In an ideal free-market you only need 2 regulations:<p>1.Prevent monopolies and 2. Fight fraud.<p>1. According to insideairbnb.com there are 8,946 full time high-availability airbnbs in Toronto. However if we look regular apartments available for rent on zillow , padmapper.com etc, there are only 8,429 or less units available.
This means airbnb has a monopoly on available living space. We don't need new regulation, monopolies are illegal. It's no surprise during the busy summer events a 1 bedroom airbnb can shoot up to 800$/night.<p>Annectodal evidence confirms this. I've been living here for 13 years. 2/3 of the new condos are usually empty, I'm not exaggerating. Wether you look at them year round from the outside, ask people if anyone actually lives on their floors, talk to the concierge in different buildings, they're more than half empty.
This is a combination of airbnb and also the foreign investor market for condos that are "never livded-in".
Also this is not uber, uber is great because it has competition from lyft. AirBnb does not, landlords are basically their contractors, i don't pay them, i pay airbnb, they set the price and promos. They control more than half the market. They further enhance scarcity because airbnb's are profitable even if they're unused for 2/3 of the time, so if we look at housing as units of a 'good-nights-sleep' , we can clearly see how this is anti-competitive behaviour.<p>2.Fight fraud: There are no employment checks for foreigners getting a mortgage in Toronto, as long as they provide a 34% downpayment and have in the bank about a year of mortgage payments. I can't legally compete with that. I don't have some third world factory, gambling business, foreign politicians in the family laundering money through me. I'm just a hard-working citizen, my student landlord has literally never had a job in their life, this is borderline feudalism at this point.