The Town of Gibsons hopes owners of short-term rentals will transition their properties to long-term rentals. I break down the new bylaws and outline how these changes could impact buyers and sellers on the Sunshine Coast, BC.
There was obviously no serious studies done on such policy decision.
This is going to seriously harm tourism on the coast because there are not near enough hotels or camp grounds here.
This will also hurt restaurants and other local businesses struggling after the past couple years.
Changes could be made to enforcement regarding the occasional disrespectful tourist(but this is honestly very rare)
And anyone thinking this will increase long term renting is kidding themselves. Most who do short term rentals don't actually need the income and will not subject themselves to BC's restrictive rental rules or the frequent risk of serious damage to their property with little recourse.
We had our home long term rented and faced over 40,000.00 in wilful damage that we could not get back because you cannot squeeze water from a stone. We had to move back to the property last year and are still working on repairing the damage. To be clear, after our experience renting long term, we also have no intention of short term renting ourselves.
The road to good intentions is often paved with nice sounding but ill thought policies/intentions.
This is a blatant tax grab, and we will see over time that no good will come from this, & rents will actually go up because of the further reduction in supply. The reality is that even short term supply affects long term rentals.
Sep 5, 2022·edited Sep 5, 2022Liked by Realtor Tony Browton
Did anyone conduct a study of the likely impacts on the rental market, their target benefit? Or on the economy? Is there a set of cost benefit assumptions anywhere to be found?
It strikes me as inherently possible to at least list some assumptions and build a (likely imperfect!) model of the issue before making a sweeping rule:
For example:
BEFORE
- x# of ST rentals listed
- b# of total LT rentals
- $y in tourism spending on coast related to the rentals
- z# of jobs supported by tourism revenue
- $a tax revenue, direct or indirect
- k# of families who live on the coast that benefit from hosting on their property
AFTER:
- repeat all from above with some estimated effect sizes
(if I wasn’t holding a baby and typing this on my phone, I’d bet we could come up with a first draft of this model tonight)
There was obviously no serious studies done on such policy decision.
This is going to seriously harm tourism on the coast because there are not near enough hotels or camp grounds here.
This will also hurt restaurants and other local businesses struggling after the past couple years.
Changes could be made to enforcement regarding the occasional disrespectful tourist(but this is honestly very rare)
And anyone thinking this will increase long term renting is kidding themselves. Most who do short term rentals don't actually need the income and will not subject themselves to BC's restrictive rental rules or the frequent risk of serious damage to their property with little recourse.
We had our home long term rented and faced over 40,000.00 in wilful damage that we could not get back because you cannot squeeze water from a stone. We had to move back to the property last year and are still working on repairing the damage. To be clear, after our experience renting long term, we also have no intention of short term renting ourselves.
The road to good intentions is often paved with nice sounding but ill thought policies/intentions.
This is a blatant tax grab, and we will see over time that no good will come from this, & rents will actually go up because of the further reduction in supply. The reality is that even short term supply affects long term rentals.
Did anyone conduct a study of the likely impacts on the rental market, their target benefit? Or on the economy? Is there a set of cost benefit assumptions anywhere to be found?
It strikes me as inherently possible to at least list some assumptions and build a (likely imperfect!) model of the issue before making a sweeping rule:
For example:
BEFORE
- x# of ST rentals listed
- b# of total LT rentals
- $y in tourism spending on coast related to the rentals
- z# of jobs supported by tourism revenue
- $a tax revenue, direct or indirect
- k# of families who live on the coast that benefit from hosting on their property
AFTER:
- repeat all from above with some estimated effect sizes
(if I wasn’t holding a baby and typing this on my phone, I’d bet we could come up with a first draft of this model tonight)