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Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

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Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#21

Post by thowawayburnout »

knuththetruth wrote: post #9
pkaler wrote: post #5

This seems like reasonable regulation. And all of this demand-side management is going to do nothing for affordability. Housing affordability is a supply-side zoning issue and can be fixed very quickly: - Unify/standardize zoning. The entire country of Japan only has about a dozen different zoning types. I see more than a dozen zoning types from my home office window. - Stop going to council for spot upzoning. This s…

Supply is part of the problem, but the real culprit is that housing has been financialized and opened up as an investment vehicle for global capital. It doesn’t really matter if you change zoning laws if everything that gets built is to serve this kind of investment. Major cities in the US, such as LA and NYC, simultaneously have huge lots of vacant luxury housing stock and homelessness crises for precisely this reas…

I work in Vancouver and have lots of coworkers who have recently bought homes. The more I look into it, the more I think the majority of this problem is related to extremely low interest rates. As rates went down, real estate all over Canada shot up a huge amount. Now that rates are rising, it immediately cooled.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#22

Post by vkou »

conanbatt wrote: post #13
vkou wrote: post #3

The rules for qualifying for a rental license are detailed, and pretty reasonable. They permit renting out a room, or your house if you live in it, but do not permit turning an apartment complex into an AirBnB hotel. In short, you can let on AirBnB, as long as you are not diminishing housing stock. [1] It's not perfect, but it's pretty damn good. [1] http://vancouver.ca/doing-business/short-term-rentals.aspx > Short-…

Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock, and help a city get more tourism which is by all means good for the whole. Its one more case of locals that vote vs non-locals that dont, even if they are way more numerous. If Vancouver finds itself short of houses by whatever measure, they have to look elsewhere.

When I buy an apartment, and sublet it to a long-term tenant, one unit of housing exists.

When I kick that long-term tenant out, and turn it into a AirBnB hotel, I just took one unit of housing from the market for locals, and added one unit of housing to the tourist market.

> more tourism which is by all means good for the whole

This is contentious. The city may be better off as a whole if it did not have 4,000 homeless people, many of whom were priced out of their apartments, due to tourism, foreign buyers, etc.

To many people, more tourism brings little to no benefit, while a reduced housing stock brings much direct harm.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#23

Post by conanbatt »

borne0 wrote: post #14
conanbatt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock, and help a city get more tourism which is by all means good for the whole. Its one more case of locals that vote vs non-locals that dont, even if they are way more numerous. If Vancouver finds itself short of houses by whatever measure, they have to look elsewhere.

>>Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock If houses that would otherwise be rented or occupied are being used for short term rentals how can this be true?

The people that stay at short term rentals are also dwellers. They are taking up the time the longer term rentals aren't taking.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#24

Post by conanbatt »

vkou wrote: post #22
conanbatt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock, and help a city get more tourism which is by all means good for the whole. Its one more case of locals that vote vs non-locals that dont, even if they are way more numerous. If Vancouver finds itself short of houses by whatever measure, they have to look elsewhere.

When I buy an apartment, and sublet it to a long-term tenant, one unit of housing exists. When I kick that long-term tenant out, and turn it into a AirBnB hotel, I just took one unit of housing from the market for locals, and added one unit of housing to the tourist market. > more tourism which is by all means good for the whole This is contentious. The city may be better off as a whole if it did not have 4,000 homel…

> This is contentious. The city may be better off as a whole if it did not have 4,000 homeless people, many of whom were priced out of their apartments, due to tourism, foreign buyers, etc.

Homeless people existed in SF long before Airbnb existed.

> To many people, more tourism brings little to no benefit, while a reduced housing stock brings much direct harm.

Yes, to long term renters. There is no doubt that long term renters would prefer no short term renters existed. They would also prefer for all units to be rent controlled, or that landlords and property owners gave their properties for free.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#25

Post by eloff »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #19
eloff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this contributes, but it's not the principal problem. The core problem is supply shortage, which given the current astronomical prices has everything to do with zoning. Relax that enough and the market will solve the problem in a matter of years.

This would be a satisfying solution were it not for the fact that Vancouver's housing starts and completions graph is a giant up and to the right. Vancouver has been building supply. At this point if you're a politician in Vancouver that is promising to solve the problem in a few years you're going to get dumped. People wanted this problem solved yesterday.

It takes years. Whether people like it or not. It's never too late to start doing something about it.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#26

Post by borne0 »

conanbatt wrote: post #23
borne0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock If houses that would otherwise be rented or occupied are being used for short term rentals how can this be true?

The people that stay at short term rentals are also dwellers. They are taking up the time the longer term rentals aren't taking.

We disagree on the definition of dweller, cities require more than just vacation seekers to function. And the longer term renters aren't taking up those dwelling since it's more profitable for owners to rent out short term, but the reason that anyone wants to rent short term is because it's an interesting place to be, which it won't be if it's all people on vacation.

I'll call this the Ibiza Quandary.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#27

Post by conanbatt »

borne0 wrote: post #26
conanbatt wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people that stay at short term rentals are also dwellers. They are taking up the time the longer term rentals aren't taking.

We disagree on the definition of dweller, cities require more than just vacation seekers to function. And the longer term renters aren't taking up those dwelling since it's more profitable for owners to rent out short term, but the reason that anyone wants to rent short term is because it's an interesting place to be, which it won't be if it's all people on vacation. I'll call this the Ibiza Quandary.

It's no quandary at all, the visitors and the landlords agree. Only a minority disagrees.

If the rate of visitors reaches a rate where where the occupancy rate of airbnbs is makes them less interesting than long term units, congratulations, you have found market equilibrium.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#28

Post by sov »

conanbatt wrote: post #23
borne0 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Short term rentals do not diminish housing stock If houses that would otherwise be rented or occupied are being used for short term rentals how can this be true?

The people that stay at short term rentals are also dwellers. They are taking up the time the longer term rentals aren't taking.

You'd be correct iff a) the dwelling is occupied near-100% of the time AND b) hotels, hostels and similarly-zoned dwellings are routinely at capacity OR c) the dwelling rented is the principal residence of the owner.

Do you have data to support this w.r.t. Vancouver?

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#29

Post by borne0 »

conanbatt wrote: post #27
borne0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We disagree on the definition of dweller, cities require more than just vacation seekers to function. And the longer term renters aren't taking up those dwelling since it's more profitable for owners to rent out short term, but the reason that anyone wants to rent short term is because it's an interesting place to be, which it won't be if it's all people on vacation. I'll call this the Ibiza Quandary.

It's no quandary at all, the visitors and the landlords agree. Only a minority disagrees. If the rate of visitors reaches a rate where where the occupancy rate of airbnbs is makes them less interesting than long term units, congratulations, you have found market equilibrium.

So people who simply want to live in a city near to where they work and their children go to school have to be subject to market corrections where a single massively financed pseudo-hotel can massively distort a major cost of living assignment? Ridiculous. This is where common-sense regulation is needed.

Re: Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals

#30

Post by bobthepanda »

bdamm wrote: post #20
Tiktaalik wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely correct. Vancouver is unlike SF in that it has no issues building new residential buildings. At the moment housing starts in Vancouver are at all time highs, unprecedented for decades, and yet vacancy remains sub zero and housing is very unaffordable. This suggests that even these unprecedented levels of supply creation are unable to meet demand, and there are more issues at play than a lack of supp…

This is even more clear when you contrast housing supply to population growth. Population growth in Vancouver, Canada has been stable; almost linear, and relatively low. Meanwhile, housing supply has exploded across the region. Yet, housing remains unobtainable to the vast majority of residents. What is going on? It clearly is not a supply problem, and perhaps even worse, there could be a massive supply glut that for…

This is not necessarily indicative of anything; I don't if this applies to Vancouver, but a big portion of why DC and Manhattan have bustling residential demand despite having less population than their historical peaks is that there has been a general reduction in household size due to various factors. So you could have the same amount of people but a much higher amount of households.
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