Short-term rental crackdown is working, city official says
Vancouver’s chief licensing inspector says the city saw a 43 per cent drop in short-term rentals in the months leading up to its registration deadline, and said staff will continue to rely on complex software and old-fashioned tipsters to hunt down and fine operators flouting bylaws.
New regulations for short-term rentals like Airbnb and VRBO came into effect Saturday, after the city approved regulating the services last fall and launched a permitting process in April.
Over the five-month registration period, staff cracked down on commercial operators and unsafe dwellings so that there are now 3,742 short-term rentals, down from 6,600 in April, chief licensing inspector Kathryn Holm said Wednesday. About 70 per cent of them have been issued business licenses.
During that time, more than 660 properties were delisted or turned into long-term rentals, while Airbnb removed 2,482 more listings on Aug. 31 for not complying with the city ’s rules by that deadline, Holm said.
“Our innovative approach to regulating short-term rentals in Vancouver is exceeding our expectations and we’re very pleased with these early results,” she said.
“We know there is still work to do and we will continue to evolve our processes as we focus our enforcement on operators who are unlicensed, or who are misusing their licence.”
Holm said staff have been working closely with Airbnb and VRBO — who together represent more than 90 per cent of the city ’s shortterm rental market — to inform operators of the rules.
Like Airbnb, Expedia has added a field to VRBO listings where Vancouver operators must include their business licence numbers. This week, those with no licence or an invalid licence will be targeted for enforcement, Holm said.
She said the city has built a new, sophisticated data analytics system to track and manage listings across platforms, and identify offenders for enforcement. Many of the data the system crunches are available only to the city, including full licensing information and 3-11 and Airbnb data, as well as data from a third-party screen-scraper program that scans all listings in the market, she added.
Those who flout the bylaws will be subject to escalating enforcement, including fines of up to $1,000 per day, and per platform. This means someone listing the same unit or property on both Airbnb and VRBO without a valid licence could face fines of $2,000 per day.
Operators who don’t comply could eventually find themselves being prosecuted and facing fines of up to $10,000. City staff have investigated more than 2,650 listings to date and have built up a substantial case file to use in enforcement, Holm said. On Wednesday, two business days since the Aug. 31 registration deadline, city staff had already launched investigations into 294 properties.
Since April, it has received more than 1,300 complaints from the public.
Holm said residents can help the city by submitting the addresses and listing pages of suspected violators to 3-1-1 or through its VanConnect smartphone app. While some residents have been regularly posting such information on social media, she urged them to also report to 3-1-1 and VanConnect so that formal investigations can be launched.