New regulations in Quebec that encourage platforms like Airbnb to police their own listings could help improve housing affordability, experts and advocates say.
Platforms like Airbnb are receiving renewed scrutiny amid a return to summer travel and an uptick in demand for short-term rentals, because of their role in making housing less affordable for some Canadians. Anne Gaviola has more on the impact of short-term rentals and the push for regulation
Betteridges Law of Headlines. No. We need speculation out of real estate to see any just transition to a sane market where people can actually own a home they live in.
I live across the street from an airbnb and honestly I don't understand the market. It's around the same price as a hotel downtown but I'm out in the suburbs, sure you get more space but at the cost of house keeping and having to drive everywhere as transit is near non-existent.
If the owners bought the place with 20% down they're going to need major utilization to cover the mortgage and I guess I'll find out if it ends up back on the market.
AorBnN makes more sense for a group of people traveling together. A couple of families or a single large family with lots of kids. In a hotel you each have to go to your own room whereas in a house you still get your own room but now you have common areas you can socialize in.
We have young kids that go to bed around 8. If we want to stay up, then we'd need another hotel room, turning $150 a night into $300 a night. On top of that, hotel rooms don't really have kitchens, so we'd have to eat out every meal. Airbnb ends up being cheaper and more convenient, even if the places are in the middle of nowhere.
Airbnb is shitty, but it fills a niche hotels have ignored.
I can only speak for myself but me and my gf basically live out of Airbnbs around the world. We typically rent a minimum of two months. There are plenty of Airbnbs I can spend two months in. I would kill myself if I had to spend two months in a hotel room.
I feel like people renting a spare room in their apartment or home should still be allowed, but the minute you allow whole rental units to go off the market to turn into short term rentals the whole rental market takes a hit. It cant be allowed to run rampant any more, not when housing is in crisis mode.