Fees for short-term rental registry will range from $100 annually for a primary residence to $600 a year for a strata hotel.
Short-term rental owners will soon have to register their properties with the province as the NDP gets set to launch a new registry on May 1.
The registry will require owners to pay a fee to help fund enforcement measures and is part of the government’s overall attempt to regulate the industry, with the hope that it will help open up more housing for purchase and long-term rentals.
Other measures previously introduced include a requirement that short-term rental operators in communities with 10,000 people or more can only list the home they live in full-time, or an additional unit on that same property.
Some resort communities, including Whistler, have been exempted from this requirement, allowing for the listing of investment properties.
For those renting out their primary residence, the registration fee will be $100 annually, while a secondary suite, cottage or laneway house will cost them $450. Owners of strata hotels will be required to pay $600 for their registration.
As an incentive to get people to register early, those who complete their application by Feb. 28 will be given 50 per cent off, while those who register by the end of March will have their bill reduced by 25 per cent.
Owners not in compliance as of June 1 will have their listings taken down.
“The reason why we’re doing all this is because we believe housing is for people and not for speculation, and this registry will allow us to take enforcement to the next step,” B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon told reporters, adding the government doesn’t expect to incur any extra costs in the establishment of the registry.
“What we’re going to probably see is local governments scale down their registries, because they’re going to rely on the province. The work we’re doing, it actually will save money at the local government level.”
The minister explained the government is already seeing results from the government’s restrictions on short-term rentals, with a 10 per cent decrease in entire homes being rented on platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo.
He also disputed notions that the restrictions are having an impact on tourism, pointing to recent numbers from the Vancouver airport that show 22 million passengers arriving in B.C. between January and October of last year. That is a five per cent increase from 2023, said Kahlon.
Kristina Loewen, Conservative rural housing critic, said the registry amounts to little more than a “cash grab” by the government as many municipalities already require owners of short-term rentals to have business licences.
She said this means certain short-term rental owners will now be required to have two business licences for their short-term rentals, placing an additional bureaucratic burden on them.
Loewen also took issue with Kahlon’s claims the short-term rental restrictions aren’t having an impact on tourism, saying Kelowna faced a major decrease in tourists this past summer that was due, at least in part, to a decline in the number of short-term rentals.
Carson Binda, B.C. director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, agreed with Loewen, saying the registration fee is actually a “short-term rental tax” and that the government needs to be focused on building more homes, not taxing homeowners.
“It’s a business tax on folks who operate short-term rental businesses in our province,” he said. “You’re not going to solve this housing crisis with taxes. You’re going to solve it by swinging hammers, and unfortunately, this government has been making it difficult for people to swing hammers and build homes.”
Kahlon did acknowledge, when asked, that part of the impetus for the fees is the economic situation that the province finds itself in, with a $9.4 billion deficit expected this year.
At the same time, he said the fees line up with other jurisdictions that restrict the use of short-term rentals. In Quebec, hosts have to pay $53 to register their primary residence and $153 to register a property that isn’t their principal residence.
“We’re in a tough financial place right now, so I think it’s important that if we are launching programs of enforcement that help alleviate cost pressures local governments are facing, we’re able to do it in a cost recovery way,” said Kahlon.
Regardless, short-term rental owners say any costs they incur because of the registry are likely to be passed back on to consumers.
Ken Calvert, whose short-term rental company manages 31 cottages in Port Renfrew, said he hopes the registry is easy to use and transparent. At the same time, he is concerned about the fees being charged by the government.
“Most likely what would happen is we would just end up rolling that into the rates that we charge for guests, so you’re probably seeing an increase in rates due to that,” he said. “Hopefully they’re using the money wisely.”
Andy Yan, director of Simon Fraser University’s City Program, said the new registry is something that the NDP has promised to bring in since the government started making moves to restrict short-term rentals in fall 2023.
He said it also makes sense as a way to regulate short-term rentals, just like the province and municipalities would do with any other business.
“If you’re using your home for housing, that’s one thing. If you’re using it for revenue, that’s another,” said Yan. “It’s a means of understanding the extent of short-term rental in British Columbia and also, in a way, dealing with a level of consumer protection.”