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

&gt; Nearly half of all Canadian Airbnb revenue in 2018 was generated by commercial operators, or those who manage multiple listings, the McGill report said. Their share of sales increased from 2017 in nearly all metro areas. Among this group, there are some hosts that vastly eclipse the competition: Fifteen managed at least 100 active listings apiece in the past year, the report said, and nearly 60 hosts earned more than $1-million in 2018.<p>&gt; It vastly differs from how Airbnb often pitches itself: as a personal platform through which residents, either out of town or looking to put a second bedroom to good use, will occasionally rent out their spaces.<p>&gt; Often, the largest “hosts” are in fact businesses that manage vacation rentals on behalf of homeowners.<p>City of Vancouver regulations (as ineffective as they are) explicitly targeted and banned these sort of commercial operators.<p>What does Airbnb&#x27;s valuation look like if such a significant share of their revenue comes from the sort of activity that is actively being banned by more and more cities?

I really wish my city would ban Airbnb with the exception being that you must reside in the household you are looking to rent out, as in, a literal bed and breakfast.<p>Our rental market is absolutely cut-throat right now. Affordable rentals on realtor.ca aren&#x27;t lasting more than a couple days after they go up.

I&#x27;m genuinely baffled that so few people in this thread see no value in Airbnb providing cheaper options for travelers. As a software engineer, one way I could advance my career would be to move back to the Bay Area. An imperfect substitute, though, is visiting regularly to maintain the relationships I built when I lived there. (Indeed, I&#x27;m writing this from a plane while flying there.) Being able to stay in an Airbnb for half the cost of the hotel makes that more feasible.

&gt; &quot;Shared exclusively with The Globe and Mail&quot;<p>Publish the actual paper or this is just vaporware nonsense. This is a non-peer-reviewed paper with zero credibility, thats been seen by a small handful of people. They could literally write a paper about the moon being made of cheese and have the same credibility. They dont even make the source material available in their article.<p>I dont want to sound overly critical, this looks like a legit finding that matches up with my experience of the housing market, but Im completely fed up with people publishing their &quot;findings&quot; without reporting where the data came from and how they got to their conclusions. Until they publish the paper, this should be dismissed out of hand. There&#x27;s such a long history of people completely messing up their statistical methodology that you cant believe anything until you see the actual numbers&#x2F;methods.

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

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

If only we had some technology that could increase the number of housing units on a given piece of land; such a technology could allow us to build as much housing as people want to occupy.<p>Too bad this has to remain a fantasy. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;new-economy-future&#x2F;urban-sprawl-housing-costs-solutions-elevators" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vox.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;new-economy-future&#x2F;urban-sprawl-housin...</a>

Thoughts: 1) It&#x27;s just basic free-market supply and demand. Landlords own property to make money, so if they want to take a risk in short term rentals they should be able to. 2) I would love to live in a double-wide shipping container... actually that&#x27;s probably bigger than what I have now.

People rarely discuss the positive impact of AirBnB: boosting the number of tourists. I wonder how much additional tourism spend and tax revenue the city is getting from the influx of tourists. Hotels aren&#x27;t closing down; AirBnB&#x27;s just make traveling easier.

It&#x27;s interesting to see how the Airbnb market has evolved. I used to always hear that &quot;Airbnb is cheaper&quot;, but lately when booking trips I&#x27;ve been able to find better deals in hotels.

What will happen when the market contracts and people don&#x27;t travel much? I know a couple in Canada that have acquired 7 homes in the last few years strictly for Airbnb rentals.

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

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

I&#x27;ve had mostly negative experiences with Airbnb over the years.<p>My neighbors airbnb their house every weekend. So nice loud music and rude guests to deal with fairly often. Of course why not? They are not accountable to rest of us full timers in my neighborhood.<p>My place was broken into by someone who stayed at it before using Airbnb.<p>One guest almost started a fire and had to be removed.<p>Checking in and out of airbnbs can be a bit of a nightmare. Everyone has their own process for checkin.<p>Airbnb destroying local real estate markets is no surprise. They&#x27;ve been doing it for several years and getting in trouble for it for several years.<p>Growth at all costs - no matter what it does to local markets or people&#x27;s lives. I&#x27;m sure their impact on local economies is the least of their concern until the governments attached to those economies start to speak up.

I&#x27;m guessing the number of short-term people hasn&#x27;t changed (except for population growth), so what impact has this had on hotel occupancy rates?

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

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

rental market is a distortion anyway, things are foobar because ownership is getting harder and harder, creating a whole generation of renters-for-life, but the solution lies not in affordable rents, it&#x27;s affordable housing where is at.

I always wonder why the same argument isn&#x27;t applied to hotel rooms. If the government forced every hotel room to be converted to affordable housing, the homelessness problem could be solved overnight!

No it hasn&#x27;t. A lot of homes are rented out through AirBnB now because it&#x27;s the way to be found. It also guarantees payments.

I have a feeling 99% of these homes they are referring to are condo&#x27;s in Vancouver and Toronto (VAN,YYZ are the condo building capitals of NA). A lot of these units are owned buy foreigners or as investment properties. According to a real estate friend, some Chinese have purchased entire floors of these buildings to park capital fleeing China. I know that many buildings in downtown Toronto can be up to 50% AirBnb rentals.<p>Coincidentally, I spoke with someone on the weekend who can&#x27;t take it anymore and wants to sell their unit or put it to work as an AirBnb because of the amount of prostitutes, drug dealers, etc using the building as short term rentals through AirBnB.<p>Canada really needs to get a grip on foreign ownership. 10&#x27;s - 100&#x27;s of billions of capital outflows over the last decade from China, Hong Kong, Iran, etc have created a tough environment for the local population. Co-op&#x27;s could possibly solve this problem by creating rules where short term rentals, foreign ownership, etc are not allowed. Although it&#x27;s tough to get a mortgage for a co-op condo.

The title is misleading. There&#x27;s nothing to see here folks. Airbnb _only_ rents properties. Nothing has been removed. The owners of the properties are probably making more money with short-term rentals than long-term. Everyone involved with the transaction is acting rational.

Anyone have any thoughts on Montreal?