Super Bowl rentals tamer
Short-term rents since 2016 may be tapering off
The region’s short-term rentals were tamer during the Super Bowl than local officials expected, with residents only filing 50 complaints across the five largest Valley cities that recently clamped down on the industry.
Those are Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale, Peoria and Goodyear.
Combined, there are about 9,100 short-term rentals in those communities. That means that the Valley experienced just one complaint for every 182 rentals operating during the area’s biggest party weekend in years.
The low rate suggests the Valleywide chaos at up-to-30-day rentals since 2016 may be tapering off. That year, state lawmakers banned cities from regulating the industry and caused the number of short-term rentals to spike everywhere from Scottsdale to Goodyear.
The properties are usually in residential areas where locals say they have disrupted quiet neighborhoods with rowdy parties and caused a slew of other problems. In Scottsdale alone, police were called to short-term rentals almost 800 times between 2021 and 2022, for example.
“The state had no enforcement,” said Scottsdale Mayor David Ortega about the unregulated era of Arizona’s short-term rental industry. “They did not fund anyone at the sTamer tate level when they preempted us from taking control of our own neighborhoods.”
After years of uproar from residents and officials, the state returned some power to cities last summer by allowing them to issue rental licenses that can be revoked if hosts break the rules.
Industry players, such as Vrbo and Arizonans for Responsible Tourism, also launched their own initiatives – including voluntary noise detectors and educational seminars for hosts – in an effort to stem the tide of political opposition ginned-up by their more disruptive clients.
Super Bowl weekend was expected to be the ultimate stress test for all of those new measures as the NFL and Waste Management Open brought up to a million visitors into the Phoenix metro area. But not a single major city in the area faced significant rental issues, even those such as Tempe where new city regulations have yet to take effect:
Scottsdale had 20 resident complaints, or one for every 253 shortterm rentals.
Goodyear and Chandler had no complaints.
Glendale received 24 complaints related to its 924 short-term rental properties.
Mesa and Peoria both had three
complaints, which is one for every 466 short-term rentals in those cities.
● Tempe and Phoenix received a total of 12 complaints, combined.
“It was a lower call volume than we had anticipated,” said Sgt. Dan Serbalik, who heads up the Scottsdale Police Department’s team dealing with shortterm rentals. He added that there “wasn’t really anything too notable about” the 20 calls his officers did receive, which were for minor issues such as “standard noise complaints.”
But Serbalik believes there were so few issues because residents “adjusted their expectations” for Super Bowl weekend and didn’t complain in instances when they normally would have, for example.
The New York Times also found that half of the short-term rentals in the area were left vacant, with many visitors opting for hotels, putting into question whether the weekend of massive events more business-as-usual than a stress test.
“Many short-term rentals went empty around the Super Bowl period. I suspect there was just higher utilization of hotels, so that could be part of the source of it,” Scottsdale City Councilmember Tom Durham said.
Key to success unclear
It’s unclear what led to the successful weekend, but it almost certainly wasn’t the new local licensing rules adopted by Mesa, Glendale, Scottsdale, Peoria and Goodyear. Most short-term rentals there haven’t complied with the mandate, despite being weeks past the deadline.
Beyond that, the answer to why the weekend was quiet is a guessing game.
Other parts of the new city laws could have nipped trouble in the bud before it happened, including one designed to stop violent felons from renting and another that ensures neighbors can contact a property manager if guests become disruptive.
In Scottsdale, Serbalik’s unit took on two extra officers who were able to respond more quickly to complaints, poAn tentially limiting the number of residents disturbed by a given incident.
“These officers weren’t going to be tied up responding to traffic collisions or other calls for service. They could dedicate themselves solely to nuisance parties,” he said. “It was a drastic improvement in response time.”
Efforts by industry players also focused on stopping problems before they got out of hand. Vrbo recently launched a risk-assessment program that allows hosts to identify and turn away highrisk guests without facing any fees or penalties, for example.
The company didn’t provide information on how many hosts participated in its mitigation programs during the Super Bowl, so it’s impossible to say whether it made an impact.
Arizonans for Responsible Tourism, a statewide group that advocates on behalf of the short-term rental industry, also hosted three different educational events for hosts in January. They said that a combined 1,400 people attended those meetings, an indication that hosts bought-in to broader mitigation efforts.
A fluke, or real progress?
alternative explanation for the low complaint figures is that the rental properties escaped neighborhood scrutiny.
The idea is that nearby residents had a higher tolerance for certain disturbances because they expected the rentals to be chock full of event-goers, so they didn’t report issues as often as they would have during any other day of the year.
Short-term rentals may have been shown a special level of grace by neighbors, but weren’t actually much busier than usual – a scenario that, if true, could mean the short-term rental industry didn’t demonstrate much real improvement at all.
“(The downtick in complaints) is probably more indicative of lower usage of short-term rentals,” Scottsdale City Councilmember Tom Durham said. “I would like to think that our program caused a lower number of complaints, but I’m not sure that it did.”