This year has been an eventful one for short-term rentals around the world: The boom-bust saga and seeming unending fights about new regulations.
06.12.2023 - 23:53 / skift.com / Srividya Kalyanaraman
Happy Thanksgiving, folks! I know you’d rather carve a turkey than open your inbox, so we will keep this brief.
On the menu today:
Canada has implemented new tax measures to address a severe shortage of rental housing.
How? By taking away income tax deductions of companies like Airbnb, Vrbo, and others.
The new rules, effective January 1, will apply in provinces and municipalities that prohibit short-term rentals and impact deductions such as interest expenses.
Airbnb, for its part, disputes this claim, stating that listings in Toronto and Montreal have decreased since 2020. How much are the estimated savings? In the neighborhood of $36 million over three years starting in 2024, the government projects.
Other countries like Australia have been battling housing shortages and considering restrictions on rentals to be the panacea. To which, Airbnb’s response is: taxing us is not the silver bullet.
I don’t know if this is a coincidence or a very well-timed study, but an Oxford Economics report showed Airbnb’s contribution to New Zealand’s economy.
The report said:
Conversely, earlier this month a study published in Real Estate Economics cited Irvine, California as a case study to indicate that a ban on Airbnbs for 30 days or less, can have a notable impact on the city’s housing market. After the city of Irvine banned Airbnb-type rentals in 2018, long-term rents dropped by 3% — a decrease of $114 a month on average.
Florida has done it again — In October, Palm Beach County experienced a surge in single-family home prices, reaching a near-record high, the Palm Beach Post reported.
The median price for existing single-family homes was $622,733, marking a 9% increase compared to October 2022 and coming close to the record set in June at $625,000.
Realtors in Broward, Palm Beach, and St. Lucie counties reported a 3.5% rise in completed sales and an 11% increase in new listings. This indicates renewed activity in a market that had stagnated during the typical summer slowdown, despite factors such as higher interest rates and increasing insurance costs.
To put this in lending context, in November 2021, the interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage had increased from 3.11%, as reported by Freddie Mac. And in November this year, that number jumped to 7.44%.
Spain’s anti-trust agency, CNMC, has cleared Amazon, Booking Holdings, and Tripadvisor of allegations related to participating in or facilitating fake reviews on their platforms, Skift’s Rashaad Jorden writes.
The investigation was prompted by a complaint from OCU, a prominent consumer organization in Spain. The CNMC found no evidence that the companies were involved in or enabled the publication of false opinions, and it noted their collaboration
This year has been an eventful one for short-term rentals around the world: The boom-bust saga and seeming unending fights about new regulations.
Hawaii Governor Josh Green has asked for 3,000 condos and homes operating as short-term rentals to be converted into long-term housing for those displaced by this summer’s wildfire in Lahaina.
Hawaii Governor Josh Green said he is ready to “drop the hammer” or go “nuclear” on short-term housing rentals on Maui.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour made headlines even before it began — by overwhelming booking platform Ticketmaster and drawing attention even from the U.S. Senate.
Dealmaking has kept short-term rental businesses in Europe busy. The past few months have seen an uptick in activity — be it mergers, or acquisitions or rebrandings.
Booking Holdings Chief Financial Officer David Goulden said this week that the flagship Booking.com brand launched its short-term rental business as a supplement to hotels “15-plus years” ago, which is roughly around the time Airbnb got going in San Francisco.
This is not a story of “Airbnbust,” but instead we’re talking about a correction of the “Airbnboom” that has taken place since the highs of the pandemic.
You read it here first: We’re halfway into the year, and the short-term rental industry has been buoyed by summer travel picking up, despite prevailing economic uncertainty.
Stat of the Day: Thinking that you, like us, are wondering what’s happening to occupancy levels this summer, we had some numbers crunched for us by data analysis firm Beyond Pricing and this is what it found: U.S. occupancy for July is pacing about 5 percentage points down year-on-year, from 37 percent in 2022 to 32 percent in 2023.
New This Morning: Following extensive discussions within the community spanning almost four years regarding short-term rental homes, the Dallas City Council implemented zoning limitations to prohibit their presence in single-family neighborhoods last week. However, as a middle ground, short-term rentals will still be permitted in commercial areas and multi-family neighborhoods.
If you’ve seen a tweetstorm about the alleged “Airbnb collapse” and are wondering if the data seems too dramatic – you’re not alone, or even wrong.
The short-term rental market in Miami isn’t so hot this summer. And there are a number of reasons for that: A slowing of the post-Covid vacation rush, the Florida government’s hostility toward the LGBTQ community, and travelers’ financial constraints due to inflation are a few contributing factors.