The removal of all illegal listings from the Airbnb rental platform on Tuesday will likely result in hundreds of homes across Quebec returning to the long-term rental market as the housing crisis is a concern in many cities.
Posted at 5:00 am
At least that’s what has happened in Toronto, Vancouver and other places where laws and regulations have been put in place to limit short-term rentals, says Josephine Fueser, a Toronto researcher at Fairbnb Canada Real Estate Market.
“Airbnb’s activity level has a huge impact on the local rental market,” says Ms. Fueser.
A regulation was passed in Toronto in 2017 to shut down this industry, but authorities have taken few steps to enforce it, according to the researcher. Since the pandemic, the impact has been felt: in January 2020, 15,020 short-term listings were active on Airbnb every day, while today there are 4,600 listings, almost all of which are licensed, according to website Inside Airbnb.
transfer of accommodation
“Using image recognition techniques, we identified 3,476 Airbnb listings published between March and December 2020 for long-term rentals on Craigslist or Kijiji platforms,” according to a study conducted for the city of Toronto and published in February 2021 by a Group was published by McGill University urban policy researchers led by Professor David Wachsmuth.
However, the study notes that 8,400 listings stayed on the Airbnb platform, but for rentals longer than 28 days, which exempted them from short-term rental rules.
PHOTO LIONEL BONAVENTURE, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVE
Vancouver had 6,000 short-term rentals on Airbnb in January 2018, just before the city asked the platform to remove listings without approval, with immediate effect. Today, 3,500 apartments are advertised for short-term rent.
Prof. Wachsmuth’s team was once again able to track down around 1,310 apartments previously advertised for short-term rent that were now offered for long-term rent.
The same phenomenon should happen in Quebec, predicts Murray Cox, founder of Inside Airbnb, which presents data from the rental platform for many cities around the world.
Registration not possible
“I know there are many areas in Montreal where short-term rentals are illegal, such as Old Montreal, the site of the deadly fire,” he said in an interview with New York State. “Then these people don’t come forward” and turn to the traditional rental market, he said.
As of December 2022, there were 13,913 listings on Airbnb in Montreal, including 7,344 that were active in the past year, according to a compilation by La Presse of Inside Airbnb website. Of these 7,344 homes, 6,400 or 88% were not registered with the Corporation de l’industrie touristique du Québec (CITQ) and were therefore illegal.
The majority of these commercial dwellings are located in sectors where municipal zoning does not allow for tourist dwellings and therefore cannot register with the CITQ.
Elsewhere, Cox said there hasn’t been any short-term ad transfer to other online rental platforms like Marketplace or Kijiji. But it’s a possibility that proves how important it is for the Quebec government to press ahead with announced tightening of its law, even with Airbnb on board, he says.
It was impossible to know how many listings without an Airbnb registration number would be removed Tuesday in Quebec. However, a spokesman clarified that reservations already made before March 28 would be honored, even if they are properties whose ads are disappearing.
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3,476 Number of Toronto apartments listed on Airbnb as short-term rentals that later entered the long-term rental market
SOURCE: City of Toronto
1310 Number of homes in Vancouver listed on Airbnb as short-term rentals that later ended up on the long-term rental market
SOURCE: City of Vancouver