Airbnb says Vancouver’s rental rules could bolster listings

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When Vancouver finalizes its new rules for short-term rental services such as Airbnb some time this summer, many people might think that means there will be fewer listings in the city.

But a representative from Airbnb, the global giant of rentals by homeowners, says there might actually be more.

"When cities introduce regulations, sometimes people come forward [to rent their places] because they see, 'This is how I can do it,'" said Alex Dagg, the public-policy manager for Airbnb in Canada. "It depends on whether the city has been smart and put forward sensible rules."

Ms. Dagg said that women older than 60 are becoming the company's fastest-growing group of hosts renting out their space through Airbnb. That group would be one that's likely to prefer clear-cut rules before venturing into vacation rental, she said.

The city is preparing rules to significantly restrict short-term rentals in Vancouver, where services such as Airbnb have been blamed for rising housing prices and rental vacancy rates below 1 per cent.

The city's proposed rules would allow owners to rent out a room in the house they live in or the entire unit while they're out of town, but devoting a home or apartment as an Airbnb rental full-time would be illegal. Owners of properties listed on Airbnb would be required to obtain licences and possibly pay a tax equivalent to what hotels and bed-and-breakfasts pay.

In the most recent count by Tom Slee, a man who scrapes Airbnb data, Vancouver had close to 5,800 listings from just that company. There are about a dozen short-term rental platforms that operate in the city, although Airbnb is the largest.

Chicago and San Jose, Calif., were two cities Ms. Dagg cited as examples of where the number of listings has grown after the city imposed regulations on short-term rentals.

The number of listings in San Jose grew to just more than 2,700 by Jan. 1, 2017, from about 1,370 the previous year, after the city brought in a bylaw to regulate vacation rentals.

In Chicago, where a new bylaw was introduced in June, 2016, the number of listings jumped from about 3,700 as of Jan. 1, 2016, to 9,075 a year later.

However, a monitoring agency that looks at Airbnb data has noted in the past that listings also can drop significantly after a city introduces regulations, especially if there are severe penalties.

"In Berlin and Santa Monica, listings fell by 49 per cent and 37 per cent after fines of $100,000 and $500 respectively were introduced," Helen Hsi wrote in April this year on the website AirDNA. "By comparison, in San Francisco, a 90-day cap on renting entire homes on Airbnb led to a modest 5-per-cent decrease in listings."

The same site, however, noted that Airbnb listings in Barcelona increased after that city instituted new rules that covered hotels and hostels as well.

Paul Hetherington, a vice-president at the company Host Compliance, which monitors Airbnb listings for cities, said their data show that listings after regulations come into place "tend to fall, but it's mostly the ones that are not that serious about it dropping off."

Over time, he said, "the trend is still for growth."

Airbnb representatives have been lobbying Vancouver officials heavily in recent months as the city prepares to finalize its rules.

One thing the company would like to see changed is Vancouver's current proposal that basement suites and laneway houses be included as units covered by the new vacation-rental regulations.

That means, if the proposed bylaw goes ahead, people can't convert their suites or laneways to short-term rentals, even if the owner is occupying the main part of the house.

Ms. Dagg noted that Toronto has chosen not to do that, saying that homeowners should be allowed to choose what they do with their property, as long as they are living in some part of it.

"This is a concern of ours in Vancouver. These [basement suites] are units that often aren't going to be in the long-term rental market."

She argued that families these days are complicated, with changing needs for space, and that it makes sense to let them use a basement suite for their family sometimes, for short-term renters at others, and as a long-term rental at some points.

However, Vancouver officials have expressed extreme anxiety in the past about losing any units at all in its tight rental market.

City statistics from 2016 indicate there were about 30,000 secondary suites in the city and close to 3,000 laneway houses.

Local residents have also heard many stories about tenants being evicted and then finding out their landlords are renting out their apartments through Airbnb.

Ms. Dagg said that Airbnb is opposed to anyone evicting a tenant and will, in some cases, remove a listing from its platform if a host has done that.