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The Canadian province if British Columbia has new legislation to bring STR rentals back into the LTR family housing market. From early reports, it appears the legislation has three main thrusts.
It will give municipalities much greater powers to regulate STR in their jurisdiction, and raised fines for non-compliance to $3,000 per day per property. (So someone with 10 properties who doesn’t have a required municipal licence can be dinged $30,000 a day, or almost a million per month
It will require Airbnb toi share data to a database available to both the provincial and municipal governments.
This is the big one: Stating next May The legislation limits short-term rentals to within a host’s home, or a basement suite or laneway home on the property where they reside… On May 1, 2024, the principal resident requirement will come into forceThis means the investors are being deliberately chased out of the STR market. The message is if you wan t to buy a condo as an investment, put it on the long term housing market. (The province already has a law that levies a heavy property tax on unoccupied condos and houses.)
Analysts are saying this will become a benchmark legislation for other Canadian provinces.
Sounds good to me. At least they recognized that “an Airbnb” covers a lot of territory and are exempting on-site hosts.
This seems to be happening in many places now- looks like Airbnb’s dreams of grandeur is slowly being forced to go back to its original “live like a local”- sharing a property with the host.
For those of us who are doing AIRBNB in-home this is golden. When I do a test search in my region, most of what comes up is new condos – soulless apartments with soulless furniture and distant “managers” posing as hosts. Since I live in British Columbia, this will get rid of a lot of my local competition. If it happens worldwide, it’ll get rid of a lot of greedy nincompoops who are undermining the brand because they do not understand or care about being a “host” – they are nothing more than investors and landlords in a business sector built on hosting.
To be fair, Airbnb encouraged this investor “host” business. Not only do they let these big property management companies get away with stuff regular hosts would get suspended or delisted for, did you know Airbnb provides them with marketing advisors?
I’m in BC and I’m watching this news, too. I think it will benefit me, but we will have to see.
Technically STRs are not permitted in our city at all. We don’t have a license, because there is no such thing. But our rental is exactly the kind of listing that would be allowed under this new provincial order.
I hope this will prompt our city to update their regulations so that our listing can be properly licensed. We feel like we fill an important need that hotels and LTRs don’t accommodate. Most of our guests are families relocating to our area, who need a place to stay until they can get settled.
The BC legislation seems like it is modeled after laws passed in the Province of Quebec (PQC) a couple of years ago where I owned a lakeside cottage north of Ottawa. I applied for a license and found that the municipal government where I was located - Blue Sea, QC - had decided to not allow any STR - anything less than 30 days. We had been renting for 5 years and at the same time our local caretaker/host and cleaner had decided to retire. We chose to sell and after two weeks on the market we sold after a bidding process. Quebec also does not allow non owner occupied STR in the cities.
I grew up spending summers at a “cottage lake” in the Laurentians. Most of the cottagers moved up the day school ended and stayed until labour day – the working fathers came up from Montreal weekends, mid week (for a night) and for their annual vacation… mothers and kids were full time.
Even then – sixty years ago – there was a lot of peer pressure on neighbours who didn’t follow that summer pattern and only occasionally used their lakehouse to not do short term rentals when their place was empty. This was because in this corner of cottage country people didn’t lock their doors and left the keys in the ski boat, and really didn’t want an ever-changing stream of strangers in their midst.
I expect that same dynamic exists to this day, and I can see how that would create pressure on rural local governments to opt in to legal tools that actually outlaw STR in cottage country.
Another CBC article with more detail about the law and reactions to the law from about-to-be-put out-of-business investor/hosts and from local municipal politicians
I think it’s wonderful. Home share STR‘s can now thrive. The low quality of investor driven and investor led short term Rentals was giving Airbnbs A bad name.
I also am glad for the new rules. In my city the people whose Airbnbs are “grandfathered in” and allowed (up until May 1) to operate even though now owner occupied are organizing and will fight the city tooth and nail. Their retirement fund is on the line and now they maybe have no job and have to either become a landlord which they may not be suited for or sell and lose their small business. All the young people say boo boo at least you have a place to live and lots hate boomers with real estate. Not a great feeling. Thinking of switching to long term renting and going to Europe for a year. Have a fixed long term lease with owner occupancy as reason for end of lease. A large pet deposit, damage deposit and security deposit. Pick a great tenant and expect the best and help young people.
The New regulation that Airbnb has to be in he house you live in (like an in-law suite or room-sharing) or a laneway house in cities over 10,000 is a provincial government regulation. The local municipality has no say in this aspect.
Glad I don’t live in Canada. One of the many models here is the property in the mountains that you buy and use and can rent out to others during ski season to help defray costs and it provides another source of lodging options for tourists coming here for ski vacations. It was something that was done long before Airbnb was even an idea or before there was the internet. This law would eliminate this and hurt everyone.
The ski cabin, and similar situations, are scenarios I think should be exempted from being disallowed. There could be some sort of maximum nights per year that places the owner uses themselves
are allowed to rent out short term. Listings like this don’t cater to long term rentals anyway, because the owner and their family also use it, plus the only people who would be interested in a long term rental there are people who work on the ski hill. And that employment may only be seasonal.
