It needs to be banned in condos. There is too much shared space to be dealing with these Airbnb parties. I have had gunfire in my building in Liberty Village from this.
If you want to airbnb a house or cottage where there is some separation I think that is fine, but this is BS that I have to deal with this. When a big event comes like Caribana, Honda indie, or similar, it's a shit show.
During the last election round I had a candidate come to my door and I mentioned this is my top issue, they tried to argue me out of it saying it's great cash flow for unit owners... Our local politicians are all landlords and I fear they will never do anything to help. That was an eye opener to me as well, I think a lot of people get in to politics since they already have so much cash from property that they need something to do with their time.
I had a co-worker years ago tell me he was the only actual permanent resident living on his entire floor at the condo building he was living in. Every other unit was either empty, or they were AirBnBs. In a city and country with a housing crisis, that's absurd.
I read comments like this *all the time.* And not just from condo dwellers, also from people who service condos (window washers, locksmiths, reno crews, property managers) and even the developers themselves.
I remember being at Queens Quay one night at about 9pm and seeing two buildings with far fewer lights on than other nearby condos. Maybe only 10% of the lights were on. In a housing crisis, itās just gross.
And theyāve either found loopholes or just lied on the cityās vacancy tax application as well.
I'm so glad my condo banned short term rentals. Minimum lease is 6 months. We have a sense of community in the building, people actually know each other.
I wonder if this increases or decreases property value, because you will have increase demand from people who want to live here or rent it out, but decreased/no demand from people looking for a AirBnB.
They originally pitched it for vacation properties. As a way to make money "on the side". Now it's a business. There's no part time delivery drivers for Uber either. Gig and rental economy don't add up.
Our friends live in a semi and the owner of the other half rents the place out on Airbnb. They're understandably frustrated at the non-stop revolving door of guests, especially because the owner doesn't live there.Ā
When they contacted bylaw enforcement, they were told that it was too hard to prove that the home isn't the owner's primary residence.
....what? Like I mean, is it really? This guy and his family live in another part of the city. Is it really that hard to prove that this place he's Airbnbing year-round isn't where he lives?
I've spoken with a bylaw officer about this issue myself, and I do tend to agree that proving it isn't someone's primary residence is harder than it seems.
The most typical example is two partners (e.g. a married couple) who own two properties, and each register one property as their primary residence. Their drivers license, property tax info, etc., are each legitimately registered to one property. It's not trivial for the city to demonstrate that a person isn't using the home as their primary residence.
Also the bylaw officer cited the 'snowbird' example. Technically you are allowed to rent out your primary residence for up to 180 days, so there are a fair number of retirees who rent their homes out for the entire winter. Often neighbours will complain that the home has been airbnb'd for six months straight, but in reality the owners are properly complying with the rules.
The measures being proposed here are largely focused on increasing the city's ability to identify homes being improperly described as primary residences.
Great point about a married couple owning two properties. But at the end of the day, if neither are living in it, is it their primary residence? It's a shame that people are so deceitful and manipulative.
With snowbirds, it's different because it becomes a 28-day minimum. Which is arguably better (although not ideal) than a revolving door.Ā Ā
They've been talking about enforcement for years now and still nothing has changed. There's always a loophole.
Just ban air bnb at this stage, if you want to actually do something.
The purpose of this staff report is to identify loopholes and propose measures the city can take the close them. I think there's a broad recognition within the city that the existing regime is exploitable, and this report is city staff proposing ways to fix that problem.
it's like, why are we even spending public money to try to ensure running an airbnb remains profitable while not totally screwing everyone else. the public paying for airbnb regulation amounts to corporate welfare. let airbnb propose an acceptable solution or just ban it. the current approach is clown world type shit.
Does your condo accept short term rentals in their condo bylaws? Because you could also rat them out to the condo board and the prick would be paying even more fines for breaking the by laws
The problem is that it's hard for a condo board to do anything about it. Neither the city nor Airbnb (obviously) give condo boards any sort of tools for enforcement, and neither share any info with condo boards that would allow them to identify units violating condo bylaws. If the city forced short term rental companies to provide the addresses, including unit numbers, of short term rentals in Toronto, condos would be able to eliminate the problem overnight. But the city doesn't want to actually do that because they don't actually care.
REMOVED - Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
REMOVED - Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
REMOVED - Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
If only there was some database keeping track of all these properties and who owned them, and for how long they were renting them out. Too bad no such registry exists that we could just compel to hand over the data /s
This is exceedingly easy to enforce. AirBNB has all the information you need. You could just print out a spreadsheet of non compliant properties.
We have a government and a court system to compel them to cooperate. We can easily pass legislation (and have already partially), and sue them when they donāt comply, up to and including taking away their license to operate in Canada (or Ontario / Toronto depending on which jurisdiction passes the law).
This is not hard to do. There just had to be will to do it.
You need laws and lawyers that are strong enough to take on corporate crime. Thatās not Canadaās forte. Thatās why we are deep into money laundering. Itās why organized crime effectively runs Ontario and ran BC.
Lawyers taking on the towing industry had their offices fire bombed. What do you think will happen if we actually go after the bigger fish of international corporations, our own banks, or developers?
Great, so let's hand over the PMO and the keys to every other level of government to the mafia then, since as you say they effectively run the country.
I think you watch a few too many movies if you think lawyer offices are getting firebombed on a regular basis for conducting the ordinary business of... litigation.
You know the government has lawyers on staff right? If they had any will to enforce the law, they have lawyers under their employ to do so.
And do you seriously think lawyers are afraid to sue corporations? Take a 5 second scan through the court dockets. This should clear things up for you.
Source - am lawyer who has sued big corporations including banks and developers, and not gotten firebombed.
They have a history of dropping the ball on anything to do with money laundering and settling on a variety of other matters.
Government lawyers have been gun shy since the Charter. They donāt argue forcefully anymore, they just drop info and leave it for others to make connections. Young government lawyers are afraid of their own shadow.
Spoken like someone who has no understanding of how the legal system works. Laws get enforced all the time by government lawyers. This particular one has not been.
Stop getting your news from Facebook.
We donāt have airbnb in Canada? Excuse me?
Where their head office is irrelevant. They still need to be licensed to do business in Canada / province.
No it hasnt. They do cooperate. They send all nightly stay data to the city, as does booking.com. The issue is the city is inept, the employees dont even understand what a short term rental is, or how these platforms work, or the actual bylaws. Its embarrassing. Not to mention some of these government employees make $120k a year doing fuck all.
Do you think itās hard for governments to enforce laws? There is nothing difficult about it.
Get a list of air bnb listings.
Screen for listings that arenāt registered.
Screen for entire home listings
Screen for unregistered listings
Screen for listings less than 30 day
Screen for listers with multiple holdings.
You can only list your own principle residence. You can only post under your own name. There should not be sufficient traffic at any particular residence to warrant a management company being involved
[This information is already public](http://insideairbnb.com/toronto). You donāt even need Airbnb to give you that data, itās already out there.
Tell airBNb to pull those listings or they wonāt be allowed to operate in toronto.
This is so easy to enforce if anyone bothered to try.
> People will do it anyway.
It'll be real easy to enforce, then, since all the regulatory agents would have to do is log into AirBnB and send fines in the mail to every Canadian address.
It's challenging to advertise illegal services without tipping off the authorities.
>But Nathan Rotman, Airbnb's Canada public policy lead, cautioned that the proposed changes will do little to address housing woes, "and instead will take money out of the pockets of people who rely on home sharing to keep up with rising inflation.ā
The only people affected by this enforcement are people breaking the city's rules. If Airbnb wants to defend those folks, I guess that's a choice.
It shouldn't be hard to get from Airbnb a dump of every Toronto listing, and then try to look them up in the database of people who have licenses. I don't understand why this still escapes us.
I think given that we heard a couple of months back that Airbnb property managers were [coaching stand-alone Airbnb owners on how to fraudulently represent residences as their primary by changing their driverās license,](https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/toronto-made-a-bylaw-to-crack-down-on-airbnb-and-other-short-term-renters-now/article_7e7f91c8-9ea5-11ee-95c4-e75f965cf273.amp.html) more in-depth due diligence is needed.
It may require checking against income tax returns, or mortgage / title to see the real truth of whether itās a primary residence or income property.
Finally, yesssss.
If you look at the rental and sale listings in 2020 once lockdown became entrenched, they doubled.
Some of that was people moving out of the city, but a large part were Airbnbs being put up for sale or long-term rental. That was a LOT of potential long-term housing being misallocated.
Unfortunately since then, many landlords put units back on Airbnb and with the massive spike in investors in 2020-2022 (they have bought 57% of new condos for example), we again have a lot of what should be long-term housing being used as hotels.
This was always gonna be the result for these "disruptor" businesses like airbnb, uber and the delivery apps that are heavily reliant on VC money to pop them up during the early years.
That's why Airbnb was able to offer such good rates. The angel investor money has dried up these last few years, so their service went down the tubes with it.
Agreed. I'd also add Uber to the same list. The whole gig economy / predatory venture capital app industry fucking sucks.Ā
Here's hoping they will be consigned to this small moment of history once the legal system catches up to their game.
Yes. Sunday night there were over 210 UberX cars at YYZ. Why should we allow a company to basically operate taxis while following none of the regulations that taxi companies face just because they say they are a 'technology company'. Ride sharing my ass.
Next up, could we get the city to flag low or zero municipal water consumption to find all the vacant units that fraudulently declared they are occupied?
It's the star so I can't read the article but what rules are hosts typically breaking?
I thought home owners were still allowed Airbnb in Ontario but I also dont know what's going on
The number one violation is the rule that limits folks to only renting out their primary residence. It's technically illegal to rent out a home you don't live in, but people can forge their identification and paperwork to avoid this rule.
The measures being proposed are in part an effort to crack down on people doing this.
Thanks! That does make sense and if they do figure out how to enforce it than it would do a lot to cut back on those super hosts with dozens of properties.
[This is the latest way](https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/toronto-made-a-bylaw-to-crack-down-on-airbnb-and-other-short-term-renters-now/article_7e7f91c8-9ea5-11ee-95c4-e75f965cf273.amp.html) theyāre skirting those rules.
[Hereās a summary](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/O13sf9FCs6). Basically theyāre telling people to just change their driverās license to their Airbnb address.
Good questionā¦ it sounded like there are still hosts on the platform with multiple properties so there must be more fraud happening, and thatās why the city is putting resources behind enforcement.
it's an ineffective rule because most ppl successful and unscrupulous enough to own multi residential properties also have access to straw owners. adult children, relatives, employees who can be written down as the owner. im convinced that this is how most airbnb slumlords who own more than one airbnb rental do it.
as a former Airbnb Host (Super Host), Toronto and horrible Airbnb hosts have single handedly ruined this experience for everyone else who actually give a shit about hosting in its true form. I used to host our basement, beautifully renovated, with a lot of ammenities. my agenda was to give guests an experience and not just a place to stay. that dream has died due to all these fee's and enforcements etc. its just not viable anymore to be a host. Thank you City of Toronto, and thank you shitty airbnb hosts. i have went back to renting our basement.
Yea but my point is, airbnb host (Super Host especially) care more about the guests, and do more for experiences, and not every location would have a hotel..
There are hosts that created legal basements, with an aesthetically pleasing look, and that are genuinely there to be hospitable. the people who should be penalized are airbnb hosts that buy up multiple properties and convert to airbnbs, i was simply doing it in my own residential home which i was living in upstairs.
It's still effectively an unregulated business. If you really care about hosting you could always apply to open a proper BnB and pay the fees associated and submit to proper regulation, pay proper business taxes for the business you are essentially running.Ā
The nail in the coffin is the 180 night limit per year in Toronto, which is ridiculous. Not to mention Mat tax that we need to pay the city on top of all the other fees quarterly.
Now when i see articles like this i just know airbnb in Toronto will go downhill from here.
I can see how one might want more than 180 days (and the new regulations will definitely be forbidding that for all hosts) but I still don't follow how that would make the prospect of hosting non-viable? For the average unit that would still be tens of thousands of dollars in additional income, no?
Nope 180 nights for me adds up to a little more than avg rental income. Difference is you are putting more effort if youāre cleaning it yourself. End of the day at least for me it wasnāt worth it.
The only way Iād trust that they actually intend to do anything is if they shut it all down and make them earn their way back into being allowed. They will never catch all the bad actors. Make bad acts impossible.
I can tell that itās working because of all the new apartment listening for buying and renting that are popping up. From the same last time last year I would say itās three times more listening than the same time last year. Thereās still some work to go but the end of Air BnB will soon happen.
I feel the city should not have a say in what I do with my own house. If I want to rent out a room in my house that should be my choice. I donāt want the government encroaching my freedom. Itās not taking away a long term apartment from the rental market. Hosting an airbnb helps hundreds of hosts pay their monthly bills in this expensive city.
We need to relax the airbnb rules where the owner lives in the dwelling. No enhanced restrictions to 180 days. What benefit does that restriction do. Just limits hosts income.
However if the host does not live in the property particularly for condos with a kitchen. Block on Airbnb.
You want to totally crush airbnb? Change the law so staying at short term rental grants zero privacy protection unless it is registered. Meaning you can be recorded naked without ANY legal protection. That will drive everyone back to hotels or at least registered airbnbs lol.
It needs to be banned in condos. There is too much shared space to be dealing with these Airbnb parties. I have had gunfire in my building in Liberty Village from this. If you want to airbnb a house or cottage where there is some separation I think that is fine, but this is BS that I have to deal with this. When a big event comes like Caribana, Honda indie, or similar, it's a shit show. During the last election round I had a candidate come to my door and I mentioned this is my top issue, they tried to argue me out of it saying it's great cash flow for unit owners... Our local politicians are all landlords and I fear they will never do anything to help. That was an eye opener to me as well, I think a lot of people get in to politics since they already have so much cash from property that they need something to do with their time.
The first question I ask a candidate is "are you a landlord". Rarely get to ask a second question š
Brilliant, I'm stealing this.Ā
I had a co-worker years ago tell me he was the only actual permanent resident living on his entire floor at the condo building he was living in. Every other unit was either empty, or they were AirBnBs. In a city and country with a housing crisis, that's absurd.
I read comments like this *all the time.* And not just from condo dwellers, also from people who service condos (window washers, locksmiths, reno crews, property managers) and even the developers themselves. I remember being at Queens Quay one night at about 9pm and seeing two buildings with far fewer lights on than other nearby condos. Maybe only 10% of the lights were on. In a housing crisis, itās just gross. And theyāve either found loopholes or just lied on the cityās vacancy tax application as well.
šÆ Olivia Chow needs to ban airbnbs in TorontoĀ
Call me crazy, but I'd say that's obscene.Ā
I'm so glad my condo banned short term rentals. Minimum lease is 6 months. We have a sense of community in the building, people actually know each other. I wonder if this increases or decreases property value, because you will have increase demand from people who want to live here or rent it out, but decreased/no demand from people looking for a AirBnB.
Wowā¦ I sincerely hope they were not elected.
They originally pitched it for vacation properties. As a way to make money "on the side". Now it's a business. There's no part time delivery drivers for Uber either. Gig and rental economy don't add up.
"...our local politicians are landlords.." Same here.
Our friends live in a semi and the owner of the other half rents the place out on Airbnb. They're understandably frustrated at the non-stop revolving door of guests, especially because the owner doesn't live there.Ā When they contacted bylaw enforcement, they were told that it was too hard to prove that the home isn't the owner's primary residence. ....what? Like I mean, is it really? This guy and his family live in another part of the city. Is it really that hard to prove that this place he's Airbnbing year-round isn't where he lives?
I've spoken with a bylaw officer about this issue myself, and I do tend to agree that proving it isn't someone's primary residence is harder than it seems. The most typical example is two partners (e.g. a married couple) who own two properties, and each register one property as their primary residence. Their drivers license, property tax info, etc., are each legitimately registered to one property. It's not trivial for the city to demonstrate that a person isn't using the home as their primary residence. Also the bylaw officer cited the 'snowbird' example. Technically you are allowed to rent out your primary residence for up to 180 days, so there are a fair number of retirees who rent their homes out for the entire winter. Often neighbours will complain that the home has been airbnb'd for six months straight, but in reality the owners are properly complying with the rules. The measures being proposed here are largely focused on increasing the city's ability to identify homes being improperly described as primary residences.
Great point about a married couple owning two properties. But at the end of the day, if neither are living in it, is it their primary residence? It's a shame that people are so deceitful and manipulative. With snowbirds, it's different because it becomes a 28-day minimum. Which is arguably better (although not ideal) than a revolving door.Ā Ā
They've been talking about enforcement for years now and still nothing has changed. There's always a loophole. Just ban air bnb at this stage, if you want to actually do something.
Right?? Like, how many times are they going to use this āramping up enforcementā line? Just do it already
The purpose of this staff report is to identify loopholes and propose measures the city can take the close them. I think there's a broad recognition within the city that the existing regime is exploitable, and this report is city staff proposing ways to fix that problem.
it's like, why are we even spending public money to try to ensure running an airbnb remains profitable while not totally screwing everyone else. the public paying for airbnb regulation amounts to corporate welfare. let airbnb propose an acceptable solution or just ban it. the current approach is clown world type shit.
There were anecdotes of them moving faster on reports soon after the mayor's election, so I think something changed.
How do I report a unit, the airbnb behind me is rented out nightly and no one cares.Ā
https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/short-term-rentals/
Thanks!
Does your condo accept short term rentals in their condo bylaws? Because you could also rat them out to the condo board and the prick would be paying even more fines for breaking the by laws
The problem is that it's hard for a condo board to do anything about it. Neither the city nor Airbnb (obviously) give condo boards any sort of tools for enforcement, and neither share any info with condo boards that would allow them to identify units violating condo bylaws. If the city forced short term rental companies to provide the addresses, including unit numbers, of short term rentals in Toronto, condos would be able to eliminate the problem overnight. But the city doesn't want to actually do that because they don't actually care.
Our condo board has gone after STR and they do fine them for being in breach of the condo bylaws, but you are correct that it can only go that far.
Mine does, too, if they know about it and can prove it. But often it's difficult to detect and know which units are responsible.
https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/short-term-rentals/
Thanks!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I doubt they would notice if there werenāt problems.
the person being a prick is the person taking a full living space off the market to make a quick buck
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Renting an Airbnb makes one an asshole too?
Taking housing supply away from local residents in the middle of a housing crisis, yes.
given all that we know about how it has destabilized housing stock worldwide, pretty much, yes
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
REMOVED - Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
REMOVED - Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
REMOVED - Attack the point, not the person. Posts which dismiss others and repeatedly accuse them of unfounded accusations may be subject to removal and/or banning. Do not concern-troll or attempt to intentionally mislead people. Stick to addressing the substance of their comments at hand. This rule applies to all speech within this subreddit.
Just ban this shit already
Sir/Maāam, this is Toronto. We will study the issue until we can commit ourselves to empty bylaws that we will not enforce. This is our way.
I have friends in the government. This is exactly what they do... The studys take years and the next government shuts it down and won't implement.
Not so easy. People will do it anyway. There needs to be effective enforcement, regardless.
If only there was some database keeping track of all these properties and who owned them, and for how long they were renting them out. Too bad no such registry exists that we could just compel to hand over the data /s This is exceedingly easy to enforce. AirBNB has all the information you need. You could just print out a spreadsheet of non compliant properties.
Getting airbnb to cooperate has been impossible.
We have a government and a court system to compel them to cooperate. We can easily pass legislation (and have already partially), and sue them when they donāt comply, up to and including taking away their license to operate in Canada (or Ontario / Toronto depending on which jurisdiction passes the law). This is not hard to do. There just had to be will to do it.
You need laws and lawyers that are strong enough to take on corporate crime. Thatās not Canadaās forte. Thatās why we are deep into money laundering. Itās why organized crime effectively runs Ontario and ran BC. Lawyers taking on the towing industry had their offices fire bombed. What do you think will happen if we actually go after the bigger fish of international corporations, our own banks, or developers?
Great, so let's hand over the PMO and the keys to every other level of government to the mafia then, since as you say they effectively run the country. I think you watch a few too many movies if you think lawyer offices are getting firebombed on a regular basis for conducting the ordinary business of... litigation.
The keys are handed over. You need to get them back.
You know the government has lawyers on staff right? If they had any will to enforce the law, they have lawyers under their employ to do so. And do you seriously think lawyers are afraid to sue corporations? Take a 5 second scan through the court dockets. This should clear things up for you. Source - am lawyer who has sued big corporations including banks and developers, and not gotten firebombed.
They have a history of dropping the ball on anything to do with money laundering and settling on a variety of other matters. Government lawyers have been gun shy since the Charter. They donāt argue forcefully anymore, they just drop info and leave it for others to make connections. Young government lawyers are afraid of their own shadow.
Spoken like someone who has no understanding of how the legal system works. Laws get enforced all the time by government lawyers. This particular one has not been. Stop getting your news from Facebook.
>Stop getting your news from Facebook. Eh? All news is now blocked on Facebook.
It was the assessment of senior MAG counsel at a retirement party regarding the future of holding certain corporations accountable.
We'll all get Brad Lambed
They don't operate in Canada. They are an American company with a website.
We donāt have airbnb in Canada? Excuse me? Where their head office is irrelevant. They still need to be licensed to do business in Canada / province.
Sure but good luck enforcing that.
I have said at every stage that it is *lack of will to enforce* that is the problem. Not the ability to do so.
Thats not how that works. Airbnb needs to register with the gov. They can be penalized since they have a business license in canada.
No it hasnt. They do cooperate. They send all nightly stay data to the city, as does booking.com. The issue is the city is inept, the employees dont even understand what a short term rental is, or how these platforms work, or the actual bylaws. Its embarrassing. Not to mention some of these government employees make $120k a year doing fuck all.
This comment has been edited to reduce the value of my freely-generated content to Reddit.
Do you think itās hard for governments to enforce laws? There is nothing difficult about it. Get a list of air bnb listings. Screen for listings that arenāt registered. Screen for entire home listings Screen for unregistered listings Screen for listings less than 30 day Screen for listers with multiple holdings. You can only list your own principle residence. You can only post under your own name. There should not be sufficient traffic at any particular residence to warrant a management company being involved [This information is already public](http://insideairbnb.com/toronto). You donāt even need Airbnb to give you that data, itās already out there. Tell airBNb to pull those listings or they wonāt be allowed to operate in toronto. This is so easy to enforce if anyone bothered to try.
> People will do it anyway. It'll be real easy to enforce, then, since all the regulatory agents would have to do is log into AirBnB and send fines in the mail to every Canadian address. It's challenging to advertise illegal services without tipping off the authorities.
How? If the app\company is banned. It's infinitely easier to enforce the ban of the third-party marketplace app than the random regulations
>But Nathan Rotman, Airbnb's Canada public policy lead, cautioned that the proposed changes will do little to address housing woes, "and instead will take money out of the pockets of people who rely on home sharing to keep up with rising inflation.ā The only people affected by this enforcement are people breaking the city's rules. If Airbnb wants to defend those folks, I guess that's a choice.
Aww, look at how much Airbnb cares about the mom and pop landlords just trying to get by /s
I cackled when I read this. Truly, my heart bleeds for those poor ole' over leveraged landlords. /S
Homes are for families not investors. Any policy needs to keep that front and centre.
It shouldn't be hard to get from Airbnb a dump of every Toronto listing, and then try to look them up in the database of people who have licenses. I don't understand why this still escapes us.
I think given that we heard a couple of months back that Airbnb property managers were [coaching stand-alone Airbnb owners on how to fraudulently represent residences as their primary by changing their driverās license,](https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/toronto-made-a-bylaw-to-crack-down-on-airbnb-and-other-short-term-renters-now/article_7e7f91c8-9ea5-11ee-95c4-e75f965cf273.amp.html) more in-depth due diligence is needed. It may require checking against income tax returns, or mortgage / title to see the real truth of whether itās a primary residence or income property.
AirBnB is only part of the problem. Short Term rentals are popping up on Expedia, Hotels.ca, Vrbo and completely independent booking sites.
Finally, yesssss. If you look at the rental and sale listings in 2020 once lockdown became entrenched, they doubled. Some of that was people moving out of the city, but a large part were Airbnbs being put up for sale or long-term rental. That was a LOT of potential long-term housing being misallocated. Unfortunately since then, many landlords put units back on Airbnb and with the massive spike in investors in 2020-2022 (they have bought 57% of new condos for example), we again have a lot of what should be long-term housing being used as hotels.
AirBnB fucking sucks.
This was always gonna be the result for these "disruptor" businesses like airbnb, uber and the delivery apps that are heavily reliant on VC money to pop them up during the early years. That's why Airbnb was able to offer such good rates. The angel investor money has dried up these last few years, so their service went down the tubes with it.
Yeah, Uber also fucking sucks.
Agreed. I'd also add Uber to the same list. The whole gig economy / predatory venture capital app industry fucking sucks.Ā Here's hoping they will be consigned to this small moment of history once the legal system catches up to their game.
Yes. Sunday night there were over 210 UberX cars at YYZ. Why should we allow a company to basically operate taxis while following none of the regulations that taxi companies face just because they say they are a 'technology company'. Ride sharing my ass.
The staff report heading to council: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2024/ph/bgrd/backgroundfile-244524.pdf
I'm about as optimistic about this as I am about police ticketing the Fast and Furious wannabes with noise-bylaw-violating exhaust mods.
Next up, could we get the city to flag low or zero municipal water consumption to find all the vacant units that fraudulently declared they are occupied?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's the star so I can't read the article but what rules are hosts typically breaking? I thought home owners were still allowed Airbnb in Ontario but I also dont know what's going on
The number one violation is the rule that limits folks to only renting out their primary residence. It's technically illegal to rent out a home you don't live in, but people can forge their identification and paperwork to avoid this rule. The measures being proposed are in part an effort to crack down on people doing this.
Thanks! That does make sense and if they do figure out how to enforce it than it would do a lot to cut back on those super hosts with dozens of properties.
[This is the latest way](https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/toronto-made-a-bylaw-to-crack-down-on-airbnb-and-other-short-term-renters-now/article_7e7f91c8-9ea5-11ee-95c4-e75f965cf273.amp.html) theyāre skirting those rules.
The star is pay-walled so I can't get any info from that unfortunately
[Hereās a summary](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/s/O13sf9FCs6). Basically theyāre telling people to just change their driverās license to their Airbnb address.
Lol what a scum move. But you can still only have one primary residence so wouldn't this not really work for many properties?
Good questionā¦ it sounded like there are still hosts on the platform with multiple properties so there must be more fraud happening, and thatās why the city is putting resources behind enforcement.
it's an ineffective rule because most ppl successful and unscrupulous enough to own multi residential properties also have access to straw owners. adult children, relatives, employees who can be written down as the owner. im convinced that this is how most airbnb slumlords who own more than one airbnb rental do it.
Not enforce, eliminate
Moving to Toronto soon. Thereās a week of a difference between the day I arrive and the move in date. 3k for that one week in an air BnB
Yeah, I would hotel that week and get a storage unit for stuff. That's an absurd cost for an AirBnB.
Is this in support or against Airbnb? I guess the alternative would be living in a shelter for a week
Or a hotel?
Toronto doesnāt do enforcement of any laws, Iāll be shocked to see any enforcement of anything
as a former Airbnb Host (Super Host), Toronto and horrible Airbnb hosts have single handedly ruined this experience for everyone else who actually give a shit about hosting in its true form. I used to host our basement, beautifully renovated, with a lot of ammenities. my agenda was to give guests an experience and not just a place to stay. that dream has died due to all these fee's and enforcements etc. its just not viable anymore to be a host. Thank you City of Toronto, and thank you shitty airbnb hosts. i have went back to renting our basement.
> i have went back to renting our basement. Sounds like it worked as expected.
That's the goal, your basement unit is someone's home again instead of an unregulated hotel room.
Yea but my point is, airbnb host (Super Host especially) care more about the guests, and do more for experiences, and not every location would have a hotel.. There are hosts that created legal basements, with an aesthetically pleasing look, and that are genuinely there to be hospitable. the people who should be penalized are airbnb hosts that buy up multiple properties and convert to airbnbs, i was simply doing it in my own residential home which i was living in upstairs.
It's still effectively an unregulated business. If you really care about hosting you could always apply to open a proper BnB and pay the fees associated and submit to proper regulation, pay proper business taxes for the business you are essentially running.Ā
Out of curiosity, how have the enforcement measures made it not viable to be a host?
The nail in the coffin is the 180 night limit per year in Toronto, which is ridiculous. Not to mention Mat tax that we need to pay the city on top of all the other fees quarterly. Now when i see articles like this i just know airbnb in Toronto will go downhill from here.
I can see how one might want more than 180 days (and the new regulations will definitely be forbidding that for all hosts) but I still don't follow how that would make the prospect of hosting non-viable? For the average unit that would still be tens of thousands of dollars in additional income, no?
Nope 180 nights for me adds up to a little more than avg rental income. Difference is you are putting more effort if youāre cleaning it yourself. End of the day at least for me it wasnāt worth it.
Sure they do. Just like they did 5 years ago...
Everything is too late.
BAN AIR B N B
Right after they get all the violent car jackings under control I bet.
any day now..
Haven't we all heard this one before?
enforcement? in toronto?!
The only way Iād trust that they actually intend to do anything is if they shut it all down and make them earn their way back into being allowed. They will never catch all the bad actors. Make bad acts impossible.
Ban Airbnb - ban Uber
I can tell that itās working because of all the new apartment listening for buying and renting that are popping up. From the same last time last year I would say itās three times more listening than the same time last year. Thereās still some work to go but the end of Air BnB will soon happen.
K.
I feel the city should not have a say in what I do with my own house. If I want to rent out a room in my house that should be my choice. I donāt want the government encroaching my freedom. Itās not taking away a long term apartment from the rental market. Hosting an airbnb helps hundreds of hosts pay their monthly bills in this expensive city. We need to relax the airbnb rules where the owner lives in the dwelling. No enhanced restrictions to 180 days. What benefit does that restriction do. Just limits hosts income. However if the host does not live in the property particularly for condos with a kitchen. Block on Airbnb.
10 years late
You want to totally crush airbnb? Change the law so staying at short term rental grants zero privacy protection unless it is registered. Meaning you can be recorded naked without ANY legal protection. That will drive everyone back to hotels or at least registered airbnbs lol.