A report from Seven Days in Vermont. “When Moriah Stokes and Vincent Connolly purchased a second home in Morrisville in 2017, they already had plans to list it on Airbnb. The couple were living in Colorado at the time, and Stokes, who grew up in Morrisville, wanted to be able to visit her family without staying in a hotel. When the couple decided to move back to Vermont in 2019 to raise their three young children, the home was waiting for them. Stokes and Connolly acknowledge that they benefited hugely from their short-term rental. ‘Vincent was like: ‘I want to have 10 of these. I want to have one in every ski town,’ Stokes said jokingly.”
“But when Stokes and Connolly settled in, their opinion of short-term rentals changed. Morrisville is just north of Stowe and the Stowe Mountain Resort, making it an ideal place to convert single-family homes and apartments to short-term rentals. After watching vacation rentals proliferate in their neighborhood, the couple became staunch supporters of a successful effort last year to impose limits on short-term rentals in the village. Stokes said it’s been hard to watch her hometown change so rapidly. ‘I would rather keep the community and lose my investment,’ Connolly said.”
WCSC in South Carolina. “The City of Folly Beach could lose $1.5 million in revenue if they decide to limit short-term rentals according to a project manage. Another major concern came from some real estate agents that spoke Wednesday night. They say they’re having major trouble closing deals because of this potential cap. Others, like Michael Riffert, say it’s affecting their overall livability. ‘Even though it hasn’t even gone to vote yet, I am being impacted right now,’ Riffert said.”
“Riffert has been a builder on the island for more than 16 years. Since the short-term rental cap is still up for debate, he says he’s had to pull two of his homes off the market from buyers’ concerns. ‘They see that our property rights are being stepped on and they’re like, ‘We don’t want any part of it. We don’t want to move to this community,’ Riffert said. ‘And that’s what we’re up against right now.’”
WFTV in Florida. “Some downtown Orlando condominium owners feel like the President of their owners association wants to run the place like a hotel, even though the city prohibits short-term rentals of entire condo units. The President of the Board admitted in court records to running a rental business with the units he owns. We wanted to ask him about a letter sent out to owners in response to complaints to code enforcement about short-term rentals, and the feeling from some owners at the Jackson that moves made by the Board might leave them no choice but to sell at a loss.”
“‘I just wanted a quiet place, and actually one that had a manageable HOA,’ owner Stephen Komives said. ‘And at the time, this one did.’ Now, some owners say a special assessment of over a million dollars, what they were told was needed to replenish reserves, has pushed their budgets. ‘The overall total amount that I’m paying per month is around $1700,’ Andrew Aponte said. ‘It’s almost tripled.’ ‘I went from, I think about $400 a month [in HOA fees] to nearly $1200 a month,’ Michelle Deleon claimed.”
“The owners question whether it’s an effort to encourage them to sell to make room for rentals. 9 Investigates went through property records and found half of the 52 units in the building are connected to association board members, either directly or through associated LLCs, including board president Nabeel Ansari.”
The Florida Phoenix. “At a City Commission meeting last fall in Pinellas County’s Indian Rocks Beach, local resident Jerry Newton’s frustration was evident. The problem? Short-term vacation rentals in his community. ‘Yet another month has passed,’ Newton said. ‘In the meantime, there are more hotel rooms and more unfamiliar faces every day next door to our homes. It’s beginning to look like our city leaders are not willing to do anything about this cancer. And the answer that ‘our hands are tied’ isn’t going to cut it.’”
“Indian Rocks Beach Mayor Cookie Kennedy has gone to Tallahassee in previous years to discuss short-term rentals with state lawmakers. ‘The big thing that many said to me was, ‘this is a property rights issue,’ but when you make that comment, what about the person who’s lived 25 to 40 years next door (to a short-term rental property)? What happened to their property rights?’ Kennedy said.”
The North East News. “Columbus Park, a historic urban neighborhood near downtown Kansas City, is being overrun by unregistered Short Term Rentals (STR), neighbors say. Now, the City is working on solutions that could have STR property owners paying their fair share. ‘We have a group of volunteers diligently trying to track these unpermitted businesses, and we are overwhelmed with that task, discovering new, illegal Airbnbs each week,’ the letter said. ‘Columbus Park is becoming an unwilling hotel district. This industry is becoming an international investment and real estate business, buying up homes in bulk. Communities are commodities to them.’”
“‘I know a lot of people sometimes try to say that Short Term Rentals or Airbnbs are just somebody who’s renting off an extra room and perhaps a carriage house,’ said Mayor Quinton Lucas. ‘However, in reality, there are a lot of folks in Kansas City that own 40, 80, 120 different single family homes that are being used as Short Term Rentals. They are operating like hotels, they’re operating as substitutes for hotels and motels.’”
Business Insider on Arizona. “The desert destination Scottsdale, Arizona, 30 minutes from downtown Phoenix, is putting its foot down on the thousands of short-term rentals dominating the local real-estate market. Starting this month, the city is requiring Airbnb and Vrbo hosts to apply for an operating license and pay a $250 annual fee. The regulation is a warning to the industry that has flourished under a 2016 Arizona law that banned local caps on short-term rentals. A 2022 state law allowing cities to require licenses made the move possible for Scottsdale, which had been hamstrung in its efforts to expand oversight of the market.”
“In resisting regulations, the hosts are upsetting locals who complain that short-term rentals have a detrimental effect on the city by reducing available housing for residents and the sense of community. ‘There are relatively few areas where there are majority homeowners or residents left,’ Susan Edwards, a local resident, told Phoenix’s CBS affiliate. ‘It’s destroying neighborhoods in Scottsdale,’ Edwards added.”
“Indeed, the explosion of short-term rentals in Scottsdale is ‘out of control,’ Solange Whitehead, a Scottsdale councilwoman, said. She likened the simmering tensions over the issue to a ‘slow-cooked lobster.’ ‘We have people in cul-de-sacs that no longer have neighbors,’ said Whitehead. When one Scottsdale local confronted a neighboring short-term host over ‘horrible parties and lewd behaviors,’ the host responded that maybe it was time for the neighbor to move out, she said.”
CBS Los Angeles in California. “While Los Angeles County might be one of the most expensive places to live in the United States, rent prices have dropped steadily over the last four months, a trend noticed across nine of California’s 10 most-populated cities. The city with the largest drop in rental prices was Oceanside, where in December, prices dropped by nearly 4%. In Los Angeles and Long Beach, there was a 1% drop. Anthony Lopez, a realtor with RE/MAX Vision, says that the drop comes from a combination in more homes on the market and more units for rent than there are prospective renters.”
“‘It’s about proactive landlords that are recognizing the loss that they’re having by keeping the property vacant,’ he said. ‘would you rather take $200 less in the mortgage and have your property vacant, or be paying your mortgage?’ On top of all of this, there are a number of additional factors pushing people to consolidate households. ‘Pandemic, inflation, cost of living,’ Lopez said. ‘I remember last year I was helping a client with a lease and there were at least 30 applicants. Now, you got some that aren’t getting any applications.’”
KRON 4 in California. “Downtown San Francisco is still struggling to recover from the pandemic, according to a new study that examined 62 large cities and placed the city in last place. The study found downtown San Francisco only has 31 percent of the activity seen before the pandemic in 2019. San Francisco recovered the least out of all of them. This does not come as a surprise to local economists. ‘Companies moved away, tourism is down, and people are moving away. These effects have come to a head in the downtown economy,’ said Jeff Bellisario, Bay Area Council Economic Institute Executive Director.”
“They said a part of the problem is all the vacant offices in San Francisco. According to city data, tourism in the city struggled right up until the end of last year, with hotel occupancy falling below 50 percent. ‘San Francisco set itself up for this. It zoned out residential and doubled down on commercial offices in the downtown zip code. That’s what it decided this area of the city should be and it was the wrong bet,’ said Karen Chapple, a University of Berkeley and Toronto professor.”
The Windsor Star in Canada. “The Town of Essex has launched a new hotline for reporting and responding to concerns about short-term rental units in the municipality. Since Jan. 1, owners of short-term rental units in the Town of Essex are required to have a valid licence to advertise or operate those units. Enforcement is now in effect. Neighbours who spoke with the Star last year noted parties, big backyard bonfires, fireworks year-round and ‘out-of-control’ parking on residential streets as key issues affecting local residents.”
The Brisbane Times in Australia. “Barney Gardner watched as his once-bustling, working-class suburb of Millers Point was turned into extravagantly renovated townhouses and rows of empty holiday homes. ‘Just about all of them are Airbnb because they were turned into one- bedrooms, and there are still quite a lot of empty properties that have been sold, and the people haven’t done anything with them,’ Gardner said .The harbourside enclave, which was once known for its social housing, has become the Sydney suburb with the highest proportion of unoccupied dwellings, with 34 per cent of its homes empty on the most recent census night.”
“It’s one of the suburbs contributing to the 164,624 empty homes across Greater Sydney. The unoccupied rates of some places, such as Copacabana, The Entrance and Avoca (28 per cent), are easily explained by the high proportion of holiday homes. And unusually high vacancy in Kensington (18 per cent) and Glebe (14 per cent) might be explained by the absence of foreign students during lockdowns in 2021. But that’s not a one-size-fits-all explanation. North Parramatta – in the heart of Sydney suburbia where the median three-bedroom house price is $1.06 million – had a relatively high 16 per cent of homes unoccupied on census night.”
From The Guardian. “Having engaged in a lot of qualitative research recently, I’ve discovered the following: everyone is sick of Airbnb. In its early years, Airbnb was a more economical and adventurous alternative to a hotel. Nowadays, it costs a small fortune to rent a shack on Airbnb and, when you get there, you are forced to abide by a long list of rules and buy your own toilet paper. It’s become a bit like staying with your cheapest, most uptight friend – and paying them for the privilege.”
“I’m not the only person to have made this observation. Every few weeks a tweet dunking on Airbnb seems to go viral. The latest example comes courtesy of a writer called Jeremy Gordon, who got more than 100,000 likes for tweeting the following: ‘Decided to stay in a Holiday Inn instead of an Airbnb for an overnight trip and strongly feel, one hour after check-in, that there has never been a more luxurious experience in all of human history.’”
“Let me be clear that I’m not being sponsored by big hotel when I say this (if big hotel would like to sponsor me then please get in contact!), but I’m not sure I’ll ever stay in an Airbnb again. To be fair, this is partly because Airbnbs are now obscenely priced and I can’t afford to. Sometimes I look at Airbnbs for fun and then, when I find one that seems reasonable, I realise it’s actually a tent. Someone has put a bed in a tent in a field and is renting it out for more than $100 a night.”
“The last time I stayed at an Airbnb was in 2021, before childcare ate all my disposable income. We had a new baby and wanted a relaxing few weeks away from the city, so we booked a riverside cottage in the Catskill mountains. As it turns out, ‘relaxing’ and ‘three-month-old baby’ don’t really mix. Being greeted with a long list of rules when we arrived didn’t help matters. Some of these rules were reasonable, some were not. Do not put drinks on the coffee table! I’m sorry, what? It’s a coffee table. The clue is in the name. You put coffee on it. If you have furniture that you don’t want people to put drinks on, then don’t rent out your place on Airbnb for a ridiculous amount of money.”
“There were a few other hiccups with this Airbnb. The hair that had been left in the sink, for example. (The host gave us a refund on the $300 cleaning fee.) The broken dishwasher. (The host grumbled, then sent a plumber.) And the snake. The first time I went to the basement to use the washing machine, I almost stepped on a snake. ‘Just thought you might want to know a snake lives in your basement!’I messaged the host, who was thoroughly sick of us by now. The curt response: ‘Well, it’s the countryside.’ That put me in my place, didn’t it? I didn’t realise that everyone in the countryside has a snake in their basement. While it may have been no big deal to the owners, it made doing the laundry eventful. First I’d pop my head into the staircase and yell: ‘Hello snake!’ to make sure it knew I was coming. Then I had to locate the bloody thing.”