As the City of Vancouver examines the impact of short-term rental companies, Airbnb has started upping the ante by offering new hosts a $250 signing bonus.
The catch is that they have to sign up by Aug. 31, live within 25 miles of downtown Vancouver and have a minimum booking value of $100 per night. The host must stay no later than Sept. 30.
“Once you activate your new listing and host your first guest, we’ll send you a $250 cash bonus,” Airbnb notes on its website.
Short-term rentals from companies such as Airbnb, VRBO, OwnersDirect and Flipkey have been controversial because many see them as taking away housing that could be rented to locals. The rentals could also help homeowners get around any empty-homes tax that the City of Vancouver enacts.
The B.C. government earlier this summer passed legislation to allow Vancouver to create such a tax. Mayor Gregor Robertson floated the idea that the tax be levied on homes that are vacant for 12 months.
Real estate watchers such as University of B.C. business professor Tom Davidoff have panned such a tax as ineffective largely because of the proliferation of short-term rental companies.
“You might as well call [any future Vancouver tax on empty homes] an Airbnb subsidy instead of a vacancy tax,” Davidoff said earlier this summer. “If I’ve got a place in Coal Harbour, I’ll just list the place for $750 a night, somebody will take it two nights a year and I’m not vacant, what is that? That’s crap.”
Airbnb hosts also do not collect a hotel tax, which is something that hotel operators are concerned about.
The City of Vancouver earlier this summer contracted a third-party consulting firm to examine 10 platforms that provide short-term rentals in Vancouver.
The city said in a July news release that the intent of the examination is “to determine how short-term rentals are affecting the availability of rental housing for families and workers in Vancouver.”
The original version of this story can be found here.
