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There is no occupancy tax in the UK. (2% or otherwise)Europe is a continent with each country being run independently (apart from some in the EU that have some joint laws).
The all in pricing shown in the UK is as a result of our consumer legislation.,
Yes I think itâs a minefield.
Entreprenuers have an independent mindset.
In my opinion, there is nothing that makes âhome share hostsâ more righteous or protected, than whole home STR owners. Home Share hosts âcouldâ also be foreced to LTR instead through overreaching regulationsâŚif there is space within any home, then that space âcouldâ be made avaialbe to someone in need of housingâŚ
how would you feel if the govt saidâŚtake in a roommate instead of STR because young adults have no place to rent because apt prices are too high?
Or if you have a separate entrance space then govt could regulate that it must be rented out only as workforce housing and not STRâŚbecause our policeman, teachers and nurses have trouble affording and finding housing
I have 2 houses. One with a separate entrance STR, and another a 5 br house 3 blocks away right in my neighborhood. They have been STR for 13 yearsâŚbefore all the boom of AirBnb, I was already an entreprenuer in a business, and then in STR by 2009. Who ruined it for me.? âŚAirBnb bringing STR
to the masses, and everyone who jumped on the bandwagon after me!
There were only 4 STR in my town. Nobody cared / nobody restricted me.
From Day one I paid the Taxex same as hotelsâŚjust in case a day ever came that STR went on the radar. I also made a comfortable donation to the civic club non profit in my gentifying neighborhoodâŚso as to assist the residents with property taxes or medications they couldnot afford.
I resent everyone who tells me that there is something wrong with whole house rentials. My house was virutally âunsellableâ when I bought it âŚthe owner actually financed it for me because he could not get out from under it. I have put lots of money into it,. I care about my neighbots, and I care about my house, and I care about who I rent toâŚthat is why I have cameras for monitoringâŚand it makes me upset that the chat rooms object to cameras. I think every STR should be required to have camerasâŚthat would stop a lot of bad behavior nonsense.
In the past decade this house has soared in valueâŚand not due to STRâŚwhich are now severely restricted. It soared because there is a housing shortage and because the country is moving to my area.
If I were âforcedâ to LTR insteadâŚthen a huge part of my income would go awayâŚand my 76 year old husband lkely canât get work anywhere. So we would live on Social Security and savings and my minor extra sales income.
Am I an entreprenuer?..yes. And that is how I ended up in STRâŚbecause in 2008 I lost âeverythingâ including my livelihood and my big business and my buildingsâŚall to the banks and the crash of that recession of 2008.
I held onto my homestead through STR, and then found my 2nd house through owner financing.
I have invested in my community my entire adult life.
And now if I had to sell that 5 bedroom houseâŚnow fabulously valued at $1 millionâŚthere is no ordinary workforce famlly who would purchase this 5 br/ 4 bth with a tropicall backyard and pool. ( that I invite the neighbors to use on turn days or empty days).
Who would rent it as LTR? Either a well to do executive family, a family in between homes, or a group of unrelated young people. With less income, it would not be maintained as pristine.
Yes I took housing off the market during the housing recessionâŚwhen the country was glad to see the homes bought and saved and fixed.
People have short memories. And most humans ( including me ) are self-focused.on themeselves first and foremost. Maslowâs hierachy of needs. I am better off producing good income, spending money and paying taxes, instead of living off my savings for the rest of my life if I had to sell, pay capital gains tax and invest the profits of a house sale.
I wont start arguing with anyone who disagrees with me. I already know how most of you feelâŚI have been reading your opinions for a decade already. You will all jump on here in a minute and type and expound to me 50 reasons why my way is wrong, but yours is right.
When you all decide to accept a permanent roommate under your roof, or take in a border to stay in your spare room, instead of STR, and when you all decide to LTR your independent entrance unit as an cozy apartment for a small family or a local worker, instead of a travelerâŚthen you have the option to look crosseyed at the whole house rental down the street.
Otherwise we are all basically the same mindsetâŚdeciding to create income from housingâŚjust as every landlord has always done. Just a new twist on an old investment.
Cant afford your house without the extra income? ⌠just LTR instead.
Does not feel good? I knowâŚ
What;s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Rant over.
Sounds like you got out of bed wrong side @georgygirlofairbnb 
Havenât seen anyone here say anything about STR owners who have one or two properties.
Itâs rather silly to try and create an analogy between those with commercial holiday letâs and those who offer a room in their home.
Iâm quite happy to help with the local housing crisis I have housed young homeless people for short stays in my home for six years and I have long term rentals.
No country has ever forced homeowners to let out space in their home .
hopefully they will. In many areas when they are restricted, or banned, they are simply shut down or cut off from STR.
Iâm with you on this mostly.
It seems to me that youâre the epitome of someone not just of the community investing but investing in the community. Wow, you really were/are ahead of your times by paying from day one in 2009 occupancy taxes just like hotels. Your contributions to the non-profit civic group and sharing your backyard and pool to your neighborhood on empty days is beautiful. Your very investment in that home, creating that value, is a good thing in itself. You wonât find any quarrel from me, just admiration.
Youâre right too, in my opinion, that over-regulation or just bad regulation is a problem.Thatâs why I was thinking that if Hosts on this forum could be informed on the thoughts of regulators, of Hosts and of others then at least when/if regulation comes to our community we might be in a better position to participate in the process when new regulations or laws are being considered.
The main criticisms that Iâm aware of (still learning!) of STRs are that theyâre contributing to the rise in rentals (there are other factors too). Iâm supposing #2 is parties/noise and #3 is changing the character of the neighborhood (thatâs a big bucket). Parking has to get in there somewhere.[Iâm sure just by saying that Iâm inviting criticism, hopefully more substantive than quibbles. Getting the words right is important and it takes dialog to get there, especially for a non-expert like me.]
So, what am I missing in thinking that for the home-share host none of these criticisms apply? Maybe a little the parking issue? I donât think home-share hosts should be sacred or righteous but I donât see how they hurt the community and see many ways that they help it. They typically maintain if not upgrade their homes, pay taxes, buy in the community, bring others in who buy in the community. I think we could go on and on. And maybe we should because Oahu â or at least that article â didnât report any protections for home-share hosts, which makes no sense to me. Otherwise the community is risking losing them and their contributions, or at the least making life a little harder for them, with no gain to the community. Thatâs just a lose-lose.
Then we get to the extremes. People or organizations buying 50 homes/condos/buildings in a community and making them STRs. Theyâre transforming the very places that theyâre attracting people to visit. While Iâm a big believer in capitalism I can understand why communities would want to stop that, why that is not good for the community. Quantitative changes can lead to qualitatively different outcomes. Or as Aristotle said, moderation in all things.
Iâm going to stop there because maybe a white paper is needed to truly discuss the issues. But just as investing in 50 seems so obviously a problem, investing in one or two in your own community, as I said above, doesnât seem to create a problem. [And thereâs no magic to 1-2, maybe it should be 3-4, who knows?]. I suppose the counter-argument might be that if everyone bought one or 2 . . . Well, not everyone is going to do that. But a community could set a limit. They could say that there can be no more than x STR licenses in this community. They could grandfather existing STRs operated/held by full-time (>6 months) residents, subject them to certain standards, and auction off the remaining balance of available licenses. Thatâs one approach. Of course, there are other approaches.
I understand that with LLCs and partnerships buying properties it might be tricky to know whoâs truly buying what (a problem we also have with property owned by Russians in the U.S.) but I just have faith that an informed community working with our government representatives could figure out reasonable âsmallâ starting points. And then, over time, revise it.
So thatâs my rant (for now).
Thank you for relating your experience [predictive typing wanted to make ârelatingâ to be ârentingâ Ha ha] and also for what youâve done/are doing. Though I donât live in your community writ small I am in and you and I are in a larger community together, here on the forum, here in this country (Iâm guessing), in the worldwide STR community . . . and we could go on and on with the different communities we share. Iâll leave it at thank you for all youâre doing.
We have close relatives in Hawaiâi and have been there often over the past 20 years. Thereâs much less aloha toward tourists than there used to be. I wouldnât call it love/hate anymore. Hawaiian families can no longer afford to buy homes there and this is a big reason for the resentment.
I do not think the 90 day booking requirement will become a nationwide trend. I think Hawaiâi is unique. I also think recommendations to open a STR in Maui or the Big Island, as Iâve seen in press reports, are ill advised.
Where we live the government collects 15% tax from our guests. AirBnB has a contract with the city/county to remit tax on hostsâ behalf. The government would collect nothing like that if we had leased tenants with 1 year leases. STRs are limited to 1000 in the county, and there cannot be too many STRs on one block, resulting in waiting lists.
Thank you for this really interesting post! :))
I just want to thank you for taking the time to post this. Really fascinating!
I donât see why that would be. When jurisdictions bring in licensing for all sorts of businesses, or zoning, there are normally requirements to meet in order to qualify.
It might be that the business owner has to provide XX number of parking spaces, that signage canât exceed a certain size. Sometimes the building or storefront has to conform to a certain style of design, like not being allowed to put an ugly, generic-looking 7-11in the middle of a historic area.
Iâm not sure how it would be illegal to have str licensing that is restricted to local residents only.
And although you seem to think home share hosts have some superior attitude and are antagonistic to hosts who have entire home listings, this home share host certainly doesnât feel that way. I see nothing wrong at all with the type of hosting business you have- you are part of the community and hands-on with your rentals. Itâs no different from traditional BnBs, small hotels, etc. As long as there is tourism, and people traveling for work, or to attend a course, or a conference, or an event, there have to be places for them to rent.
It also is reasonable to me for people to want to rent out a place they themselves use as a vacation home to offset the costs of having the place. Or a place they bought when the market was good that they plan to retire to in a few years.
Thatâs completely different from some remote investor who buys up homes purely to str, given over to property managers to run, who cares about nothing but a good return on their investment.
I canât imagine restrictions ever being brought in where I live in Mexico- this townâs entire economy is based on tourism. And the govt. loves the occupancy and income taxes they get to collect.
Our townâs attorneyâs advised our council that this could not be written into legislation. It was the first instinct of our town council on how to manage the ownership of STR. I dont know what law or rationale they used to base their advisement.
I do suspect however that these attorneys are âprobablyâ correctâŚotherwise many towns would probaby want to prohibit âoutsidersâ from owning STR because most towns do support their residents, but object to the outside investors instinctively ( âŚand mostly correctly) .
Only allowing locals to STR would probably keep a town and neighborhood from getting inundated or overwhelmed with STR.
So if it could be done, it probably would have been done.
Imagine if Hawaii only allowed itâs residents to STRâŚproblem solved!
Well, Iâm not an attorney, so obviously donât know what laws it would contravene. But even if it was somehow illegal to prohibit non-local str business, it seems like there are other ways it could be discouraged. Like higher municipal taxes and licensing fees for non-resident strs, to the point where it would not make it attractive as an investment.
From our State Laws:
Nonresidents
Many license ordinances establish higher rates for nonresident than for resident licensees, usually double the resident rates. The state Supreme Court has upheld a differential rate classification between residents and nonresidents,
if the circumstances and conditions are different and
if the imposition of a higher license on nonresidents
is not unreasonable, capricious, or confiscatory.
I honestly think it just canât be done in the way you suggest
Spotted another story yesterday about the large number of vacant homes on Maui, which also has a housing shortage, and their county govt may do the same. A lot of Alaskans own time shares or condos on Maui, you see local ads here for condos there every fall.
I think we have to assume that the townâs attorney was right, though it would be really important to know WHY the municipality could not move forward on its own, so that in-state owners could evaluate opportunities.
There could be something in the state law that prevents distinguishing between in-state and out-of-state investors, State law could restrict how municipalities can regulate or enact laws regarding residential use. So maybe the lawyer was implicitly saying that State law would have to change to enable municipality regulation/legislation. So thatâs one BIG possibility.
Another possibility is the one I mentioned above. Many if not most/all states allow entities like LLCs, trusts, partnerships to own real estate. So, the lawyer might have been saying that on a practical level you canât distinguish between the two because out-of-state investors will just buy in the name of an LLC.
I wasnât joking when I said above that this is a problem with Russian assets in the U.S. It has been mentioned that perhaps there should be more transparency in asset ownership worldwide.
Many jurisdictions have and are looking at this, but what is striking to me about the Oahu law is: 1) no protection for Host-shared units (none in NYC too, but that seems rare) and 2) the requirement for stay minimums of either 90 days in residential area and 30 day stays in resort zones. Itâs not STR legislation that is at the beginning of a wave but this kind of draconian legislation that I was questioning is not the wave of the future in resort areas.
The more I am reading the less concerned I am that Oahu becomes a âmodelâ because the local or state legislation seems particularized to that areaâs concerns. But it is âin the mixâ of enacted laws to deal with the âSTR problem.â
The townâs attorney must be right.
Your excerpt suggests that it is not a practicality issue but a legal issue of fairness.
But then what they could do is limit the number, say to 1-2, which would presumably protect at least âthe little guy.â
That is somewhat correctâŚit does have to do with the LLCâs. Both my properties are held as LLCâs under a trust, and I had to submit the member names anyway to get my permit.
I personally love the new rules Atlanta, Georgia put into place for Airbnbs in April. I didnât note where I saw this, but what I read was:
This is cute- theyâre not only listing 3 bedroom apartments for 16 people in each, they are doing this where Airbnbs are supposedly banned.