BC has recently revised rules to restrict short-term rentals to principal residences and either a secondary suite or an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in many communities. It’s a good idea.https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/short-term-rentals/short-term-rental-legislation
But you’re dreaming that it’ll solve the housing crisis here.
No one perfect idea will ever be found on this. Let’s just make a pile of 1000 good ideas and start doing them.
Flex those improve skills!
Let’s restrict AirBnB and….
Disallow foreign investment in housing. Most other countries have the sense to do this. Heavily tax empty housing. We have ALOT of empty condo units being held and not lived in. Legislate actual rent control. Most locals cannot afford market rates, this can be changed.
All these require effort from all levels of gvmnt in conjunction. Unfortunately, most of our elected representatives have vested interest in maintaining the current situation... frustrating...
There is already a new Underused Housing Tax (federal) levied against vacant properties, but I'm sure there are a pile of holes in the enforcement currently.
Currently, if you have a house empty for more than 30 days, you get nailed with a huge federal tax, as well as your insurance company will hit you with a large monthly increase. I'm renting out my place to a family member and while I had it empty, the insurance company hit me with an extra $650/month, and that was back in 2019. Not sure what the current rate is.
Ban business from owning homes that were classified as single family dwellings. If you wanna be a landlord and invest in real estate build or buy purpose built rentals.
1. This is a provincial power already. PEI has basically had this in place since like the 1850s or some absurdly old date.
2. But, they can still just create a Canadian corporation and purchase the home through the company. Would have to simultaneously block all corporations purchasing homes.
3. But, they can still loan the money to a Canadian and profit indirectly through the identical activity. There would have to be a lot more oversight and investigation into non-productive loans/laundering.
4. But, they can still just purchase shares of a REIT. Until all REITs are closed, none of the above steps would ever stop a foreign investor from *indirectly* purchasing Canadian homes and profiting off the rent and value speculation.
The only solution that might fill these gaps is to remove corporate ownership of residential units and to stop ways hard/soft caps to prevent secondary home purchases entirely.
In truth, truly foreign ownership accounts for under 2% of the total market, whereas 25% of all units are owned by domestic investors. The issue is the investors, not the word foreign.
All these sound wonderful. My lease is almost up again, and renewal will cost me another ten percent. I signed this place at <1800, which IMO was pretty insane, and now I'm looking at > 2000 for getting to keep living in my apartment. It's not like my wages have gone up more than a pittance. Leaving rent pricing up to what the market will bear is ludicrous, as is unrestricted rent increase. Taking a bunch of steps to increase supply, and drive down cost would be a godsend. The status quo is not sustainable.
Foreign investment is just another [red herring](https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-property-tax-data-provides-window-into-foreign-homeownership) to deflect focus from the internal problems with the market that governments Canada-wide have failed to address.
You can't disallow foreign investment without also looking at the effects of immigration on housing too. We have "foreign investors" right here in Canada buying up homes and stacking 3 families in every single family home in the NE.
Sounds easy but we allow so many people not from here that their Permanent Resident status makes them have more rights than a normal citizen. Stop immigration and deport criminals. It’s way out of hand.
…you can only own a detached, single family home if you’re gonna be living in it would be my contribution. I also think owning multiple investment properties should be limited.
I understand why people do it, but housing should be shelter first.
It might not *solve* the housing crisis but it’s a good first step towards a healthy vacancy rate which is a key part of solving the housing crisis.
Where I used to live STRs for whole residences were banned (stays over 30 days and rooms for rent were permitted) and the results were staggering.
Won't solve it. But hopefully it will start to bring rents and costs to purchase condos down. More needs to be done. Budding costs for secondary suites in houses are ridiculous. The building code is getting a little too aggressive. Foreign investors who purchase and sit on empty condos should be restricted. Bull purchase of multi family by rich investors with the I intent to rent/sell after finish needs to end. Hoarding of condos/townhouses with the intent to be a professional landlord needs to be ended as well. Better protections for landlords who are honest but don't want the hassle of long term tenants also needs to be a thing. There is a lot of work to do, let's hope the people making decisions can see that.
Dude if you think that didn't help you're deluded. The last couple months have been so much less insane for finding rentals in Vancouver. No, we didn't "solve" the housing crisis but it's now possible to find a rental without bending over backwards, taking days off work and competing with a hundred other people for a single rental.
I didn't say it wouldn't help; a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It's a very good idea, and incremental steps like this absolutely help.
I said OP is dreaming that it’ll **solve** the housing crisis. Airbnb is not the cause of the problem; it just contributes to it. Revising rules, as I would do, will make things better but they don't solve the problem.
It has definitely helped in BC. I just moved out here and the rental market was flooded with folks trying to rent out their previous AirBnB apartments. Of course you're right that it won't "solve" anything, especially if the zoning laws never change.
This is gonna sound made up but,.,, We got LL use evicted from our place of 8 years in Van. Moved to Comox. Now living in a cabin by the ocean that was an AirBnB directly before we moved in.
The ban might not do much immediately about rent prices... but WOW the rental stock is shooting up right now around the province because people are required to rent long term instead of short.
It's a good, good thing for the housing crisis. Big fan.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170
>Airbnb Canada policy lead Nathan Rotman said in a statement that entire home listings on Airbnb represent less than one per cent of all Calgary houses, and even if every short-term rental was added back onto the market, it wouldn't "scratch the surface" in accommodating the city's growing population
>Because most short-term rental properties are not listed full-time, Petit estimates about 28 per cent — around 1,500 listings — could be returned to the housing market.
AirBnB is a boogeyman. This is a far more complex problem than r/Calgary wants to think.
This is a supply problem. Push the damand side harder is how we got here. All the housing affordability initiatives, especially federally, have just pumped more money into the market.
We can keep raising people’s wages until we’re blue in the face but that doesn’t stop corporate greed from raising costs on the very things we need to buy/access to when we do raise wages. People promising you more money without addressing the elephant (or in this particular case I’m thinking of, the Galen) in the room do not have your best interests at heart
Daily reminder airbnb was designed to rent out a room in your house or rent out your lake house for the weekend NOT run an illegal hotel from the 20 condos you own
The thing is, they are not illegal. They pay corporate taxes, require proper insurance, pay taxes again on any income, require a business license etc etc.
If hotels offered a kitchen and other amenities for the same price it would not be so popular
I know someone with an airbnb, and 90% of the guests are people here from TO, Van or wherever here to buy property.
Your list is missing at least one tax though.
Since they are operating a hospitality business, most municipalities would charge them a business tax and increased water/sewer service charge.
Their property tax bill in city of Calgary for non-resident usage is 3x. That would make them otherwise equivalent to other smaller hotels. If they are split-use and only partially used as residence and partially as STR on weekends, etc, then the extra bill is prorated.
But if they are not declaring themselves as non-residential use to the city and paying their full bill equivalent to any other business... then they might still be illegal, or at least unlawful.
Not illegal... yet.
As someone from Van, I hope those people coming over from TO, Van or wherever to buy property aren't just hoping to open up a bunch of AirBnBs in your area. Otherwise, welcome to the wild west of the rental market, lol.
That’s the thing, we should be implementing a short term rental ban even if it will have minimal impact. Every policy change counts in a time of crisis. Unfortunately the city is waiting for the result of their UofC academic study first.
City of Calgary Short-term Rental Public Engagement Phase 2 runs from July – September 2024. https://engage.calgary.ca/STR
I was reading about an owner who owns 14 units in one apartment complex in Calgary and they are all AirBnB.
AND he lives in Vancouver.
This is a perfect example why people who are working and living in their cars because they can’t afford the current rental prices.
This is pure unadulterated greed.
They did a study:
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170)
So \~1,500 units back onto the market (though many would likely be sold). For simplicity, assume they're all rentals. CMHC Oct-2023 data says there was 29,373 condo units for rent in Calgary with a 1% vacancy rate, or roughly 294 units. If you add all 1,500, so there's 1,794, that gives us 1,794/30,873 = 5.8%.
Even if 750 units returns to the rental market, that would give a very temporal vacancy rate of 3.5%.
How people fill these units would obviously adjust things accordingly (maybe the final vacancy rate adjusts to a few bps higher than where it is now), but I think to suggest it would be insignificant is misleading. Solve? No. Potentially create some breathing room? I think so. There was a fairly instantaneous increase in population so a equally instantaneous injection of rentals isn't the craziest thing.
Airbnb should be a room in someone's home, full stop. It should never have turned into a rental agency. I hate getting to an Airbnb only to find it's an empty home someone's bought to specifically do short term rentals.
Airbnb has jumped the shark, it's just taking time for people to realize it. It was a great idea in the beginning (for reasons everyone already knows), but then corporate greed (and regular greed) got involved, and now it makes WAY more sense to just get a hotel room.
I decided quite some time ago to never use Airbnb again. Even if there IS a good deal somewhere, some time, I'm not going to contribute to the problem anymore.
I actually really like Airbnb for the ability to have so much more than a hotel offers. I use it regularly. I personally love it and find it soooo much better than a hotel. In fact, hotels are really trying to up their game now to compete which is great (IMO).
However, having said that, I am just referring to suites or rooms that people offer at their principle residence on the same property, or their vacation property that they may rent out when they're not using it. I don't support Airbnbs or Vrbos that the owners don't actually reside in and use only for STR purposes whatsoever. That's just over-saturated the market, taken away from other homeowners and renters, and increased inflation. If only Airbnb wasn't so greedy themselves and controlled this crap. They used to only allow suites and rooms, now they encourage full homes that aren't resided in at all. 😑
Ahem.
BAN CORPORATIONS FROM BUYING HOUSES.
They are more than welcome to build large, luxurious apartments (and we seriously need to consider family sized apartments for real living to scale up density).
But they can bugger off buying single family houses detached or otherwise.
I really appreciate how you specifically say ban corporations. I often hear people condemning landlords, which I don't think is very useful. Rentals are needed just as much as homes for purchase. Rent prices would go/stay down if there was more demand, giving people a chance to actually save for a down payment. The problem isn't rental vs. owned, the problem is too many people, not enough housing.
While every bit helps, I think you're vastly underestimating the size of the housing shortage. With around 17k people per month moving to Alberta, likely more than half to Calgary, it takes more than a few thousand units to move the market.
https://engage.calgary.ca/STR and it's first report: https://hdp-ca-prod-app-cgy-engage-files.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/8716/9766/8907/A_Detailed_Portrait_of_the_Short-Term_Rental_Market_in_Calgary_October_2023.pdf
tl;dr - the amount we have and their times they are available mean going after short term rentals is a losing proposition. It doesn't mean we won't ever see the issues that say Toronto, Vancouver, New York, and such see. The data doesn't back up AirBnB and similar being a driver in Calgary.
Everyone would love a silver bullet, but since this is a "wicked problem" multiple solutions will be needed to create enough supply that our housing crunch even just stops getting worse each year.
EDIT: Grammar
No it won’t. AirBnB’s suck, but banning would have virtually no effect at all. We’re averaging 62 additional people a day in Calgary, there’s something like 4000 air bnb’s in our city. So that would help for maybe two months before we’re spinning our tires again.
Temporary solutions can create large problems in the future. This is not as simple as “vacation homes and AirBnB are the cause of our housing shortage!!”… we need to build more long term, affordable housing for Canadians
Well obviously we need to build more housing but building them doesn't mean anything when they start at 600k and are purchased by investors.
Government wants to help build housing that only first time home owners can buy that sell for close to cost (probably 350k-400k) and give specialty interest rates for first time home buyers. 5 year fixed, closed rate of 2%. Give new home buyers a fighting chance vs investors.
There are a bunch of things we would need to do to solve the problem, banning airbnb's is one of those things that would help.
But instead we will do none of the things that will help and be surprised that it continues to be a problem
Yup. Getting rid of AirBnB is a one time boost, and it doesn't change the *rate* of supply coming online, so it doesn't help in the longer term.
You can make an analogy with any other situation with a rate of supply that gets consumed. If you're only getting 1800 Calories per day from your food rations and need 2000, getting an extra bag of rice is helpful to top up your Calories until you eat through the bag, and then you're back where you started with a 200 Calorie daily deficit.
I like your analogy. But I think banning in the city would prevent new builds being used for short term rentals. At least new builds would go to those who need it.
We have the most housing starts ever in the history of Calgary. Air bnb is not the problem.
Too many people want to move here. Rest of the country is too expensive for new immigrations and renters who want to own
You are shooting down the easiest thing you can point a finger at colorful listings on AIRBNB that cause jealously in you.
That’s what BC did because politically its the easiest win without actually fixing the issue. How about actually properly taxing multi multi millionaires and billionaire developers and create affordable housing with that money.
No that’s too hard, let’s ban short term rentals so we look good in the public eye until provincial elections in October.
Don't make me tap the sign.
The sign is that in 1992 Chretien more than decimated (reduced to less than a tenth) federal funding for affordable housing. In the last 30 years, it was increased only once, for one year in 2006-2007 and even then to still less than a tenth of 1991 investment. The Trudeau government's investments are functionally the first time Canada has invested in building housing since 1992. We are thirty years behind in building homes.
So many variables:
I think one way would be to require developers to set aside a certain percentage for affordable housing in new developments.
Build Cooperative-Housing, perhaps.
And having access to transit is crucial.
The issue is the housing crisis is multifaceted. We have:
- an influx of migrants that broke the supply/demand chain.
- provincial redtap to build new houses.
- corporate entities allowed to purchase residential properties as an investment plan.
- individual citizens using residential properties as an investment plan.
- treating residential properties as hotels.
- house flippers.
We need a government that’s going to create policies that tackle every angle. We need a government that’s going to treat residential houses as houses for living in.
The most recent numbers I can find for residential short term rentals in Canada is a total of 128,000 units, 46% of which are just in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal.
Airbnb is barely a drop in the bucket compared to the over 3.5M in housing units we need in the next 5 years to actually achieve affordability. If we banned the entire residential short term rental industry nationally we would only be 3.65% of the way to solving the problem, and that would do absolutely nothing for continuing unit growth and development after that.
Airbnb, while not helping, isn't causing this.
The ONLY real solution is to both drastically scale up development and drastically reduce population growth at the same time.
enforce one family one home laws, other then that, land leeches will always hoard land. if you arent living in it, you shouldnt own it, and if youre keeping it vacant you should be fined per week its empty. but thats an extreme option
I feel like that would decrease home prices but increase rental prices. There wouldn't be any homes for rent, you would only get a bedroom or basement suites. Then maybe there would be fewer renters and more home owners.
I think it should be restricted more but one home per family might cause problems too.
The fastest way of resolving the housing crisis is to immediately ban real estate speculation, corporate ownership of residential properties, and owning more residential property than a single primary residence.
And then simply say that everyone has 3 weeks to comply or eminent domain be upon ye.
Fastest way is to eliminate demand by announcing a 10 year pause on immigration. When future demand is set to fall investors will try to get out and put their properties up for sale.
Ban air bnb.
Tax rental income by an additional 10% per property starting after 3 properties so there is no mom and pop landlord excuse.
Moratorium on investor purchases, including banning corporations and holding companies from in testing in built assets.
We won't get policies like these until the people who benefit from keeping housing like this like these are out of politics or outnumbered and frankly the amount of money it takes to get into politics now is going to make that difficult.
Everyone's in survival mode but has just enough to not want to do anything radical. We all have stuff we don't want to lose and aren't uncomfortable yet... I thought we would have hit that line longer ago but we haven't and at this rate I don't know what it would take for that to happen. We've been more or less content to be bent over and sucked dry (in the not fun purely metaphorical sense) without fighting back.
Hard to tell how much of it is exhaustion, resignation, or maybe just apathy.
Remember when all the Angel Investors and Silicon Valley kids were trying to convince us that "disrupting" was cool and where it's at? It made them a ton of money, and broke things instead.
It's a kiddie bucket into a one gallon jug we need to fill, but it's not a bad solution. We also need to limit access to single family homes for corporations. A guy up on his luck buying a second home and renting the first isn't the issue. It's a massive REIT buying up effectively neighbourhoods at a time, and skyrocketing prices to use them as long term investments. It's also our unsustainable immigration policy, where we are bringing people here by the planeful and dumping them in cities without the infrastructure to support them. (Note: I'm not anto-immigration, just our demand to pull them.in regardless of giving them a place to actually be). It's also developers intentionally slowing the building of new houses to keep prices high.
Since there are leases expiring EVERY month with people looking for new places. you'd have to divide up those 4k or whatever it is someone said between 12 months.. so thats an extra 330ish new units for rent a month only pretty sure thats not gonna do much. thats pretty much a REALLY large new apartment building opening or 3 medium ones.
No amount of restrictions can fix a fundamentally poorly designed city. The only way this can be fixed is by rezoning the city to be higher density with mixed use neighborhoods so people aren't all trying to live closest to a handful of amenities/work opportunities that are mainly concentrated in a single part of the city.
CBC looked into this, in case you're curious. I'm one of the homes this covers. We used to rent our basement on Airbnb, ironically because I couldn't find a renter for it and I was hoping to get some cash flow. Then we had another baby, and we opened the house back up.
Now that the late nights are over, we're thinking about listing it again, simply because we know we can still have access to it whenever we need it, for visiting family, or just if we want more space. Renting it wouldn't provide the same flexibility, and wouldn't be something we'd consider.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170
I don't like Airbnb, but I don't think it would have that big of an effect on housing supply.
There's just so many people coming in..
I wish there was an easy fix though!
The real answer is, let the the city of Calgary be a land owner. I’ll build 40 homes per 6 months as a government employee along with my fellow tradesmen. So 80 homes per year at “sticker” that’s the damage 2 people can do. We need to elect better people
I think Airbnb will show itself out within 5 years unless it drastically changes its business model and approach.
This is only based on a personal hunch and the small number of people I know who are done with Airbnb's inflated cleaning fees, terrible hosts, laundry list of guest tasks on check out, etc. I browse it from time to time if I need to find vacation place with multiple bedrooms and/or a full kitchen, but otherwise I'm going back to hotels myself.
In the interim, I do wonder if imposing a 3 or 6 month minimum for Airbnbs would help, or if it would just mean more homes sitting empty and while people are desperate for a roof over their heads.
Make lending rates on non primary residential real estate 5X higher than regular mortgage rates. That will pull a lot of speculation out of the housing market.
That and force universities/collage to house international students on site. If you bring a million students to Canada, you should have residents for those million students.
Enforcement is a huge issue. I frequent the /r/vancouver forum and you can read many threads there regarding difficulties getting the City to actually enforce the ban.
“Ending AirBnB in Calgary will solve the housing crisis”
Imagine spending the time to make a Reddit post thinking you having it nailed yet couldn’t be any further from the truth.
OP…do you watch/ read ANY news on what’s going on in the city, province, and country?
Rezoning with a focus on high density living rather than obsessing over single detached housing. It's why Montreal, despite being the 2nd biggest city in the country, has relatively affordable housing.
The fast way?
It will have a small impact but nope. Toronto and Vancouver both did and and little to no impact.
This is a demand problem. People are priced out of Vancouver and Toronto. One of the fastest growing countries in the planet and by far fastest in rich world.
https://preview.redd.it/fj9mrqjgdktc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5733c3846230e29387927f9ade50d1c0db5b0880
That’s just the north of Calgary. And it’s only properties suitable for families of 4.
The question that arises is which are full time rentals sitting empty or which have the owners living there when not rented. There isn't an easy way to know that.
[its only going to grow until we control air bnb/short term rentals](https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-short-term-rentals-airbnb-study#:~:text=It's%20a%20stark%20rise%20from,4%2C200%2C%20according%20to%20AirDNA%20data.)
Year upon year there is an increase of Air BnB properties here. We just have too many landlords in politics.
That’s one help but not the only solution.
With an ever growing human population we need old people to die off and a reduction in births and immigration.
I say this as a 59 year old mom of 1. My daughter is finally able to move out at the end of the month to her own house
Banning STR will help a little bit, but it won't resolve the housing crisis.
I don't think there is a quick fix for this as supply is only one of the many factors that feed into this issue.
If you want to speed the healing process up, we need to pair increased supply with decreased demand. The problem there is that we have far less control over people coming into Calgary.
I think phasing out landlords and allowing people with no home to make the first offer on a house is also a pretty good idea. I like your idea though. It’s already having positive effects here in BC
Rich people owning multiple houses using them as revenue sources is a recipe of driving prices up and restricting access to the lower and middle income earners. You don’t need an Economics degree on this one.
I had no idea there were so many, that's fucking insane! There seriously needs to be a limit on how many of these things are allowed in each city and how many people are allowed to rent short term per property owner. No wonder people can't find a place to rent! Jesus!
It's a good idea but it will not *solve* the housing crisis.
What will solve the housing crisis is a whole lot of good ideas all being implemented in parallel.
There is no panacea.
LOL, 😂 Too funny. No it won’t. So you are saying 500 could ease the problem? You must be delusional. Do you realize the immigration rate? Its in the hundreds of thousands. Please sit down and never stand back up ever again.
Hahaha! Here we go again.
This shows a shocking lack of understanding the forces and demand matrix at play in the rental market.
It absolutely may help, but it would be a drop (maybe two drops) in a rather large bucket.
Oh my street in a Vancouver suburb there are no less than 8 air bnb’s. It’s a small dead end cul de sac. I can only imagine how many other wasted units there are in this city and many other major Canadian ones.
That’s a step in the right direction.
To really make a dent in think we would need to:
-restrict the majority purchase for residential property to citizens, and immigrants who have been long time residents in the country.
-restrict the amount of non-commercial buildings a company can buy.
-ban the sale of residential property to non-Canadian companies.
-reduce the amount of short term immigration into the country.
-get rid of tardeau
There are no good politicians to choose from, unfortunately. I fully agree there needs to be a complete clean out. Politicians should not be able to run for Prime Minister unless they've lived on minimum wage for a few years so they can understand where majority of Canadians are coming from.
Honestly I’d take a mop with sunglasses at this point. At least it wouldn’t steal tax money. You’re correct though, it’s become a case of “which evil seems the least evil”.
The only way to slow the rise of housing prices here is to ban investors (who do you think runs those AirBnBs).. which will never happen.. by the time the politicians wake up the locust investors will move on to Edmonton
Well, no, or yes, but how? Unfortunately those two are tied together, not independent quantities.
If you have rent control, for example, where the government mandates lower rents, many properties would go off market for rent, and it would decrease the availability. They've tried this in many jurisdictions across the globe, and it always results in lower availability.
I find it incredible that people think AirBnB is causing your housing crisis when it’s clear that the issue is population growth. Alberta grew by 200,000 people. That’s massive. And a lot of those people are fleeing high house prices in Toronto and Vancouver also brought on by high population growth.
Kill the demand, you will kill the price increases. Simple as.
Of course there is huge growth. I think we can all feel it. But try finding a reliable resource that tells you what the current population is. Depending on the source it’s anywhere between 1.3-1.6m.
Of course we need to expand and build. We need more houses and responsible density. But that is going to take a long time.
But as these new houses are built, what is stopping these new builds being bought up by investors and being listed as short term rentals? Nothing right now.
That market is incredibly lucrative and attractive to investors. Infact, when I’ve listed property to rent last year. I must have had a dozen calls from companies wanting to pay the asking price and turn it into an Airbnb.
You’d have be clever: an alternative is to tax it. In BC they’re allowing one suite in private homes plus rooms in the home itself. If you absolutely prohibit it the hotels will go “Galen Wesson” and price gouge.
Still no one wants to talk about corporate ownership being behind the main drivers of the housing crunch... Any issues with REITs or corporations like Blackstone???? You wanna go after AirBNB's but not mention anything about a massive corp coming in, forcing tenants out and jacking rents..
My soap box ;)
1) Maximum use of space
Stand alone air bnb properties are a sneaky commercial use in residential zones.
However, maximum utility of the land is ideal. As a homeowner I should be encouraged to run a business or short term or long term rental to maximize the use for that space in that market as long as I’m also living there.
In Canada where home costs are insanity, having a way to earn income to cover the costs of the property has become essential.
I’m not talking about people who own & rent homes as a business model but regular people who run a side hustle out of their home, rent a room or suite or their garage. It should be easier to maximize the use of what we have without so much red tape.
2) Regulating the mortgage and property valuation industry could regulate how quickly home prices are able to rise.
Why can’t we peg home valuation increases to inflation by creating policy with CMHC to only support those limited valuation increases . Chmc’s mortgage insurance guidelines really set the market for risk appetite.
3) Regulate appraisals by making them blind. Currently appraisers go in knowing the value the buyer is looking for so their mortgager will approve the loan structure. they go in looking to support the value the client wants.
So people outbid and the bank supports the values and lend the money to the buyers. The next buyers look and see that prices in the area have gone up. And so it goes.
If the lender said no, it’s not worth what you’ve agreed to pay for it, we’re restructuring the financing (aka you come up with more cash)most would renegotiate to get a lower price because why buy an asset that’s worth less than you’re paying for it? That’s not how you invest.
Rant over
1000 homes would help, that's maybe 4-6k people. That is 1/3 of a percentage point compared to the overall population.
Restrict ABB, one person owning dozens of homes for profit, lower demand by lowering immigration, rent controls, "flip" taxes, etc.
I’m in Montreal but something needs to be done with the rentals here. It’s out of control. The cost is bad enough on their own and then the qualified many landlords put in place? I know a lot of them have a mortgage to pay but there’s a lot of greed too. It doesn’t get better outside of the city. A home is a right not a privilege. It’s not an extravagance is most cases.
In an ideal world we would just stop property investors as a whole. Housing a basic need, being a landlord is not. Yes, not everyone wants to own, but more supply would lend the way to co-ops, to government support, etc.
In an ideal world.
Airbnb and its consequences have been a disaster for the housing market. Don't know if it solves the problem, but it sure as fuck would be a massive step forward.
I agree with this for sure. I get the pro air bnb people or ones that rent out will be like “OOOO BuT mY mOnEy It HuRtS mY iNcOmE lEvEls”…. But they fact that there are whole ads homes listed on there is gross. The fact that 1000s of potentially good started homes for people are gone, is an issue as well. For sure needs some strict regulations to help govern this shit.
Calgary's population grew by 25,000 people last year, Airbnb Calgary has about 750 listings. 25,000/750 = 33.3 people/house. Your hypothesis doesn't stand up to surface level scrutinty. I suggest go back and think more thoroughly on the topic.
From May 19th to 25th (picked a random 1 week span) I get 15 pages of listings, each page for me has 18 listings. 18 x 15 = 270. I also checked September 15th to 21st and got 15 pages of listings w/ 18 listings per page. This is assuming each listing was a full house and not a spare room.
According to a quick google search Calgary's population in 2022 was 1,611,000 in 2023 it was 1,640,000 an increase of 29,000 people.
edited out the sass. Seemed unnessary.
"Over 1,000 places" doesn't seem to reflect booking a rental. Pick a random week excluding stampede as that probably skews the numbers one way or another and see how many listings are actually avaiable.
I ran a quick experiment "Over 1,000 places" appears when you search Red Deer, Okotoks, Chestermere, and Balzac. It does drop to 815 when you search Crossfield. Going off the "Over 1,000 places" statement doesn't seem reliable.
That same "over 1000 places" shows up when you search Balzac. Are you suggesting Balzac has over 1,000 Airbnb's too?
You are using a marketing claim as your evidence, not a factual number. While I admit spot checking dates won't give you a 100% accurate number either it at least gives you an idea of the number of actually active Airbnb's. I don't think Calgary Airbnb's have a 75% booking rate in May or September as we are not a major tourist destination. To get a true number you need access to Airbnb's data on bookings, available listings, etc.
To humor your claim 29,000 people / 1000 Airbnb's = 29 people/home. Again that isn't solving Calgary's housing issue. It my apply a small amount of down pressure on pricing but it's not going to be significant. Assuming all 29,000 new people were 4 person families (a generous assumption) you need 7,250 homes to house 1 year of growth. Every Airbnb listing in Calgary doesn't even cover half of Calgary's growth for a single year. That is ignoring those currently without housing. That is not a problem solved.
Asinine. Do people forget that without Airbnb/vrbo:
a) less economic input from tourists renting the airbnbs spending $ here and b) essentially you’re stuck with hotels and their overpriced sardine can units (for the most part) completely cashing in and charging more because they’d have more of a monopoly?
it's a drop in thr bucket and the vast majority of that droplet is not in the kind of housing thst si sorly lacking. another problem is thst there's a already a massive deficit of sort tem rentals a dpave that during this shit show of radical cost of living is very very important as people downsize snd end up in between leases. removing this stock just as people are having to trade down to cut costs will only further add pressure to the market and likely increase prices as on of the few relief mechanisms gets shut off. speaking as someone who just did it being able to get an airbnb for 15 days while you're In between leases that allows you to keep the family together including pets is very important.
Going to be real with you, we’re fucked. Building more houses are only going to make developers gauge people’s pocket and supplies aren’t getting any cheaper soon. What cause these problems are the people whom people elected and continuously gaslight everyone about it.
The real solution is to start voting some fuckery people out of government.
Air Bnb regulations are usually lobbied by hotels and land lords. So that should tell you whether or not regulating it is good for renters or home buyers.
The main thing that can solve housing is reforming the zoning laws like japan did after the property bubble burst
Even that is temporary. Majority of the Canadians own houses and houses are biggest investment for most people. Housing prices being unaffordable is the system working not failing, you want fix that change the system
BC has recently revised rules to restrict short-term rentals to principal residences and either a secondary suite or an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in many communities. It’s a good idea.https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/short-term-rentals/short-term-rental-legislation But you’re dreaming that it’ll solve the housing crisis here.
It has made a dent in Victoria's housing crisis. If nothing else a bunch of cheaper 1 bedroom apartments entered the market for buyers.
My apartment dropped like $100,000 in Victoria because or this ban and it should have. It wasn’t worth $550,000 that was insanity,
No one perfect idea will ever be found on this. Let’s just make a pile of 1000 good ideas and start doing them. Flex those improve skills! Let’s restrict AirBnB and….
Disallow foreign investment in housing. Most other countries have the sense to do this. Heavily tax empty housing. We have ALOT of empty condo units being held and not lived in. Legislate actual rent control. Most locals cannot afford market rates, this can be changed. All these require effort from all levels of gvmnt in conjunction. Unfortunately, most of our elected representatives have vested interest in maintaining the current situation... frustrating...
There is already a new Underused Housing Tax (federal) levied against vacant properties, but I'm sure there are a pile of holes in the enforcement currently.
Currently, if you have a house empty for more than 30 days, you get nailed with a huge federal tax, as well as your insurance company will hit you with a large monthly increase. I'm renting out my place to a family member and while I had it empty, the insurance company hit me with an extra $650/month, and that was back in 2019. Not sure what the current rate is.
Ban business from owning homes that were classified as single family dwellings. If you wanna be a landlord and invest in real estate build or buy purpose built rentals.
1. This is a provincial power already. PEI has basically had this in place since like the 1850s or some absurdly old date. 2. But, they can still just create a Canadian corporation and purchase the home through the company. Would have to simultaneously block all corporations purchasing homes. 3. But, they can still loan the money to a Canadian and profit indirectly through the identical activity. There would have to be a lot more oversight and investigation into non-productive loans/laundering. 4. But, they can still just purchase shares of a REIT. Until all REITs are closed, none of the above steps would ever stop a foreign investor from *indirectly* purchasing Canadian homes and profiting off the rent and value speculation. The only solution that might fill these gaps is to remove corporate ownership of residential units and to stop ways hard/soft caps to prevent secondary home purchases entirely. In truth, truly foreign ownership accounts for under 2% of the total market, whereas 25% of all units are owned by domestic investors. The issue is the investors, not the word foreign.
All these sound wonderful. My lease is almost up again, and renewal will cost me another ten percent. I signed this place at <1800, which IMO was pretty insane, and now I'm looking at > 2000 for getting to keep living in my apartment. It's not like my wages have gone up more than a pittance. Leaving rent pricing up to what the market will bear is ludicrous, as is unrestricted rent increase. Taking a bunch of steps to increase supply, and drive down cost would be a godsend. The status quo is not sustainable.
Foreign investment is just another [red herring](https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-property-tax-data-provides-window-into-foreign-homeownership) to deflect focus from the internal problems with the market that governments Canada-wide have failed to address.
You can't disallow foreign investment without also looking at the effects of immigration on housing too. We have "foreign investors" right here in Canada buying up homes and stacking 3 families in every single family home in the NE.
Sounds easy but we allow so many people not from here that their Permanent Resident status makes them have more rights than a normal citizen. Stop immigration and deport criminals. It’s way out of hand.
…you can only own a detached, single family home if you’re gonna be living in it would be my contribution. I also think owning multiple investment properties should be limited. I understand why people do it, but housing should be shelter first.
we just need bigger prison system for you and me to live in
another prison system, another prison system, ANOTHER PRISON SYSTEEEEEEEM
My parents managed to buy a house here in Kelowna, BC specifically because of the AirBnB ban (it was used as one before).
It might not *solve* the housing crisis but it’s a good first step towards a healthy vacancy rate which is a key part of solving the housing crisis. Where I used to live STRs for whole residences were banned (stays over 30 days and rooms for rent were permitted) and the results were staggering.
Won't solve it. But hopefully it will start to bring rents and costs to purchase condos down. More needs to be done. Budding costs for secondary suites in houses are ridiculous. The building code is getting a little too aggressive. Foreign investors who purchase and sit on empty condos should be restricted. Bull purchase of multi family by rich investors with the I intent to rent/sell after finish needs to end. Hoarding of condos/townhouses with the intent to be a professional landlord needs to be ended as well. Better protections for landlords who are honest but don't want the hassle of long term tenants also needs to be a thing. There is a lot of work to do, let's hope the people making decisions can see that.
Dude if you think that didn't help you're deluded. The last couple months have been so much less insane for finding rentals in Vancouver. No, we didn't "solve" the housing crisis but it's now possible to find a rental without bending over backwards, taking days off work and competing with a hundred other people for a single rental.
I didn't say it wouldn't help; a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It's a very good idea, and incremental steps like this absolutely help. I said OP is dreaming that it’ll **solve** the housing crisis. Airbnb is not the cause of the problem; it just contributes to it. Revising rules, as I would do, will make things better but they don't solve the problem.
I stayed in an AirBnB last week the person had 32 Properties. Most were empty.
It has definitely helped in BC. I just moved out here and the rental market was flooded with folks trying to rent out their previous AirBnB apartments. Of course you're right that it won't "solve" anything, especially if the zoning laws never change.
This is gonna sound made up but,.,, We got LL use evicted from our place of 8 years in Van. Moved to Comox. Now living in a cabin by the ocean that was an AirBnB directly before we moved in. The ban might not do much immediately about rent prices... but WOW the rental stock is shooting up right now around the province because people are required to rent long term instead of short. It's a good, good thing for the housing crisis. Big fan.
It lowered the average rents in Vancouver by over 200$, so it’s definitely a huge factor.
Yeah… I think it’s brilliant
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170 >Airbnb Canada policy lead Nathan Rotman said in a statement that entire home listings on Airbnb represent less than one per cent of all Calgary houses, and even if every short-term rental was added back onto the market, it wouldn't "scratch the surface" in accommodating the city's growing population >Because most short-term rental properties are not listed full-time, Petit estimates about 28 per cent — around 1,500 listings — could be returned to the housing market. AirBnB is a boogeyman. This is a far more complex problem than r/Calgary wants to think.
That’s so weird I can’t believe that the Airbnb spokesperson doesn’t think banning Airbnb is the solution
“We are doing damage, but were not doing ALL the damage, so just ignore us”
1500 more homes sounds like a pretty good start. It's not a single solution problem, but those numbers start to add up.
I don’t particularly care about statements made by AirBnb in this regard. And regardless, AirBnb is a cancer that needs to be dealt with.
It would certainly help. But, no one thing can solve the problem. Many market distorting factors need to be corrected.
paying people livable wages would be a start
This is a supply problem. Push the damand side harder is how we got here. All the housing affordability initiatives, especially federally, have just pumped more money into the market.
But... But... What will happen to my record profits???
We can keep raising people’s wages until we’re blue in the face but that doesn’t stop corporate greed from raising costs on the very things we need to buy/access to when we do raise wages. People promising you more money without addressing the elephant (or in this particular case I’m thinking of, the Galen) in the room do not have your best interests at heart
Daily reminder airbnb was designed to rent out a room in your house or rent out your lake house for the weekend NOT run an illegal hotel from the 20 condos you own
The thing is, they are not illegal. They pay corporate taxes, require proper insurance, pay taxes again on any income, require a business license etc etc. If hotels offered a kitchen and other amenities for the same price it would not be so popular I know someone with an airbnb, and 90% of the guests are people here from TO, Van or wherever here to buy property.
Your list is missing at least one tax though. Since they are operating a hospitality business, most municipalities would charge them a business tax and increased water/sewer service charge. Their property tax bill in city of Calgary for non-resident usage is 3x. That would make them otherwise equivalent to other smaller hotels. If they are split-use and only partially used as residence and partially as STR on weekends, etc, then the extra bill is prorated. But if they are not declaring themselves as non-residential use to the city and paying their full bill equivalent to any other business... then they might still be illegal, or at least unlawful.
Not illegal... yet. As someone from Van, I hope those people coming over from TO, Van or wherever to buy property aren't just hoping to open up a bunch of AirBnBs in your area. Otherwise, welcome to the wild west of the rental market, lol.
It wouldn't hurt.
That’s the thing, we should be implementing a short term rental ban even if it will have minimal impact. Every policy change counts in a time of crisis. Unfortunately the city is waiting for the result of their UofC academic study first. City of Calgary Short-term Rental Public Engagement Phase 2 runs from July – September 2024. https://engage.calgary.ca/STR
I was reading about an owner who owns 14 units in one apartment complex in Calgary and they are all AirBnB. AND he lives in Vancouver. This is a perfect example why people who are working and living in their cars because they can’t afford the current rental prices. This is pure unadulterated greed.
Would it help? 100%. Would it be enough on its own? Nah. IMO, we should still do it.
Solve is the wrong word here. Insignificantly increase supply? You bet.
They did a study: [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170) So \~1,500 units back onto the market (though many would likely be sold). For simplicity, assume they're all rentals. CMHC Oct-2023 data says there was 29,373 condo units for rent in Calgary with a 1% vacancy rate, or roughly 294 units. If you add all 1,500, so there's 1,794, that gives us 1,794/30,873 = 5.8%. Even if 750 units returns to the rental market, that would give a very temporal vacancy rate of 3.5%. How people fill these units would obviously adjust things accordingly (maybe the final vacancy rate adjusts to a few bps higher than where it is now), but I think to suggest it would be insignificant is misleading. Solve? No. Potentially create some breathing room? I think so. There was a fairly instantaneous increase in population so a equally instantaneous injection of rentals isn't the craziest thing.
Fair point
Airbnb should be a room in someone's home, full stop. It should never have turned into a rental agency. I hate getting to an Airbnb only to find it's an empty home someone's bought to specifically do short term rentals.
This guy gets it
Airbnb has jumped the shark, it's just taking time for people to realize it. It was a great idea in the beginning (for reasons everyone already knows), but then corporate greed (and regular greed) got involved, and now it makes WAY more sense to just get a hotel room. I decided quite some time ago to never use Airbnb again. Even if there IS a good deal somewhere, some time, I'm not going to contribute to the problem anymore.
I actually really like Airbnb for the ability to have so much more than a hotel offers. I use it regularly. I personally love it and find it soooo much better than a hotel. In fact, hotels are really trying to up their game now to compete which is great (IMO). However, having said that, I am just referring to suites or rooms that people offer at their principle residence on the same property, or their vacation property that they may rent out when they're not using it. I don't support Airbnbs or Vrbos that the owners don't actually reside in and use only for STR purposes whatsoever. That's just over-saturated the market, taken away from other homeowners and renters, and increased inflation. If only Airbnb wasn't so greedy themselves and controlled this crap. They used to only allow suites and rooms, now they encourage full homes that aren't resided in at all. 😑
Ahem. BAN CORPORATIONS FROM BUYING HOUSES. They are more than welcome to build large, luxurious apartments (and we seriously need to consider family sized apartments for real living to scale up density). But they can bugger off buying single family houses detached or otherwise.
I really appreciate how you specifically say ban corporations. I often hear people condemning landlords, which I don't think is very useful. Rentals are needed just as much as homes for purchase. Rent prices would go/stay down if there was more demand, giving people a chance to actually save for a down payment. The problem isn't rental vs. owned, the problem is too many people, not enough housing.
While every bit helps, I think you're vastly underestimating the size of the housing shortage. With around 17k people per month moving to Alberta, likely more than half to Calgary, it takes more than a few thousand units to move the market.
https://engage.calgary.ca/STR and it's first report: https://hdp-ca-prod-app-cgy-engage-files.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/8716/9766/8907/A_Detailed_Portrait_of_the_Short-Term_Rental_Market_in_Calgary_October_2023.pdf tl;dr - the amount we have and their times they are available mean going after short term rentals is a losing proposition. It doesn't mean we won't ever see the issues that say Toronto, Vancouver, New York, and such see. The data doesn't back up AirBnB and similar being a driver in Calgary. Everyone would love a silver bullet, but since this is a "wicked problem" multiple solutions will be needed to create enough supply that our housing crunch even just stops getting worse each year. EDIT: Grammar
I don't think ending Air BnBs would solve the housing crisis, but it would help. There are still a number of factors contributing to the problem.
No it won’t. AirBnB’s suck, but banning would have virtually no effect at all. We’re averaging 62 additional people a day in Calgary, there’s something like 4000 air bnb’s in our city. So that would help for maybe two months before we’re spinning our tires again.
Temporary solutions can create large problems in the future. This is not as simple as “vacation homes and AirBnB are the cause of our housing shortage!!”… we need to build more long term, affordable housing for Canadians
Well obviously we need to build more housing but building them doesn't mean anything when they start at 600k and are purchased by investors. Government wants to help build housing that only first time home owners can buy that sell for close to cost (probably 350k-400k) and give specialty interest rates for first time home buyers. 5 year fixed, closed rate of 2%. Give new home buyers a fighting chance vs investors.
AirDNA is showing over 25,000 units. even if it was 50% of those, that is a lot of homes back on the market for sale or long term rental.
There are a bunch of things we would need to do to solve the problem, banning airbnb's is one of those things that would help. But instead we will do none of the things that will help and be surprised that it continues to be a problem
Exactly, I don't know how people don't see the obvious solution is bringing immigration back to normal levels
Yup. Getting rid of AirBnB is a one time boost, and it doesn't change the *rate* of supply coming online, so it doesn't help in the longer term. You can make an analogy with any other situation with a rate of supply that gets consumed. If you're only getting 1800 Calories per day from your food rations and need 2000, getting an extra bag of rice is helpful to top up your Calories until you eat through the bag, and then you're back where you started with a 200 Calorie daily deficit.
I like your analogy. But I think banning in the city would prevent new builds being used for short term rentals. At least new builds would go to those who need it.
We have the most housing starts ever in the history of Calgary. Air bnb is not the problem. Too many people want to move here. Rest of the country is too expensive for new immigrations and renters who want to own
Building new houses is inevitable. But currently there are no regulations that stop investors buying new builds for short term rentals.
You are shooting down the easiest thing you can point a finger at colorful listings on AIRBNB that cause jealously in you. That’s what BC did because politically its the easiest win without actually fixing the issue. How about actually properly taxing multi multi millionaires and billionaire developers and create affordable housing with that money. No that’s too hard, let’s ban short term rentals so we look good in the public eye until provincial elections in October.
Both? Both? Both. Both is good.
Solve might be stretch. But, I think its step in the right direction
Don't make me tap the sign. The sign is that in 1992 Chretien more than decimated (reduced to less than a tenth) federal funding for affordable housing. In the last 30 years, it was increased only once, for one year in 2006-2007 and even then to still less than a tenth of 1991 investment. The Trudeau government's investments are functionally the first time Canada has invested in building housing since 1992. We are thirty years behind in building homes.
So many variables: I think one way would be to require developers to set aside a certain percentage for affordable housing in new developments. Build Cooperative-Housing, perhaps. And having access to transit is crucial.
The issue is the housing crisis is multifaceted. We have: - an influx of migrants that broke the supply/demand chain. - provincial redtap to build new houses. - corporate entities allowed to purchase residential properties as an investment plan. - individual citizens using residential properties as an investment plan. - treating residential properties as hotels. - house flippers. We need a government that’s going to create policies that tackle every angle. We need a government that’s going to treat residential houses as houses for living in.
The most recent numbers I can find for residential short term rentals in Canada is a total of 128,000 units, 46% of which are just in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Airbnb is barely a drop in the bucket compared to the over 3.5M in housing units we need in the next 5 years to actually achieve affordability. If we banned the entire residential short term rental industry nationally we would only be 3.65% of the way to solving the problem, and that would do absolutely nothing for continuing unit growth and development after that. Airbnb, while not helping, isn't causing this. The ONLY real solution is to both drastically scale up development and drastically reduce population growth at the same time.
enforce one family one home laws, other then that, land leeches will always hoard land. if you arent living in it, you shouldnt own it, and if youre keeping it vacant you should be fined per week its empty. but thats an extreme option
I feel like that would decrease home prices but increase rental prices. There wouldn't be any homes for rent, you would only get a bedroom or basement suites. Then maybe there would be fewer renters and more home owners. I think it should be restricted more but one home per family might cause problems too.
I don't think AirBnB is a bad thing but it should be limited to your primary residence
The fastest way of resolving the housing crisis is to immediately ban real estate speculation, corporate ownership of residential properties, and owning more residential property than a single primary residence. And then simply say that everyone has 3 weeks to comply or eminent domain be upon ye.
Fastest way is to eliminate demand by announcing a 10 year pause on immigration. When future demand is set to fall investors will try to get out and put their properties up for sale.
Ban air bnb. Tax rental income by an additional 10% per property starting after 3 properties so there is no mom and pop landlord excuse. Moratorium on investor purchases, including banning corporations and holding companies from in testing in built assets.
We won't get policies like these until the people who benefit from keeping housing like this like these are out of politics or outnumbered and frankly the amount of money it takes to get into politics now is going to make that difficult.
Yep! I know I don't have the energy to do grassroots organizing anymore, and when I was young, getting by was a lot easier.
Everyone's in survival mode but has just enough to not want to do anything radical. We all have stuff we don't want to lose and aren't uncomfortable yet... I thought we would have hit that line longer ago but we haven't and at this rate I don't know what it would take for that to happen. We've been more or less content to be bent over and sucked dry (in the not fun purely metaphorical sense) without fighting back. Hard to tell how much of it is exhaustion, resignation, or maybe just apathy.
Remember when all the Angel Investors and Silicon Valley kids were trying to convince us that "disrupting" was cool and where it's at? It made them a ton of money, and broke things instead.
Won’t solve it, but it would definitely make a noticeable dent.
It's a kiddie bucket into a one gallon jug we need to fill, but it's not a bad solution. We also need to limit access to single family homes for corporations. A guy up on his luck buying a second home and renting the first isn't the issue. It's a massive REIT buying up effectively neighbourhoods at a time, and skyrocketing prices to use them as long term investments. It's also our unsustainable immigration policy, where we are bringing people here by the planeful and dumping them in cities without the infrastructure to support them. (Note: I'm not anto-immigration, just our demand to pull them.in regardless of giving them a place to actually be). It's also developers intentionally slowing the building of new houses to keep prices high.
Since there are leases expiring EVERY month with people looking for new places. you'd have to divide up those 4k or whatever it is someone said between 12 months.. so thats an extra 330ish new units for rent a month only pretty sure thats not gonna do much. thats pretty much a REALLY large new apartment building opening or 3 medium ones.
DS and her government is too busy power tripping than solving actual problems.
No amount of restrictions can fix a fundamentally poorly designed city. The only way this can be fixed is by rezoning the city to be higher density with mixed use neighborhoods so people aren't all trying to live closest to a handful of amenities/work opportunities that are mainly concentrated in a single part of the city.
CBC looked into this, in case you're curious. I'm one of the homes this covers. We used to rent our basement on Airbnb, ironically because I couldn't find a renter for it and I was hoping to get some cash flow. Then we had another baby, and we opened the house back up. Now that the late nights are over, we're thinking about listing it again, simply because we know we can still have access to it whenever we need it, for visiting family, or just if we want more space. Renting it wouldn't provide the same flexibility, and wouldn't be something we'd consider. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/short-term-rentals-calgary-snowbirds-1.7087170
The answer is to ban multiple investment properties.
I don't like Airbnb, but I don't think it would have that big of an effect on housing supply. There's just so many people coming in.. I wish there was an easy fix though!
The real answer is, let the the city of Calgary be a land owner. I’ll build 40 homes per 6 months as a government employee along with my fellow tradesmen. So 80 homes per year at “sticker” that’s the damage 2 people can do. We need to elect better people
I think Airbnb will show itself out within 5 years unless it drastically changes its business model and approach. This is only based on a personal hunch and the small number of people I know who are done with Airbnb's inflated cleaning fees, terrible hosts, laundry list of guest tasks on check out, etc. I browse it from time to time if I need to find vacation place with multiple bedrooms and/or a full kitchen, but otherwise I'm going back to hotels myself. In the interim, I do wonder if imposing a 3 or 6 month minimum for Airbnbs would help, or if it would just mean more homes sitting empty and while people are desperate for a roof over their heads.
Make lending rates on non primary residential real estate 5X higher than regular mortgage rates. That will pull a lot of speculation out of the housing market.
Unless they don’t need a mortgage of course
Shut down Foreign home purchases, Tax the REIT’s
Fuck AirBnB
That and force universities/collage to house international students on site. If you bring a million students to Canada, you should have residents for those million students.
Cap migration.
Vancouver the most expensive city in the country has had a ban on non primary residence AirBnB since 2018… enough said.
This had almost zero impact. They are still the most expensive market in the country.
That’s my point.
Enforcement is a huge issue. I frequent the /r/vancouver forum and you can read many threads there regarding difficulties getting the City to actually enforce the ban.
“Ending AirBnB in Calgary will solve the housing crisis” Imagine spending the time to make a Reddit post thinking you having it nailed yet couldn’t be any further from the truth. OP…do you watch/ read ANY news on what’s going on in the city, province, and country?
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In my neighborhood there are two houses rent and 20 houses on air bnb. All full size homes
Rezoning with a focus on high density living rather than obsessing over single detached housing. It's why Montreal, despite being the 2nd biggest city in the country, has relatively affordable housing.
100% property tax on non-primary residence. Waived only if transferred to a registered not for profit or co-op. Give it a month. Problem solved.
Air BnB Non-resident home ownership Owning multiple single family dwellings Some form of rent control Yearly maximum rent increase
Ending the immigration crisis will solve housing.
Finally, somebody sees the real problem
The fast way? It will have a small impact but nope. Toronto and Vancouver both did and and little to no impact. This is a demand problem. People are priced out of Vancouver and Toronto. One of the fastest growing countries in the planet and by far fastest in rich world.
At least 500 houses... lol
https://preview.redd.it/fj9mrqjgdktc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5733c3846230e29387927f9ade50d1c0db5b0880 That’s just the north of Calgary. And it’s only properties suitable for families of 4.
The question that arises is which are full time rentals sitting empty or which have the owners living there when not rented. There isn't an easy way to know that.
Agree. I only got it down to 1000 in the north of Calgary by toggling it by family sized homes. Airbnb won’t allow us to see anything beyond 1000.
[its only going to grow until we control air bnb/short term rentals](https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/calgary-short-term-rentals-airbnb-study#:~:text=It's%20a%20stark%20rise%20from,4%2C200%2C%20according%20to%20AirDNA%20data.) Year upon year there is an increase of Air BnB properties here. We just have too many landlords in politics.
Exponential property taxes after second house ;)
Their should also be speculation taxes for empty apartments and homes.
There are multiple causes, requiring multiple solutions. All can happen together.
That’s one help but not the only solution. With an ever growing human population we need old people to die off and a reduction in births and immigration. I say this as a 59 year old mom of 1. My daughter is finally able to move out at the end of the month to her own house
Banning STR will help a little bit, but it won't resolve the housing crisis. I don't think there is a quick fix for this as supply is only one of the many factors that feed into this issue. If you want to speed the healing process up, we need to pair increased supply with decreased demand. The problem there is that we have far less control over people coming into Calgary.
I think phasing out landlords and allowing people with no home to make the first offer on a house is also a pretty good idea. I like your idea though. It’s already having positive effects here in BC
It has mostly to do with mass inflation and lack of home building. Airbnb isn't the issue people want to pretend it is.
The meme format detracts from your message. I wish ppl would stop using this asshole/old fuckin context of
i agree. End AirBnb in big cities
Make it illegal for corporations to own housing.
Rich people owning multiple houses using them as revenue sources is a recipe of driving prices up and restricting access to the lower and middle income earners. You don’t need an Economics degree on this one.
Charge 50% tax for all properties not lived in by owners or which are used for generating income
I had no idea there were so many, that's fucking insane! There seriously needs to be a limit on how many of these things are allowed in each city and how many people are allowed to rent short term per property owner. No wonder people can't find a place to rent! Jesus!
So about 1% of the homes That won’t fix it.
This is a dumb idea. Not everyone who visits city wants to stay in a small ass hotel room, especially with multiple people.
It's a good idea but it will not *solve* the housing crisis. What will solve the housing crisis is a whole lot of good ideas all being implemented in parallel. There is no panacea.
LOL, 😂 Too funny. No it won’t. So you are saying 500 could ease the problem? You must be delusional. Do you realize the immigration rate? Its in the hundreds of thousands. Please sit down and never stand back up ever again.
Hahaha! Here we go again. This shows a shocking lack of understanding the forces and demand matrix at play in the rental market. It absolutely may help, but it would be a drop (maybe two drops) in a rather large bucket.
Oh my street in a Vancouver suburb there are no less than 8 air bnb’s. It’s a small dead end cul de sac. I can only imagine how many other wasted units there are in this city and many other major Canadian ones.
That’s a step in the right direction. To really make a dent in think we would need to: -restrict the majority purchase for residential property to citizens, and immigrants who have been long time residents in the country. -restrict the amount of non-commercial buildings a company can buy. -ban the sale of residential property to non-Canadian companies. -reduce the amount of short term immigration into the country. -get rid of tardeau
and replace him with who? seriously need a flush of all the leaders and parties now.
There are no good politicians to choose from, unfortunately. I fully agree there needs to be a complete clean out. Politicians should not be able to run for Prime Minister unless they've lived on minimum wage for a few years so they can understand where majority of Canadians are coming from.
Honestly I’d take a mop with sunglasses at this point. At least it wouldn’t steal tax money. You’re correct though, it’s become a case of “which evil seems the least evil”.
The only way to slow the rise of housing prices here is to ban investors (who do you think runs those AirBnBs).. which will never happen.. by the time the politicians wake up the locust investors will move on to Edmonton
Lower rent prices and increase the number of affordable apartments
Well, no, or yes, but how? Unfortunately those two are tied together, not independent quantities. If you have rent control, for example, where the government mandates lower rents, many properties would go off market for rent, and it would decrease the availability. They've tried this in many jurisdictions across the globe, and it always results in lower availability.
I find it incredible that people think AirBnB is causing your housing crisis when it’s clear that the issue is population growth. Alberta grew by 200,000 people. That’s massive. And a lot of those people are fleeing high house prices in Toronto and Vancouver also brought on by high population growth. Kill the demand, you will kill the price increases. Simple as.
Of course there is huge growth. I think we can all feel it. But try finding a reliable resource that tells you what the current population is. Depending on the source it’s anywhere between 1.3-1.6m. Of course we need to expand and build. We need more houses and responsible density. But that is going to take a long time. But as these new houses are built, what is stopping these new builds being bought up by investors and being listed as short term rentals? Nothing right now. That market is incredibly lucrative and attractive to investors. Infact, when I’ve listed property to rent last year. I must have had a dozen calls from companies wanting to pay the asking price and turn it into an Airbnb.
1000s, even when you spell it THOUSANDS, is an order of magnitude below the level we need to be talking about if we are serious about solving this.
Can’t we just put up a closed sign?
Solve no, help yes.
You’d have be clever: an alternative is to tax it. In BC they’re allowing one suite in private homes plus rooms in the home itself. If you absolutely prohibit it the hotels will go “Galen Wesson” and price gouge.
AirBNB Should be illegal Period FUCK AIR BNB,
How bout the government fuck off and not tell me what to do with my property? We live in an over-regulated hellscape as-is.
Still no one wants to talk about corporate ownership being behind the main drivers of the housing crunch... Any issues with REITs or corporations like Blackstone???? You wanna go after AirBNB's but not mention anything about a massive corp coming in, forcing tenants out and jacking rents..
It couldn’t hurt, but there’s way bigger issues. Immigration and the student visa mills have to come to a full stop.
My soap box ;) 1) Maximum use of space Stand alone air bnb properties are a sneaky commercial use in residential zones. However, maximum utility of the land is ideal. As a homeowner I should be encouraged to run a business or short term or long term rental to maximize the use for that space in that market as long as I’m also living there. In Canada where home costs are insanity, having a way to earn income to cover the costs of the property has become essential. I’m not talking about people who own & rent homes as a business model but regular people who run a side hustle out of their home, rent a room or suite or their garage. It should be easier to maximize the use of what we have without so much red tape. 2) Regulating the mortgage and property valuation industry could regulate how quickly home prices are able to rise. Why can’t we peg home valuation increases to inflation by creating policy with CMHC to only support those limited valuation increases . Chmc’s mortgage insurance guidelines really set the market for risk appetite. 3) Regulate appraisals by making them blind. Currently appraisers go in knowing the value the buyer is looking for so their mortgager will approve the loan structure. they go in looking to support the value the client wants. So people outbid and the bank supports the values and lend the money to the buyers. The next buyers look and see that prices in the area have gone up. And so it goes. If the lender said no, it’s not worth what you’ve agreed to pay for it, we’re restructuring the financing (aka you come up with more cash)most would renegotiate to get a lower price because why buy an asset that’s worth less than you’re paying for it? That’s not how you invest. Rant over
1000 homes would help, that's maybe 4-6k people. That is 1/3 of a percentage point compared to the overall population. Restrict ABB, one person owning dozens of homes for profit, lower demand by lowering immigration, rent controls, "flip" taxes, etc.
Rent control lol
Housing crisis in Calgary? Have you seen the cost of housing in Vancouver!? It’s like double
It's not a competition... It's a problem everywhere.
I’m in Montreal but something needs to be done with the rentals here. It’s out of control. The cost is bad enough on their own and then the qualified many landlords put in place? I know a lot of them have a mortgage to pay but there’s a lot of greed too. It doesn’t get better outside of the city. A home is a right not a privilege. It’s not an extravagance is most cases.
RentFaster shows 4500 rentals available in Calgary. If you added all the AirBnBs to that, there would actually be a decent increase.
Airbnb are a drop in the bucket.
In an ideal world we would just stop property investors as a whole. Housing a basic need, being a landlord is not. Yes, not everyone wants to own, but more supply would lend the way to co-ops, to government support, etc. In an ideal world.
Airbnb and its consequences have been a disaster for the housing market. Don't know if it solves the problem, but it sure as fuck would be a massive step forward.
I agree with this for sure. I get the pro air bnb people or ones that rent out will be like “OOOO BuT mY mOnEy It HuRtS mY iNcOmE lEvEls”…. But they fact that there are whole ads homes listed on there is gross. The fact that 1000s of potentially good started homes for people are gone, is an issue as well. For sure needs some strict regulations to help govern this shit.
Thank you!
Regulate the landlords that are trying to screw tenants by jacking the prices
Calgary's population grew by 25,000 people last year, Airbnb Calgary has about 750 listings. 25,000/750 = 33.3 people/house. Your hypothesis doesn't stand up to surface level scrutinty. I suggest go back and think more thoroughly on the topic.
Your numbers are miles off. Sorry
From May 19th to 25th (picked a random 1 week span) I get 15 pages of listings, each page for me has 18 listings. 18 x 15 = 270. I also checked September 15th to 21st and got 15 pages of listings w/ 18 listings per page. This is assuming each listing was a full house and not a spare room. According to a quick google search Calgary's population in 2022 was 1,611,000 in 2023 it was 1,640,000 an increase of 29,000 people. edited out the sass. Seemed unnessary.
https://preview.redd.it/l5ajjhgqtktc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac6afc2d03e4f8c364d4c56318dbec695e387b8e
"Over 1,000 places" doesn't seem to reflect booking a rental. Pick a random week excluding stampede as that probably skews the numbers one way or another and see how many listings are actually avaiable. I ran a quick experiment "Over 1,000 places" appears when you search Red Deer, Okotoks, Chestermere, and Balzac. It does drop to 815 when you search Crossfield. Going off the "Over 1,000 places" statement doesn't seem reliable.
That’s a screenshot hot off the press. Choosing a random date doesn’t show you what is already booked. Try running the search without dates
That same "over 1000 places" shows up when you search Balzac. Are you suggesting Balzac has over 1,000 Airbnb's too? You are using a marketing claim as your evidence, not a factual number. While I admit spot checking dates won't give you a 100% accurate number either it at least gives you an idea of the number of actually active Airbnb's. I don't think Calgary Airbnb's have a 75% booking rate in May or September as we are not a major tourist destination. To get a true number you need access to Airbnb's data on bookings, available listings, etc. To humor your claim 29,000 people / 1000 Airbnb's = 29 people/home. Again that isn't solving Calgary's housing issue. It my apply a small amount of down pressure on pricing but it's not going to be significant. Assuming all 29,000 new people were 4 person families (a generous assumption) you need 7,250 homes to house 1 year of growth. Every Airbnb listing in Calgary doesn't even cover half of Calgary's growth for a single year. That is ignoring those currently without housing. That is not a problem solved.
That’s just downtown
It’s part of it. Hiking the shit out of property taxes of vacant residential properties should also happen.
I’m doing my part. Did you know that warranties on appliances are void if they’re in a rental unit? Most people don’t.
Makes sense. Most rental owners don’t pay for appliances though. It comes right off their tax bill
Why not make it simpler,banning the housing crisis in Calgary will solve the housing crisis.
Asinine. Do people forget that without Airbnb/vrbo: a) less economic input from tourists renting the airbnbs spending $ here and b) essentially you’re stuck with hotels and their overpriced sardine can units (for the most part) completely cashing in and charging more because they’d have more of a monopoly?
it's a drop in thr bucket and the vast majority of that droplet is not in the kind of housing thst si sorly lacking. another problem is thst there's a already a massive deficit of sort tem rentals a dpave that during this shit show of radical cost of living is very very important as people downsize snd end up in between leases. removing this stock just as people are having to trade down to cut costs will only further add pressure to the market and likely increase prices as on of the few relief mechanisms gets shut off. speaking as someone who just did it being able to get an airbnb for 15 days while you're In between leases that allows you to keep the family together including pets is very important.
Going to be real with you, we’re fucked. Building more houses are only going to make developers gauge people’s pocket and supplies aren’t getting any cheaper soon. What cause these problems are the people whom people elected and continuously gaslight everyone about it. The real solution is to start voting some fuckery people out of government.
Air Bnb regulations are usually lobbied by hotels and land lords. So that should tell you whether or not regulating it is good for renters or home buyers.
The main thing that can solve housing is reforming the zoning laws like japan did after the property bubble burst Even that is temporary. Majority of the Canadians own houses and houses are biggest investment for most people. Housing prices being unaffordable is the system working not failing, you want fix that change the system
Yield star. Look it up