There have been isolated comments about this in the past, but this is the first time the federal housing minister has speculated about details of specific measures to bring investor-owned STR housing back into the LTR/family housing market, including disallowing owners from deducting property-related expenses (including municipal tax and mortgage interest) against income from Airbnb. They are clearly getting ready to drop legislation.
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In West Australia they are considering a one off $10000 payment if you return the dwelling to the LTR market and upping the rates/ taxes etc if you donât
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Instead of trying to find ways to support airbnb hosts you seem to be on the oppositte side of things.
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Um, migrants? Really? People who need housing and will pay for it? How is that a bad thing for landlords or STRs? Your racism is showingâŚ
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The lack of affordable housing is exactly because LT landlords and investors are choosing to STR. Obviously that takes LT housing off the market. Although I agree that tenantsâ rights laws in many places cause undue hardship to landlords.
And what, donât let immigrants in so home owners can continue to str? As mentioned, that sounds racist.
The senior levels of government should have housing policies that anticipate the market is not going to provide affordable housing for incoming immigrants, and intervene to increase housing stock. The Scandinavians have figured it out⌠so can other countries,
That said â Airbnb (the company and the local hosts) are not going to change any of this or lead public opinion. The point in posting here is to a) give a heads up and b) promote discussion on how this affects the industry and the (mostly owner-operator) hosts in this forum.
Each jurisdiction that takes steps in this direction creates a precedent for other jurisdictions. We saw this 20 years ago when breakthroughs in acceptance of legalized gay marriage ricocheted around the world and 40 years ago when smoking restrictions that would have seemed impossible in the age of Mad Men became commonplace â one jurisdiction at a time â in all industrialized countries (even France!).
I think the era of âIâll buy a few investment apartments and use them as Airbnbsâ is time-limited.
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We all hope so. Arbitrage and absentee hosts are the scourge of this âindustryâ.
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I doubt it will happen anytime soon or at all, in areas like mine, where the entire townâs main industry is tourism. It definitely makes it difficult for locals to find affordable places to rent, (which is why I bought a lot and built a house here after years of renting) but the govt. is more interested in the tax dollars and business strs bring in.
And what one considers locals varies- the real locals, the Mexicans who were born here, basically all have their own homes, they donât rent. The ones looking for LT rentals are those who have come here from elsewhere, to open businesses or work, to retire, or snowbirds who stay here for 6 months. Itâs not the same situation as âIâve lived in Vancouver all my life and can no longer afford to rent a place here.â
It also seems like there arenât that many purely investor hosts here. There are plenty of big houses that are strs, but the homeowners also use them themselves for a few months a year. Or if they are purely bought, built, or renoed as strs, the owners live here and hands-on manage them themselves.
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muddy
I doubt it will happen anytime soon or at all, in areas like mine,
I think this kind of regulation is a ârich country solution.â
Kind of. But I could see Mexico City, for instance, bringing in regs, as there are a lot of Mexico City dwellers who are complaining about all the digital nomads who have been overrunning parts of the city and driving rental prices up. Itâs more a matter of whether an area is mostly dependent on tourism or not, I think, and whether they have a housing crisis. Mexico as a whole is quite dependent on tourism, but not the big cities like Mexico City and Guadalajara- theyâre like big cities anywhere- there are many things which drive the economy aside from tourism.
Interesting that airbnb (not in home hosts) owners are somehow being implicated in solving a housing crisis. In Blue Mountains, Australia in my town of 3500 people, there has traditionally been a reasonable percentage of properties that are used by owners living elsewhere as holiday houses. I have not seen them targeted by local authorities as a means to address the housing crisis. Some of these properties are listed on airbnb now, having a dual purpose for owners.
10 years back the NSW Premier outlined their housing strategy which was moving from social or public housing to affordable housing (subsidised) then private rental market.
The catch is that here the rental industry is self regulated and mainly looks after real estate agents, not owners or tenants.
Supply and demand has shown exorbitant rent increases eg 2014 200 houses burned down in one afternoon and due to shortage of homes rent went up hugely - a double whammy for those who lost everything.
In local govt consultations I have raised iimpending housing shortages for years but it appears that in crisis mode, airbnb owners are targeted.
If there were rental standards and protection for owners/landlords LTR might be more appealing but as it is, airbnb seems to be a more attractive scenario as any damage can be addressed in an ongoing basis which is no guarantee with property managers who are managing LTRs.
For sure, when there are issues, not just regarding affordable and available housing, but anything really, sometimes the root causes arenât addressed. Itâs not just higher revenue that causes homeowners to go to strs, itâs also landlord/tenant laws that overly protect the tenant and leave landlords unable to evict bad tenants without lengthy legal battles or along waiting petiod, during which the tenants arenât paying their rent.
Regarding not fully examining the root causes, I listened to a radio show where young people were talking about deciding not to have children, even if they wanted to, because they âcouldnât afford itâ. Almost all of them talked about the high cost of living, but almost all of them also said they had a very comfortable lifestyle. One said âof course we want to have the nicest things for ourselves and a childâ. It never seemed to occur to any of these folks that perhaps having children, if they want them, would be affordable if they didnât want âthe nicest thingsâ and perhaps changed their habits, like not buying expensive lattes at Starbucks everyday, or taking two vacations every year, or buying whatever strikes their fancy. They also cited the cost of daycare, but it didnât seem to occur to them that if one of them was a stay-at-home parent, they wouldnât need daycare, and would save money on transportation, a work wardrobe, meals out, etc. In other words, it seemed more important to all of them to maintain the life and lifestyle they were accustomed to than to sacrifice anything in order to start a family, even though they claimed to want children, which seemed to me to be more the issue than whether they could afford to have kids.
The model the Canadian government is looking at does not apply to towns less than 10,000 people
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