11 ms·

Airbnb likely removed 31,000 homes from Canada’s rental market, study finds

108 points by bendauphinee 7y ago

hourislate 7y ago
I have a feeling 99% of these homes they are referring to are condo's in Vancouver and Toronto (VAN,YYZ are the condo building capitals of NA). A lot of these units are owned buy foreigners or as investment properties. According to a real estate friend, some Chinese have purchased entire floors of these buildings to park capital fleeing China. I know that many buildings in downtown Toronto can be up to 50% AirBnb rentals. Coincidentally, I spoke with someone on the weekend who can't take it anymore and wants to sell their unit or put it to work as an AirBnb because of the amount of prostitutes, drug dealers, etc using the building as short term rentals through AirBnB. Canada really needs to get a grip on foreign ownership. 10's - 100's of billions of capital outflows over the last decade from China, Hong Kong, Iran, etc have created a tough environment for the local population. Co-op's could possibly solve this problem by creating rules where short term rentals, foreign ownership, etc are not allowed. Although it's tough to get a mortgage for a co-op condo.
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  my friend just a year out of undergrad started a short term rental management company here in toronto and its crazy how much money comes thru, and ive lived my entire life around one of the wealthiest areas of the country
- kitcar 7y ago
  It's affecting all property types. I know of one street corner where there is one newish townhouse which is a full-time AirBnB, as well as a turn-of-the-century apartment walk-up which is 100% airBnB. There is also a 1970's apartment building where a number of "tenants" sublease their property on AirBnB. I found this all out when I was helping a friend look for a place to stay near the University of Toronto...
- john_moscow 7y ago
  Vancouverite here. The biggest trouble is that our economy now really depends on that dirty money. The biggest sector of the BC economy (almost 20%) is real estate and the next one is construction with 8%. So banning that would mean losing roughly a third of the budget income, let alone most mortgages going under. On the other hand, continuing it would make property ownership pretty much out of reach for anyone without external capital flowing in. Tough spot.
  - blueside 7y ago
    The moral dilemma of curtailing dirty money to keep your economy going. Yikes.
  - harryVic 7y ago
    You make an assumption that foreign money is entirely funding those two industries which is untrue. Vancouver is the most desirable city in a country with 36 Million people, so it makes sense for real estate to be expensive there. And new immigrants want to live in lower BC because it is warm here. I am an immigrant and I live in Victoria. It doesn't matter how much more I could make in Calgary, I don't want to spend 9 months of a year shoveling snow.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      So Vancouver is a nice place to live, but so is nearby Seattle. Does Vancouver deserve to be more expensive than Seattle rent wise? No, at least as a tech worker, the salaries just aren't there.
      - harryVic 7y ago
        Moving to Vancouver from another country is much easier than moving to Seattle. And Seattle is considered to be a city with a bad weather in the US. That bad weather is actually considered good here in Canada.
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
- itsaidpens 7y ago
  Any thoughts on Montreal?
Tiktaalik 7y ago
> Nearly half of all Canadian Airbnb revenue in 2018 was generated by commercial operators, or those who manage multiple listings, the McGill report said. Their share of sales increased from 2017 in nearly all metro areas. Among this group, there are some hosts that vastly eclipse the competition: Fifteen managed at least 100 active listings apiece in the past year, the report said, and nearly 60 hosts earned more than $1-million in 2018. > It vastly differs from how Airbnb often pitches itself: as a personal platform through which residents, either out of town or looking to put a second bedroom to good use, will occasionally rent out their spaces. > Often, the largest “hosts” are in fact businesses that manage vacation rentals on behalf of homeowners. City of Vancouver regulations (as ineffective as they are) explicitly targeted and banned these sort of commercial operators. What does Airbnb's valuation look like if such a significant share of their revenue comes from the sort of activity that is actively being banned by more and more cities?
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  Much smaller, which is why AirBnB has to keep pretending "oh, it's just people renting out their main homes while they're out of town" and that any kind of regulation or crackdown on their business is only hurting ordinary people, even when everyone including them knows that's a lie.
segmondy 7y ago
What will happen when the market contracts and people don't travel much? I know a couple in Canada that have acquired 7 homes in the last few years strictly for Airbnb rentals.
- loceng 7y ago
  The thought with a few commercial Airbnb people I know is that, at least in major Canadian cities, the demand for living in Canada won't allow this to happen. What's more likely are controls that will be put into place to extract more of the profit, making it less profitable to run such a business, in order to fund displacement from gentrification and low-income housing projects. This is however one of those invisible beasts that has enough people + Airbnb as an organization aligned to lobby politicians to push back against any legislation that will harm their profits.
jseliger 7y ago
If only we had some technology that could increase the number of housing units on a given piece of land; such a technology could allow us to build as much housing as people want to occupy. Too bad this has to remain a fantasy. https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housing-costs-solutions-elevators https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...
- swiley 7y ago
  You don’t even need elevators. In most cities it’s possible to build and maintain small concrete rooms in a single story structure with an exterior wall and make a profit renting them out for less than ~$40/month. The issues come from zoning, rent seeking, and regulation.
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    You're speaking of storage units, correct? Not habitable structures?
    - nine_k 7y ago
      Have you ever seen a typical apartment in downtown Tokyo?
      - marak830 7y ago
        While I agree with your point, I have. I do have an elevator and eevry apartment building (and business I have worked at), has an elevator.
  - marak830 7y ago
    Primarily to support nine_k down below, wtf are you smoking. I've yet to see a wheelchair user climb stairs. As for the remainder of your comment, I'll leave that low hanging fruit to dangle.
eljimmy 7y ago
I really wish my city would ban Airbnb with the exception being that you must reside in the household you are looking to rent out, as in, a literal bed and breakfast. Our rental market is absolutely cut-throat right now. Affordable rentals on realtor.ca aren't lasting more than a couple days after they go up.
- dkhenry 7y ago
  I would like to know if you think the problem is AirBnB or the lack of building new houses. I find a lot of people who complain AirBnB drives up rent, but also believe building more units won't push down rents.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    AirBnB causes damaging housing economics more rapidly than building more units can alleviate them. Is building more units a (long term) solution? Yes. Is banning AirBnB a solution? Also yes. What seems strange to me is the idea that tourists and small time local economic actors profiting handsomely from short term rentals should take priority over a majority of local citizens. If citizens don't like your plan, out your plan goes (very similar to how California residents keep killing upzoning). If you're a local citizen and want to put a wrench in short term rentals, engage in the political process. Go to your representatives and tell them to enact legislation to do so if that's what you want, and if they won't you will assemble with other local citizen voters and vote them out. That's democracy.
    - dkhenry 7y ago
      I can't speak to the nature of the Canadian market, but in the bay area where people also say banning AirBnB will help I always like to remind people that there are approximately 7,000 AirBnb units in SF[1], and there is was an estimated housing shortage of 300,000 units in 2016[2]. Even if you outlawed all AirBnb listings, it would not change rent prices at all, its a rounding error on the shortage of available housing. 1. http://insideairbnb.com/san-francisco/ http://insideairbnb.com/san-francisco/ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage
fjabre 7y ago
I've had mostly negative experiences with Airbnb over the years. My neighbors airbnb their house every weekend. So nice loud music and rude guests to deal with fairly often. Of course why not? They are not accountable to rest of us full timers in my neighborhood. My place was broken into by someone who stayed at it before using Airbnb. One guest almost started a fire and had to be removed. Checking in and out of airbnbs can be a bit of a nightmare. Everyone has their own process for checkin. Airbnb destroying local real estate markets is no surprise. They've been doing it for several years and getting in trouble for it for several years. Growth at all costs - no matter what it does to local markets or people's lives. I'm sure their impact on local economies is the least of their concern until the governments attached to those economies start to speak up.
- Veen 7y ago
  As a counter-point, I lived in AirBnBs for over two years in places ranging from Morocco to France to Bulgaria, and had an almost universally positive experience.
- dmix 7y ago
  I live next to an Airbnb that constantly has new people coming through and occasionally some music and I don’t have any problem with it. None of my neighbours have complained either and I know quite a few of them in the 3yrs I’ve lived here. I guess your experience may vary depending on what type of place you have and what type of owner of the unit. It’s really not hard to filter out the idiots with the review system. The people who I have met waiting for the elevator were always super polite when I see them and our walls are thick enough with concrete where I don’t hear the music unless I’m close to my living room wall, which is far from my bedroom. The owner of the unit, an older retiree from the area with just the one unit AFAIK, was very polite and open about it too and gave me his number in case I had any problems (which I’ve never used). But 99% of them seem to be European or Chinese travellers, who at most occasionally need some help with our complicated fob system. It’s only rarely young people who are partying and if it is it’s always the weekend where I’m more tolerant. Plus I’ll never forget how Airbnb saved me when I flew into SF last minute as a 20yr old and the only option was a $500 hotel or not sleeping that night, because my prior arrangement with someone fell through when they were unexpectedly out of town. I was fortunate to find an Airbnb guy who accepted my request at 9pm after I got out of the BART with a dying phone. I was literally preparing to spend the night in a park with my luggage. So I’m a bit biased regarding Airbnb and the alternate options without it (which no one seems to offer or care about in their calls to ban it).
jumbopapa 7y ago
It's interesting to see how the Airbnb market has evolved. I used to always hear that "Airbnb is cheaper", but lately when booking trips I've been able to find better deals in hotels.
wedn3sday 7y ago
> "Shared exclusively with The Globe and Mail" Publish the actual paper or this is just vaporware nonsense. This is a non-peer-reviewed paper with zero credibility, thats been seen by a small handful of people. They could literally write a paper about the moon being made of cheese and have the same credibility. They dont even make the source material available in their article. I dont want to sound overly critical, this looks like a legit finding that matches up with my experience of the housing market, but Im completely fed up with people publishing their "findings" without reporting where the data came from and how they got to their conclusions. Until they publish the paper, this should be dismissed out of hand. There's such a long history of people completely messing up their statistical methodology that you cant believe anything until you see the actual numbers/methods.
- itsaidpens 7y ago
  The data they received is a competitive advantage and they are not under any obligation to publish it. You don't need to, or are allowed to, extend your demands of peer-reviewed academia to modern online journalism. Stop whining, and address the claims of the article.
  - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
    This is why they call it fake news.
    - itsaidpens 7y ago
      I just hate that pedantic comments like the original poster are the most upvoted on HN. The most upvoted comment on most articles isn't addressing the topic; it's some sort of ridiculous analysis or criticism of process, or an embedded piece of javascript, or whatever.
      - chongli 7y ago
        I happen to appreciate this style of comment on HN. We live in a frenzy of sensationalism. Why can't we have a devil's advocate to remind us of the most common, basic mistakes? It's like a compiler that catches null-pointer errors for us.
9387367 7y ago
The same happened in London and I lived through it, saw this happening in my neighbourhood, but the thing is, nobody cares. Every single person I brought this up with dismissed it as a non issue. Those flats on Airbnb have to come from somewhere and there are rental agencies that specialise in managing properties exclusively for Airbnb, none of this existed before and some of those properties were taken from the long let market, which would drive prices up.
- ng12 7y ago
  It's a matter of scale. How much does AirBnB inflate price versus overly restrictive zoning and NIMBY laws? AirBnB is just easier to rail against because it's a private company.
lixtra 7y ago
The numbers have to be seen in relation to 250.000 immigrants (2012) that occupy a larger amount of flats each year. Also this pool of AirBnb flats offers flexibility for people who didn’t find a long term apartement yet and home owners who want to reshape these homes.
- bobbyT314 7y ago
  The number of immigrants admitted to Canada per year is very stable and only slowing rising. On average it has been between 200-300 thousand per year for at least the past 20 years. This is not the driving force of lack of housing, and is a driving force of a stronger economy with the introduction of skilled labour. https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigrants-in-canada/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigra...
  - Veen 7y ago
    I can't see how immigration can be considered to have no impact on available housing. People have to live somewhere and if there were fewer immigrants, there would be more housing stock for non-immigrants — unless you believe that immigration causes houses. It's perfectly possible for immigration to be a net positive for the economy and for it to have negative affects on the availability of housing.
    - bobbyT314 7y ago
      Of course it has an impact. But it is likely not a dominant one or we'd have experienced the housing crises we're seeing now, long ago.
      - Veen 7y ago
        There are approximately 14,072,080 occupied private dwellings in Canada. The rental of 31,000 of them on AirBNB is unlikely to be a significant factor in the housing shortage. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016005/98-200-x2016005-eng.cfm https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98... As the article states, 31,000 is 1.5 percent of rental accommodation. If we assume that half of the 300,000 immigrants rent, and that they tend to rent in couples, that's 75,000 rental properties consumed by immigration each year -- or about 3.5 percent. That's an additional 3.5 percent of rental housing stock each year, a much faster increase than the number of AirBNB rentals. Regardless of whether you think immigration or AirBNB are major causes of a housing shortage, it's disingenuous to argue that immigration has less of an impact than AirBNB. EDIT: It's also worth noting that construction is expected to slow over the next five years, whereas immigration is expected to grow. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/immigration-canada-2018-1.4371146 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/immigration-canada-2018-1.4... https://www.on-sitemag.com/construction/end-of-an-era-20-years-of-almost-uninterrupted-construction-growth-poised-to-slow/1003962031/ https://www.on-sitemag.com/construction/end-of-an-era-20-yea...
itsaidpens 7y ago
Anyone have any thoughts on Montreal?
- xutopia 7y ago
  I have a friend who rents out an apartment long term on the south shore through AirBnB. It works out to about the same price as he would get from renting out long term through ads but the process is actually easier for him with the platform than posting ads and answering phone calls. I have a basement apartment that my friend rents out and when he goes on trips he rents it out. If he leaves I would consider AirBnB even if long term because it would save me a lot of trouble.
  - itsaidpens 7y ago
    I just love the city, and I'd like to buy a property there.
    - 33degrees 7y ago
      It's not the greatest market for buying right now, which has led to an increase in the number of renters and extremely low vacancy rates...
xutopia 7y ago
No it hasn't. A lot of homes are rented out through AirBnB now because it's the way to be found. It also guarantees payments.
- parthdesai 7y ago
  What are you talking about. No one is renting a long term unit, i.e. signing an actual lease on airbnb, at least here in Toronto.
bparsons 7y ago
I always wonder why the same argument isn't applied to hotel rooms. If the government forced every hotel room to be converted to affordable housing, the homelessness problem could be solved overnight!
- yifanl 7y ago
  Because hotels were originally zoned for short-term rentals and operate as short-term rentals. AirBnB properties were originally zoned for long-term housing and operate as not-long-term housing.
thehappypm 7y ago
People rarely discuss the positive impact of AirBnB: boosting the number of tourists. I wonder how much additional tourism spend and tax revenue the city is getting from the influx of tourists. Hotels aren't closing down; AirBnB's just make traveling easier.
- dorchadas 7y ago
  Is an increase in tourists really a positive impact? Sure, they bring more money to the city, but there's lots of downsides to it as well, especially when they stay in AirBnBs. See Barcelona, for example. For the record, I'd almost say increased tourism in most places isn't a net positive.
sokoloff 7y ago
AirBnB perhaps moved that number of units from the long-term rental market to the short-term rental market.
LoSboccacc 7y ago
rental market is a distortion anyway, things are foobar because ownership is getting harder and harder, creating a whole generation of renters-for-life, but the solution lies not in affordable rents, it's affordable housing where is at.
jpollock 7y ago
I'm guessing the number of short-term people hasn't changed (except for population growth), so what impact has this had on hotel occupancy rates?
- ncphillips 7y ago
  Anecdata, from people I know working in hospitality, is that they're going down, and hotels are definitely being threatened by AirBnBs
RocketSyntax 7y ago
Thoughts: 1) It's just basic free-market supply and demand. Landlords own property to make money, so if they want to take a risk in short term rentals they should be able to. 2) I would love to live in a double-wide shipping container... actually that's probably bigger than what I have now.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
SilasX 7y ago
Sorry for the Joker meme, but we really have a double standard here. - Crappy local policy prevents creation of 300,000 housing units: nobody panicks. - Startup removes 30,000 housing units from the market: everyone loses their mind!
- wvenable 7y ago
  Given that construction is effectively non-stop in Vancouver, this is a bullshit post.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    It’s not 300k homes though, and the relevant comparison is to what could have been. The existence of some construction is not a refutation and does not make the government’s role “bullshit”.
    - wvenable 7y ago
      It's not "some" construction though.
mrosett 7y ago
If property owners can make more money renting out properties on Airbnb, that suggests short term rentals are the highest value use of that property. I derive a lot of value from using Airbnb when I travel, particularly in markets with housing shortages. If an apartment can host a hundred visitors a year, is that obviously worse for the city than renting it out to a single person?
- momokoko 7y ago
  It creates an economic(and tax revenue) downward spiral in an area if it becomes a significant percentage of vacation rentals. Real estate isn't really that controlled by market forces. Its a means to an end and pricing does not actually represent best utility.
- notatoad 7y ago
  >that suggests short term rentals are the highest value use of that property. that's undeniably true for all property in most places that have any tourism value, but it's a short-term value akin to "if we light this city on fire, we can probably make a lot of money selling tickets to watch it". People also have to live in the city for it to have any value as a tourism destination. If an apartment can host a hundred visitors a year but there's no service industry staff living within 50km because all their houses have been converted to AirBnB's, your tourism industry is going to collapse.
- snarf21 7y ago
  I think the main issue is that there are laws related to hotels and there are laws around renting/leasing and there are laws around owning houses. The "short term rental" category gets to bypass all these regulations and that is the exclusive source of their margins. Once government constructs rules around short term rentals, the advantage goes away. It is also interesting that the focus of these discussions is never really balanced. It is always why it is bad for home owners or would be renters OR exclusively why it is great for consumers who get to pay less, etc. These things are complicated and it will take slow governments more time to adapt to the changed world.
  - 7y ago
marcrosoft 7y ago
The title is misleading. There's nothing to see here folks. Airbnb _only_ rents properties. Nothing has been removed. The owners of the properties are probably making more money with short-term rentals than long-term. Everyone involved with the transaction is acting rational.
- herodotus 7y ago
  When people live and work in a city, and if they cannot or do not want to buy a property, they are looking for a rental agreement that typically guarantees them a place for a year, and is renewable. This is completely different from an Airbnb rental. For owners or rental units (such as basement suites), much more money is to be made with Airbnb, because people who are staying for 5 days pay rates that are was higher than the typical yearly rental fee for the same place. So of course many owners go the Airbnb route. And those units are lost to the other rental market. For my city (Vancouver) this has contributed to the housing market pain that exists here. And it affects real people in real ways. There is plenty to see and think about here.
  - marcrosoft 7y ago
    > When people live and work in a city, and if they cannot or do not want to buy a property, they are looking for a rental agreement that typically guarantees them a place for a year, and is renewable. I had to stop here. 1. It is not always the case but that person (fortunately) has the freedom to choose another location. 2. Guarantees don't really exist unless you are talking physics theory and even that sometimes surprises people. > much more money is to be made with Airbnb, because people who are staying for 5 days pay rates that are was higher than the typical yearly rental fee for the same place. You made my original point. This transaction is a win-win for both parties involved. The rest of your argument centers around stifling this transaction to subsidize an artificial-non-sustainable market. Yes, this effects real people in real ways but they need to take _personal_ action and do what's best for them personally instead of effecting change on the rest of the area.
    - mikehodgson 7y ago
mrosett 7y ago
I'm genuinely baffled that so few people in this thread see no value in Airbnb providing cheaper options for travelers. As a software engineer, one way I could advance my career would be to move back to the Bay Area. An imperfect substitute, though, is visiting regularly to maintain the relationships I built when I lived there. (Indeed, I'm writing this from a plane while flying there.) Being able to stay in an Airbnb for half the cost of the hotel makes that more feasible.
- edoloughlin 7y ago
  Kind of a double-edged sword. It makes it easier to visit, but more difficult to live there if you do land a job: In New York, for instance, Airbnb directly accounted for a US$380 increase in median annual rent costs, according to a separate report from Prof. Wachsmuth last year that was funded, in part, by a hotel-industry organization.
- Retric 7y ago
  Things that hurt the local population to benifit other people are rarely well liked.
- neonate 7y ago
  It's similar to how you'd conclude no one was using Uber from reading the equivalent threads.
- lykr0n 7y ago
  Not many people want a lot of tourists in their town.
- sarcher 7y ago
  It's a mirror of the intracity highway issue. Access is improved for people who don't live in a specific location, and the externalities of this decision are dumped onto local citizens. The desirable location ends up hollowed-out, as no more geography is generated but instead the existing geography sliced away and allocated to visitors. They become destinations, more theme park than city. It's well accepted that the highway boom of twentieth century had a negative impact on city life. That's why the Big Dig put that city-cutting highway underground in Boston, and (one reason) why the viaduct in Seattle is going underground, and why the I-93 corridor in Massachusetts became a public transit route instead. Here's a longer list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal Transforming private residences into hotel rooms makes it easier to visit and harder to live. Acknowledging this doesn't mean people don't like Airbnb, it just means that both the positive and the negative impacts of their business model are being discussed.
Tiktaalik 7y ago
This trend of professional Airbnb operators renting new condos as a business is part of the explanation for why land values in Toronto and Vancouver have spiked and distorted beyond local incomes. A person can make substantially more money renting short term to a tourist than they can to a long term tenant, so accordingly the land valuation is less and less based on the underlying assumption of land being rented long term to a person that can only afford what a local income provides.
- dorchadas 7y ago
  It's a huge issue in Ireland, too. Houses in Galway and Dublin are hard to come by partially (there are other factors, of course) because AirBnB operators can make more renting to the tourists for the summer than to locals for a year. With less to worry about, too (not to mention all the taxes they likely aren't paying). Furthermore, it also destroys the communities. See Barcelona for examples of that.

108 points by bendauphinee 7y ago

I have a feeling 99% of these homes they are referring to are condo's in Vancouver and Toronto (VAN,YYZ are the condo building capitals of NA). A lot of these units are owned buy foreigners or as investment properties. According to a real estate friend, some Chinese have purchased entire floors of these buildings to park capital fleeing China. I know that many buildings in downtown Toronto can be up to 50% AirBnb rentals. Coincidentally, I spoke with someone on the weekend who can't take it anymore and wants to sell their unit or put it to work as an AirBnb because of the amount of prostitutes, drug dealers, etc using the building as short term rentals through AirBnB. Canada really needs to get a grip on foreign ownership. 10's - 100's of billions of capital outflows over the last decade from China, Hong Kong, Iran, etc have created a tough environment for the local population. Co-op's could possibly solve this problem by creating rules where short term rentals, foreign ownership, etc are not allowed. Although it's tough to get a mortgage for a co-op condo.

hi5eyes 7y ago
my friend just a year out of undergrad started a short term rental management company here in toronto and its crazy how much money comes thru, and ive lived my entire life around one of the wealthiest areas of the country
kitcar 7y ago
It's affecting all property types. I know of one street corner where there is one newish townhouse which is a full-time AirBnB, as well as a turn-of-the-century apartment walk-up which is 100% airBnB. There is also a 1970's apartment building where a number of "tenants" sublease their property on AirBnB. I found this all out when I was helping a friend look for a place to stay near the University of Toronto...
john_moscow 7y ago
Vancouverite here. The biggest trouble is that our economy now really depends on that dirty money. The biggest sector of the BC economy (almost 20%) is real estate and the next one is construction with 8%. So banning that would mean losing roughly a third of the budget income, let alone most mortgages going under. On the other hand, continuing it would make property ownership pretty much out of reach for anyone without external capital flowing in. Tough spot.
- blueside 7y ago
  The moral dilemma of curtailing dirty money to keep your economy going. Yikes.
- harryVic 7y ago
  You make an assumption that foreign money is entirely funding those two industries which is untrue. Vancouver is the most desirable city in a country with 36 Million people, so it makes sense for real estate to be expensive there. And new immigrants want to live in lower BC because it is warm here. I am an immigrant and I live in Victoria. It doesn't matter how much more I could make in Calgary, I don't want to spend 9 months of a year shoveling snow.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    So Vancouver is a nice place to live, but so is nearby Seattle. Does Vancouver deserve to be more expensive than Seattle rent wise? No, at least as a tech worker, the salaries just aren't there.
    - harryVic 7y ago
      Moving to Vancouver from another country is much easier than moving to Seattle. And Seattle is considered to be a city with a bad weather in the US. That bad weather is actually considered good here in Canada.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
itsaidpens 7y ago
Any thoughts on Montreal?

Tiktaalik 7y ago

> Nearly half of all Canadian Airbnb revenue in 2018 was generated by commercial operators, or those who manage multiple listings, the McGill report said. Their share of sales increased from 2017 in nearly all metro areas. Among this group, there are some hosts that vastly eclipse the competition: Fifteen managed at least 100 active listings apiece in the past year, the report said, and nearly 60 hosts earned more than $1-million in 2018. > It vastly differs from how Airbnb often pitches itself: as a personal platform through which residents, either out of town or looking to put a second bedroom to good use, will occasionally rent out their spaces. > Often, the largest “hosts” are in fact businesses that manage vacation rentals on behalf of homeowners. City of Vancouver regulations (as ineffective as they are) explicitly targeted and banned these sort of commercial operators. What does Airbnb's valuation look like if such a significant share of their revenue comes from the sort of activity that is actively being banned by more and more cities?

Analemma_ 7y ago
Much smaller, which is why AirBnB has to keep pretending "oh, it's just people renting out their main homes while they're out of town" and that any kind of regulation or crackdown on their business is only hurting ordinary people, even when everyone including them knows that's a lie.

segmondy 7y ago

What will happen when the market contracts and people don't travel much? I know a couple in Canada that have acquired 7 homes in the last few years strictly for Airbnb rentals.

loceng 7y ago
The thought with a few commercial Airbnb people I know is that, at least in major Canadian cities, the demand for living in Canada won't allow this to happen. What's more likely are controls that will be put into place to extract more of the profit, making it less profitable to run such a business, in order to fund displacement from gentrification and low-income housing projects. This is however one of those invisible beasts that has enough people + Airbnb as an organization aligned to lobby politicians to push back against any legislation that will harm their profits.

jseliger 7y ago

If only we had some technology that could increase the number of housing units on a given piece of land; such a technology could allow us to build as much housing as people want to occupy. Too bad this has to remain a fantasy. https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housing-costs-solutions-elevators https://www.vox.com/a/new-economy-future/urban-sprawl-housin...

swiley 7y ago
You don’t even need elevators. In most cities it’s possible to build and maintain small concrete rooms in a single story structure with an exterior wall and make a profit renting them out for less than ~$40/month. The issues come from zoning, rent seeking, and regulation.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  You're speaking of storage units, correct? Not habitable structures?
  - nine_k 7y ago
    Have you ever seen a typical apartment in downtown Tokyo?
    - marak830 7y ago
      While I agree with your point, I have. I do have an elevator and eevry apartment building (and business I have worked at), has an elevator.
- marak830 7y ago
  Primarily to support nine_k down below, wtf are you smoking. I've yet to see a wheelchair user climb stairs. As for the remainder of your comment, I'll leave that low hanging fruit to dangle.

eljimmy 7y ago

I really wish my city would ban Airbnb with the exception being that you must reside in the household you are looking to rent out, as in, a literal bed and breakfast. Our rental market is absolutely cut-throat right now. Affordable rentals on realtor.ca aren't lasting more than a couple days after they go up.

dkhenry 7y ago
I would like to know if you think the problem is AirBnB or the lack of building new houses. I find a lot of people who complain AirBnB drives up rent, but also believe building more units won't push down rents.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  AirBnB causes damaging housing economics more rapidly than building more units can alleviate them. Is building more units a (long term) solution? Yes. Is banning AirBnB a solution? Also yes. What seems strange to me is the idea that tourists and small time local economic actors profiting handsomely from short term rentals should take priority over a majority of local citizens. If citizens don't like your plan, out your plan goes (very similar to how California residents keep killing upzoning). If you're a local citizen and want to put a wrench in short term rentals, engage in the political process. Go to your representatives and tell them to enact legislation to do so if that's what you want, and if they won't you will assemble with other local citizen voters and vote them out. That's democracy.
  - dkhenry 7y ago
    I can't speak to the nature of the Canadian market, but in the bay area where people also say banning AirBnB will help I always like to remind people that there are approximately 7,000 AirBnb units in SF[1], and there is was an estimated housing shortage of 300,000 units in 2016[2]. Even if you outlawed all AirBnb listings, it would not change rent prices at all, its a rounding error on the shortage of available housing. 1. http://insideairbnb.com/san-francisco/ http://insideairbnb.com/san-francisco/ 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_housing_shortage

fjabre 7y ago

I've had mostly negative experiences with Airbnb over the years. My neighbors airbnb their house every weekend. So nice loud music and rude guests to deal with fairly often. Of course why not? They are not accountable to rest of us full timers in my neighborhood. My place was broken into by someone who stayed at it before using Airbnb. One guest almost started a fire and had to be removed. Checking in and out of airbnbs can be a bit of a nightmare. Everyone has their own process for checkin. Airbnb destroying local real estate markets is no surprise. They've been doing it for several years and getting in trouble for it for several years. Growth at all costs - no matter what it does to local markets or people's lives. I'm sure their impact on local economies is the least of their concern until the governments attached to those economies start to speak up.

Veen 7y ago
As a counter-point, I lived in AirBnBs for over two years in places ranging from Morocco to France to Bulgaria, and had an almost universally positive experience.
dmix 7y ago
I live next to an Airbnb that constantly has new people coming through and occasionally some music and I don’t have any problem with it. None of my neighbours have complained either and I know quite a few of them in the 3yrs I’ve lived here. I guess your experience may vary depending on what type of place you have and what type of owner of the unit. It’s really not hard to filter out the idiots with the review system. The people who I have met waiting for the elevator were always super polite when I see them and our walls are thick enough with concrete where I don’t hear the music unless I’m close to my living room wall, which is far from my bedroom. The owner of the unit, an older retiree from the area with just the one unit AFAIK, was very polite and open about it too and gave me his number in case I had any problems (which I’ve never used). But 99% of them seem to be European or Chinese travellers, who at most occasionally need some help with our complicated fob system. It’s only rarely young people who are partying and if it is it’s always the weekend where I’m more tolerant. Plus I’ll never forget how Airbnb saved me when I flew into SF last minute as a 20yr old and the only option was a $500 hotel or not sleeping that night, because my prior arrangement with someone fell through when they were unexpectedly out of town. I was fortunate to find an Airbnb guy who accepted my request at 9pm after I got out of the BART with a dying phone. I was literally preparing to spend the night in a park with my luggage. So I’m a bit biased regarding Airbnb and the alternate options without it (which no one seems to offer or care about in their calls to ban it).

jumbopapa 7y ago

It's interesting to see how the Airbnb market has evolved. I used to always hear that "Airbnb is cheaper", but lately when booking trips I've been able to find better deals in hotels.

wedn3sday 7y ago

> "Shared exclusively with The Globe and Mail" Publish the actual paper or this is just vaporware nonsense. This is a non-peer-reviewed paper with zero credibility, thats been seen by a small handful of people. They could literally write a paper about the moon being made of cheese and have the same credibility. They dont even make the source material available in their article. I dont want to sound overly critical, this looks like a legit finding that matches up with my experience of the housing market, but Im completely fed up with people publishing their "findings" without reporting where the data came from and how they got to their conclusions. Until they publish the paper, this should be dismissed out of hand. There's such a long history of people completely messing up their statistical methodology that you cant believe anything until you see the actual numbers/methods.

itsaidpens 7y ago
The data they received is a competitive advantage and they are not under any obligation to publish it. You don't need to, or are allowed to, extend your demands of peer-reviewed academia to modern online journalism. Stop whining, and address the claims of the article.
- fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
  This is why they call it fake news.
  - itsaidpens 7y ago
    I just hate that pedantic comments like the original poster are the most upvoted on HN. The most upvoted comment on most articles isn't addressing the topic; it's some sort of ridiculous analysis or criticism of process, or an embedded piece of javascript, or whatever.
    - chongli 7y ago
      I happen to appreciate this style of comment on HN. We live in a frenzy of sensationalism. Why can't we have a devil's advocate to remind us of the most common, basic mistakes? It's like a compiler that catches null-pointer errors for us.

9387367 7y ago

The same happened in London and I lived through it, saw this happening in my neighbourhood, but the thing is, nobody cares. Every single person I brought this up with dismissed it as a non issue. Those flats on Airbnb have to come from somewhere and there are rental agencies that specialise in managing properties exclusively for Airbnb, none of this existed before and some of those properties were taken from the long let market, which would drive prices up.

ng12 7y ago
It's a matter of scale. How much does AirBnB inflate price versus overly restrictive zoning and NIMBY laws? AirBnB is just easier to rail against because it's a private company.

lixtra 7y ago

The numbers have to be seen in relation to 250.000 immigrants (2012) that occupy a larger amount of flats each year. Also this pool of AirBnb flats offers flexibility for people who didn’t find a long term apartement yet and home owners who want to reshape these homes.

bobbyT314 7y ago
The number of immigrants admitted to Canada per year is very stable and only slowing rising. On average it has been between 200-300 thousand per year for at least the past 20 years. This is not the driving force of lack of housing, and is a driving force of a stronger economy with the introduction of skilled labour. https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigrants-in-canada/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/443063/number-of-immigra...
- Veen 7y ago
  I can't see how immigration can be considered to have no impact on available housing. People have to live somewhere and if there were fewer immigrants, there would be more housing stock for non-immigrants — unless you believe that immigration causes houses. It's perfectly possible for immigration to be a net positive for the economy and for it to have negative affects on the availability of housing.
  - bobbyT314 7y ago
    Of course it has an impact. But it is likely not a dominant one or we'd have experienced the housing crises we're seeing now, long ago.
    - Veen 7y ago
      There are approximately 14,072,080 occupied private dwellings in Canada. The rental of 31,000 of them on AirBNB is unlikely to be a significant factor in the housing shortage. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98-200-x/2016005/98-200-x2016005-eng.cfm https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/as-sa/98... As the article states, 31,000 is 1.5 percent of rental accommodation. If we assume that half of the 300,000 immigrants rent, and that they tend to rent in couples, that's 75,000 rental properties consumed by immigration each year -- or about 3.5 percent. That's an additional 3.5 percent of rental housing stock each year, a much faster increase than the number of AirBNB rentals. Regardless of whether you think immigration or AirBNB are major causes of a housing shortage, it's disingenuous to argue that immigration has less of an impact than AirBNB. EDIT: It's also worth noting that construction is expected to slow over the next five years, whereas immigration is expected to grow. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/immigration-canada-2018-1.4371146 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/immigration-canada-2018-1.4... https://www.on-sitemag.com/construction/end-of-an-era-20-years-of-almost-uninterrupted-construction-growth-poised-to-slow/1003962031/ https://www.on-sitemag.com/construction/end-of-an-era-20-yea...

itsaidpens 7y ago

Anyone have any thoughts on Montreal?

xutopia 7y ago
I have a friend who rents out an apartment long term on the south shore through AirBnB. It works out to about the same price as he would get from renting out long term through ads but the process is actually easier for him with the platform than posting ads and answering phone calls. I have a basement apartment that my friend rents out and when he goes on trips he rents it out. If he leaves I would consider AirBnB even if long term because it would save me a lot of trouble.
- itsaidpens 7y ago
  I just love the city, and I'd like to buy a property there.
  - 33degrees 7y ago
    It's not the greatest market for buying right now, which has led to an increase in the number of renters and extremely low vacancy rates...

xutopia 7y ago

No it hasn't. A lot of homes are rented out through AirBnB now because it's the way to be found. It also guarantees payments.

parthdesai 7y ago
What are you talking about. No one is renting a long term unit, i.e. signing an actual lease on airbnb, at least here in Toronto.

bparsons 7y ago

I always wonder why the same argument isn't applied to hotel rooms. If the government forced every hotel room to be converted to affordable housing, the homelessness problem could be solved overnight!

yifanl 7y ago
Because hotels were originally zoned for short-term rentals and operate as short-term rentals. AirBnB properties were originally zoned for long-term housing and operate as not-long-term housing.

thehappypm 7y ago

People rarely discuss the positive impact of AirBnB: boosting the number of tourists. I wonder how much additional tourism spend and tax revenue the city is getting from the influx of tourists. Hotels aren't closing down; AirBnB's just make traveling easier.

dorchadas 7y ago
Is an increase in tourists really a positive impact? Sure, they bring more money to the city, but there's lots of downsides to it as well, especially when they stay in AirBnBs. See Barcelona, for example. For the record, I'd almost say increased tourism in most places isn't a net positive.

sokoloff 7y ago

AirBnB perhaps moved that number of units from the long-term rental market to the short-term rental market.

LoSboccacc 7y ago

rental market is a distortion anyway, things are foobar because ownership is getting harder and harder, creating a whole generation of renters-for-life, but the solution lies not in affordable rents, it's affordable housing where is at.

jpollock 7y ago

I'm guessing the number of short-term people hasn't changed (except for population growth), so what impact has this had on hotel occupancy rates?

ncphillips 7y ago
Anecdata, from people I know working in hospitality, is that they're going down, and hotels are definitely being threatened by AirBnBs

RocketSyntax 7y ago

Thoughts: 1) It's just basic free-market supply and demand. Landlords own property to make money, so if they want to take a risk in short term rentals they should be able to. 2) I would love to live in a double-wide shipping container... actually that's probably bigger than what I have now.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

SilasX 7y ago

Sorry for the Joker meme, but we really have a double standard here. - Crappy local policy prevents creation of 300,000 housing units: nobody panicks. - Startup removes 30,000 housing units from the market: everyone loses their mind!

wvenable 7y ago
Given that construction is effectively non-stop in Vancouver, this is a bullshit post.
- SilasX 7y ago
  It’s not 300k homes though, and the relevant comparison is to what could have been. The existence of some construction is not a refutation and does not make the government’s role “bullshit”.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    It's not "some" construction though.

mrosett 7y ago

If property owners can make more money renting out properties on Airbnb, that suggests short term rentals are the highest value use of that property. I derive a lot of value from using Airbnb when I travel, particularly in markets with housing shortages. If an apartment can host a hundred visitors a year, is that obviously worse for the city than renting it out to a single person?

momokoko 7y ago
It creates an economic(and tax revenue) downward spiral in an area if it becomes a significant percentage of vacation rentals. Real estate isn't really that controlled by market forces. Its a means to an end and pricing does not actually represent best utility.
notatoad 7y ago
>that suggests short term rentals are the highest value use of that property. that's undeniably true for all property in most places that have any tourism value, but it's a short-term value akin to "if we light this city on fire, we can probably make a lot of money selling tickets to watch it". People also have to live in the city for it to have any value as a tourism destination. If an apartment can host a hundred visitors a year but there's no service industry staff living within 50km because all their houses have been converted to AirBnB's, your tourism industry is going to collapse.
snarf21 7y ago
I think the main issue is that there are laws related to hotels and there are laws around renting/leasing and there are laws around owning houses. The "short term rental" category gets to bypass all these regulations and that is the exclusive source of their margins. Once government constructs rules around short term rentals, the advantage goes away. It is also interesting that the focus of these discussions is never really balanced. It is always why it is bad for home owners or would be renters OR exclusively why it is great for consumers who get to pay less, etc. These things are complicated and it will take slow governments more time to adapt to the changed world.
- 7y ago

marcrosoft 7y ago

The title is misleading. There's nothing to see here folks. Airbnb _only_ rents properties. Nothing has been removed. The owners of the properties are probably making more money with short-term rentals than long-term. Everyone involved with the transaction is acting rational.

herodotus 7y ago
When people live and work in a city, and if they cannot or do not want to buy a property, they are looking for a rental agreement that typically guarantees them a place for a year, and is renewable. This is completely different from an Airbnb rental. For owners or rental units (such as basement suites), much more money is to be made with Airbnb, because people who are staying for 5 days pay rates that are was higher than the typical yearly rental fee for the same place. So of course many owners go the Airbnb route. And those units are lost to the other rental market. For my city (Vancouver) this has contributed to the housing market pain that exists here. And it affects real people in real ways. There is plenty to see and think about here.
- marcrosoft 7y ago
  > When people live and work in a city, and if they cannot or do not want to buy a property, they are looking for a rental agreement that typically guarantees them a place for a year, and is renewable. I had to stop here. 1. It is not always the case but that person (fortunately) has the freedom to choose another location. 2. Guarantees don't really exist unless you are talking physics theory and even that sometimes surprises people. > much more money is to be made with Airbnb, because people who are staying for 5 days pay rates that are was higher than the typical yearly rental fee for the same place. You made my original point. This transaction is a win-win for both parties involved. The rest of your argument centers around stifling this transaction to subsidize an artificial-non-sustainable market. Yes, this effects real people in real ways but they need to take _personal_ action and do what's best for them personally instead of effecting change on the rest of the area.
  - mikehodgson 7y ago

mrosett 7y ago

I'm genuinely baffled that so few people in this thread see no value in Airbnb providing cheaper options for travelers. As a software engineer, one way I could advance my career would be to move back to the Bay Area. An imperfect substitute, though, is visiting regularly to maintain the relationships I built when I lived there. (Indeed, I'm writing this from a plane while flying there.) Being able to stay in an Airbnb for half the cost of the hotel makes that more feasible.

edoloughlin 7y ago
Kind of a double-edged sword. It makes it easier to visit, but more difficult to live there if you do land a job: In New York, for instance, Airbnb directly accounted for a US$380 increase in median annual rent costs, according to a separate report from Prof. Wachsmuth last year that was funded, in part, by a hotel-industry organization.
Retric 7y ago
Things that hurt the local population to benifit other people are rarely well liked.
neonate 7y ago
It's similar to how you'd conclude no one was using Uber from reading the equivalent threads.
lykr0n 7y ago
Not many people want a lot of tourists in their town.
sarcher 7y ago
It's a mirror of the intracity highway issue. Access is improved for people who don't live in a specific location, and the externalities of this decision are dumped onto local citizens. The desirable location ends up hollowed-out, as no more geography is generated but instead the existing geography sliced away and allocated to visitors. They become destinations, more theme park than city. It's well accepted that the highway boom of twentieth century had a negative impact on city life. That's why the Big Dig put that city-cutting highway underground in Boston, and (one reason) why the viaduct in Seattle is going underground, and why the I-93 corridor in Massachusetts became a public transit route instead. Here's a longer list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal Transforming private residences into hotel rooms makes it easier to visit and harder to live. Acknowledging this doesn't mean people don't like Airbnb, it just means that both the positive and the negative impacts of their business model are being discussed.

Tiktaalik 7y ago

This trend of professional Airbnb operators renting new condos as a business is part of the explanation for why land values in Toronto and Vancouver have spiked and distorted beyond local incomes. A person can make substantially more money renting short term to a tourist than they can to a long term tenant, so accordingly the land valuation is less and less based on the underlying assumption of land being rented long term to a person that can only afford what a local income provides.

dorchadas 7y ago
It's a huge issue in Ireland, too. Houses in Galway and Dublin are hard to come by partially (there are other factors, of course) because AirBnB operators can make more renting to the tourists for the summer than to locals for a year. With less to worry about, too (not to mention all the taxes they likely aren't paying). Furthermore, it also destroys the communities. See Barcelona for examples of that.