Recently, landlords lost their case for Airbnb but is it only the landlords that have lost out here? Airbnb, much like Uber & Tesla is like any other market disrupter. And, yes, our knee-jerk reaction is to hate change, I’m usually guilty of that myself. Except when we only want to stick to the status quo, we are missing out on other opportunities that exist because of our comfort.
Continue Reading
I’ve recently read a number of articles about the Sharing Economy and what that means for businesses looking to thrive in the years to come. A sharing economy to me is one where people share services or products. Continue Reading
When I travel I love finding great places to stay on airbnb.com or vrbo.com. I’ve never stopped to think of how this short term rental phenomenon is impacting the condos in downtown Toronto. I am the president of my condo corporation and we’ve recently discovered a few units in our condo building were being rented through short term rental sites. In the condo declaration it clearly states that rental terms shorter than 6 months are not permitted. Now most people don’t read the condo declaration regularly to be concerned with all of the rules. However once the condo corporation becomes aware of the problem a terse letter will be sent to the owner/landlord in question to make them aware of the rules. If the first or second letters don’t change their behaviour than the condo corporation will have no choice but to get their lawyers. The resulting legal bills will be charged back to the offending unit.
Short-term rentals are becoming more of a problem in the city. I was recently out with clients who were complaining about the influx of new people they had started seeing in their west end condo building. I suggested that they search their address on a few short term rental web sites. Sure enough they went home and did exactly that and were shocked to learn that some of the units in their building were on kijiji being advertised as a short term rental.
The short-term rental problem is affecting many of the condos in our city. These vacation renters simply do not care as much about the welfare of the building so it’s important that owners be diligent in their efforts to root out the units being used for short term rentals in their buildings. So, if you live a condo building, spend some time searching on the short term rental sites to see if any of the units in your building are being rented out, then inform your property manager and board so they can start resolving the issue.