How the World Cup affects the housing market
The 2026 FIFA World Cup won’t just take over stadiums. In some American cities where matches are played, it has also taken over the MLS.
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, real estate agents in host cities like Boston and Miami are watching listings disappear at an unusual pace, short-term rental requests from international callers spike and the normal rhythm of the late spring and summer market turns into a football schedule.
The disruption varies by city, but in both places real estate agents say the fingerprints of the World Cup are all over their markets.
Skipping the spring market to organize the World Cup
Eric Rollo, vice president of Greater Boston at The Agency, said he started noticing the pattern in March. A South End seller had since been unlisted, causing the house to be taken off the market because her family needed the house for the World Cup.
“I told her she was going to miss the spring fair,” Rollo said Inman. “She said: yes, but I need it for the World Cup.”
Rollo tracks cancellations and withdrawals through his ILS and said the volume has become impossible to ignore. Over the past week, his system has gone from generating one or two cancellation alerts per day to one or two per hour.
“That’s unusual,” he said, “because our market usually goes around the Fourth of July before you see people doing things.”
The geographical pressure extends beyond the city limits. Rollo said home buying and selling activity in Foxborough, home of Gillette Stadium, the Boston area’s World Cup venue, will essentially stagnate for the duration of the tournament.
Boston will host seven gamesincluding a quarter-final. Haiti will play Scotland in the first match on June 13.
Rollo pointed to the friendly match between Brazil and France on March 26, when Route 1 in Foxborough was closed for more than half a day. With games scheduled every other day, screenings near the stadium corridor will be virtually impossible.
“In Boston, we’re used to it emptying out around this time of year because all the students are leaving,” Rollo said. “But now it’s starting to fill again. Just making ends meet will make the real estate market extremely difficult over the next three to four weeks.”
Short-term rentals come with complications
Many homeowners in the Boston area are looking to take advantage of a surge in demand for short-term rentals.
April Airbnb data shows that Dorchester is the fastest growing neighborhood in Boston for World Cup stays, with bookings up 122 percent year over year for the tournament period, compared to Q1 2026 reservations for the same period last year.
But Rollo warned that short-term rentals in Boston can be complicated. Condominium owners in downtown Boston, near South Station, where the commuter rail line to Gillette Stadium begins, risk running into trouble with their condo documents if they apply without checking.
Bostons short-term rental regulation It will also limit stays to 28 days, limit listings to owner-occupied units and require landlords to register with the city and verify the property as their primary residence.
“The spirit of the law was for longer-term investors,” Rollo said, referring to the portfolios of investors who buy up clusters of apartments for full-time Airbnb use. The rules were not written with the one-off scenario of ‘someone coming for a week because of the World Cup’ in mind.
“You roll the dice on fines and whether that cost-benefit analysis works,” Rollo said.
And for owners who rent out their properties and leave town, there’s another risk: rowdy tournament tenants who treat a stranger’s home like a venue. “JYou have to come back and look your neighbors in the eye,” Rollo said.
Welcome to Miami
In Miami, the calculus works differently. The city fills and does not empty, and the atmosphere is exciting.
Anna M. Uribe, a Miami Beach-based agent for The Agency, said the bulk of her World Cup requests are for short-term rentals and come from people in Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, countries with teams in the tournament and deep soccer cultures.
They usually filter through local agents who post in a specialized group chat for short-term rental agents.
Miami, which will play seven games between June 15 and July 18, has seen demand for short-term rentals rise as much as 118 percent per night on some game days. according to AirDNA data.
Miami is of course no stranger to hosting major events. The Miami Grand Prix, a Formula 1 motor race, was held in May. Miami has also hosted the Super Bowl 11 times, which is tied to New Orleans for most of the NFL’s history.
But Uribe said the World Cup attracts a wider audience.
“With Formula 1 you tend to get more locals or people from places where F1 races are already happening (Monaco, Mexico) because they are used to seeing this in their own country,” Uribe said. “The Super Bowl is huge, but national. The World Cup is truly international, so the audience is much larger and more diverse.”
While residents of other U.S. host cities may fear the traffic caused by the World Cup, Uribe said most Miami residents aren’t trying to escape it. “Miami has such a diverse population that people really have a fan spirit,” Uribe said. “They want to be part of it.”
Uribe’s brother and sister-in-law are traveling from Dallas. His two best friends and their wives fly from Colombia to attend the Colombia-Portugal match. Uribe’s Brazilian friend, who lives in Miami, is flying to Kansas City to watch Argentina play.
“People will go wherever the games are,” Uribe said. “In Boston it may be more of a mentality of American residents: too much commotion. But here people are excited. It will be a big party.”
The longer term real estate securities
In addition to the short-term increase in rental prices, both real estate agents pointed to a longer-term real estate effect: the World Cup as a buyer pipeline.
In Miami, Uribe said many of the international visitors arriving for the tournament have never been to the city or have only been once or twice. Some leave curious about the market, others move on.
“They get that bug — oh my God, it’s so nice here — and they decide to rent something temporarily while they explore the market, or they decide to buy,” she said. “It is a real eye-opener for real estate.”
Rollo noted a similar dynamic for Boston. The city has a history of international buyers purchasing homes for students and then converting those properties into investments. The World Cup could reignite that pattern, he said.
“You have people from all over the world exploring Boston and maybe saying, ‘I can see myself buying a second home here,’” Rollo said.
He also noted another potential benefit from the transit investments Massachusetts has made around the tournament. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) has expanded service for the World Cup with direct trains, as well as for New England Patriots football games.
“I think this is almost a proof-of-concept for them to increase the number of trains to and from Gillette Stadium on smaller event days as well,” Rollo said. “And it could be extended to the Xfinity Center in Mansfield for concerts, since Mansfield has a T station. This is a test case: Can we alleviate car traffic by increasing commuter rail service?”
The loss of listings in Boston due to the World Cup will likely be temporary. Rollo expects some of the withdrawn listings to return after July 4 or cluster around Labor Day, through mid-November.
The timing compression is correct. He’s already said that Memorial Day felt like the 4th of July this year. The World Cup has accelerated the calendar.
“When fireworks go off, the real estate market dies,” Rollo said. “This year it happened early and the World Cup had a lot to do with that.”
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