing a deal about a specific apartment and later on apologizing for it being suddenly unavailable and offering another one -which is likely to be in a less appealing area, or be of a lesser quality. Again, thankfully this isn't the norm but there are always rotten apples here and there.
I advise always looking for apartments that are fully compliant with the Law... this is a good business practice and, while not necessarily a guarantee, a sign of willingness to provide a good service... after all when one's in the hospitality business one needs a good word of mouth, right?
