That isn’t like the B.C., Canada regs. In BC, in the areas affected, the host has to share their own residence with guests- they can’t just buy an apartment to live in and have another entire apartment to rent out. While the Nice regulations seem like they effectively eliminate remote hosts, who don’t live in the area, which the BC regs also do, the Nice regs wouldn’t result in more long term housing being available, if a host can still rent out a entirely different apartment short term.
In New South Wales, my state in Australia, a review was done about 4 years ago. In greater Sydney, if your listing was unhosted, you are limited to 180 days rental a year, 21 day rentals do not count towards this total.
Your local council could join in and apply their own limitations.
The Byron Bay Area goes to 60 nights a year, unhosted this September. Currently there are over 3000 listings and LTR access has had limited availability for a number of years. I can’t see these STR going to longer rental periods as they can be very expensive and unaffordable for the lower income demographic they want to house.
My town has no night limitations, but there is a new review coming up and I can see this coming in. My listings are all old heritage homes, so I am looking at some sort of tourism approach which will take my business out of a general residential representation.
The other twist will be that if your are managing someone else’s listing, you must have a real estate agent accreditation……that will upset the arbitrage model.
muddy
@Spark So do you have to now let guests share your kitchen? I think you have a self-contained unit in your house with its own kitchen?
As it turns out, it’s worse than that.
If the on-site inspection determines that my guest suite kitchen (now re-named the “common room”) is used for food preparation, we do not get a business license. The presence of a microwave will disqualify us. The presence of a two-burner built-in glass stovetop MAY disqualify us unless we can convince the inspector it is only used to “heat the teakettle.”
We have to take all pots and pans and cooking tools out for the inspection, and somehow walk a fine line by not making “food preparation area” obvious in our listing, but still signalling to guests that there is a common room “for meals.” (It’s legal for the guests to eat in the guest suite, as long as the food is prepared elsewhere in the house.
That seems unnecessarily harsh. I thought the purpose of the legislation was to get rid of remote "investor " hosts, and “entire house” hosts, making more housing available to locals who live and work in the area, and get rid of those entire place listings that disturb the neighbors.
I don’t understand why it matters whether guests have a place to heat up take-out or fry an egg in their suite when the host also lives there. Are the powers that be assuming that if there’s any sort of food prep area, that the place qualifies as something that could be rented out to full-time tenants and therefore you are taking long-term housing off the market? Even if you wouldn’t ever choose to rent it to tenants?
Yes. That and sucking up to hotel developers.
Thing is – not one of my guests for the past 10 years would ever switch to a hotel even if every Airbnb in this little suburb closed down – they would simply choose one of hundreds that are still available ten minutes north of my house, or south, or east, or west in the four adjoining municipalities, none of which are following this madness…
Idiots!
For Muddy:
That would be Surrey, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody and Burnaby
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Well that sure sucks for you.
This is off-topic, sort of, but many years ago my oldest daughter and son-in-law knew of this place where we all stayed for a couple of nights that was down near 4th and Denman, that was supposedly a small condo building, and zoned as such, but was being run as a clandestine hotel. We had this nice 2 bedroom apt, with a living room with a gas fireplace, and a kitchen. I wonder what became of that place.
I’m currently applying for a business license in Richmond. I have some of the same fears. The wording of our regulation says that there are to be no cooking facilities in the rental rooms. I’ve taken out the stove in the downstairs kitchen and replaced the big fridge with an under-counter, so hopefully it can be defended as a family room.
Our other barrier is that we are allowed a maximum of two guests, and we stretch that a bit to say “two adult guests plus children and pets”.
I feel like we are well within the Provincial regulations, and we do legitimately use the space for ourselves when it’s not rented, but I feel very vulnerable to the potential whims of the city inspector.
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@Spark you could on your own or with other hosts seek to amend the pending legislation.
I would also suggest an exploratory chat (call to find out if you can get a free brief consult, I think they see these issues frequently) with Enrico Schaeffer, who in the podcast I linked yesterday discusses representing hosts facing onerous local regulations.
If it were me, I’d try to get a free initial consultation to lay out options, and fin out what sort of retainer he would want to do a quick letter or lobbying phone call to see how to tweak #4 to keep you legal.
If you could draft a letter yourself to go out under a law firm’s letterhead, even a local law firm, and enlists several more signatories, that might make this an more affordable lobbying effort. Perhaps note that you plan additional actions [political, legal] if #4 isn’t redrafted to define cooking facilities as the inclusion of a “range, oven, cooktop or hotplate,” and that refrigerators, microwaves and electric kettles are permitted.
American lawyer, Canadian laws.
Not helpful.
British Columbia law firms that appear to be following the crackdown and may have specialists:
Also, a quick call to the Traverse Law Firm might determine any Canadian or B.C. partners they could recommend.
I worked at the interface of provincial and municipal government for decades. The municipalities appear to be clearly well within their legitimate powers under the Municipal Act to enact this kind of bylaw.
Perhaps there is some kind of novel Charter argument to be made, but charter challenges cost more than we would make in two years – paid up front.
Of course, with that said, governmental bodies to respond as you note to pressure, and pressure from hosts also counts.
As they say in New York City, “You don’t ask, you don’t get.”
If I were in these shoes, I would personally file (“pro se”) an injunction against the law for whatever the provincial court filing fee is (hopefully nominal). I woud note that the hotels are interfering with my legitimate business (“tortuous interference”) and a suit is forthcoming. I would list the local government and the relevant lobbying group, in this case, the British Columbian Hotel Association, as joint defendants (“joint tortfeasors”).
I would ask for a sizable amount, multiples of my foreseable income, and try to get other hosts to join me as plaintiffs. I would go to provincial court, not small claims, since this allows you to put together a stronger record of facts for appeals courts to examine. (Small claims forms are deliberately simple.)
If funds permitted, I would get a legal eagle to look over my draft injunction and draft tortuous interference lawsuit.
I’ve done something similar when a fraudulent guest review threw me off Airbnb without recourse, and the legal route got me reinstated. The judges also danced up to the line on whether I could force damages, but the U.S. case law isn’t there yet on one-sided contracts such as Airbnb’s. (what are called contracts of adhesion).
The amount of work involved, to me, is not bad especially given the potential for a settlement and possibly even real change by the government bodies.
Also, if you narrowly tailored your complaint to the fact that requirement #4 is excessive, given that requirements #1-#3 are sufficient to deter investors, that might give the court a notion that your are only seeking a reasonable accommodation for legitimate non-investors, and that the hotel lobbyists went too far.
That would also essentially cede the fact that the government indeed has an interest in preserving long-term housing options, just it went a bit overboard here.
There is no basis in municipal law in this jurisdiction for claiming that regulation is “excessive.” None. They know it and I would expect they would know I know it.
I am intimately familiar with the mindset, and filing what would be perceived as a nuisance lawsuit would not give them pause, it would make them more determined to stand their ground with me in particular
Comparing the political and institutional culture and the legal landscape to New York City is way off the mark. If I’m going to get compromise, it’s not because I’m in a pissing match to see who can be the biggest, posturing asshole. That doesn’t work when the government knows it is on firm ground and knows the local public is totally indifferent.
I would describe the law in question as the nuisance in this scenario, and a lawsuit to rectify the matter justified.
That is, of course, how I see the bylaw.
However, in the public square, at city hall, and in court that argument wold be seen as self-serving and frivolous. The municipality has broad (and well-tested) powers to regulate business being conducted in residential neighbourhoods. I will never win this if my opening gambit establishes me as a self-entitled, above-the-law kook.
This is Canada, where snarling belligerence is viewed as a character flaw, and not as an admirable and respected sign of strength.
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That all makes sense to me. In line with existing STR rental regulations in most places. I’m curious how actual B&Bs will survive though. This renders those illegal. Hotels with efficiency kitchens, too.
Hotels are still legal because this is an amendment to the bylaw regulating home based businesses. Bed and breakfast are legal because they comply by providing meals, a point I did not share because it is outside the business model of almost all Airbnbs (and certainly mine).
Interesting bit of research – three months before the city announced these restrictions, their economic development committee met. One item on the agenda was filing a draft 2024 Economic Development Work Plan where the #1 priority was “attracting investment for hotels.” A separate discussion item was “Airbnb’s impact on local hotel development and revenues”
2 + 2 = 4
The only thing I’m left wondering is how much “hotel developers” are contributing to local election campaigns.
I cannot think of one of our guests who – if they couldn’t find an Airbnb in this tiny suburb – would stay in a hotel rather than going five or ten minutes down the road to an adjoining suburb. Most of our guests had never even heard of this particular suburb before they booked us – they just wanted to stay in a house with a yard away from the busy downtown.
The small town in AZ that I hosted in for several years and had no STR requirements has now implemented several. Now you have to register with the town and pay $50, no problem.
Now required that you have to have $500,000 liability insurance and here’s the really odd one, within 24 hours of a booking you have to do a sex offender background check on the renter.
I’ve noticed there are fewer older Airs left there that were there when I left about 6 years ago.
The governments are using airbnb’s as a scapegoat for their lack of building, red tape discouraging building, terrible landlord laws that have allowed squatters and those who do not pay rent to flourish-driving landlords out of the business, greedy govt agencies that want extra licensing and regulation fees, foreign investors that buy property to launder money… And blaming it all on airbnb owners- many who are seniors and those on low income… Its a terrible thing they are doing.
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