Number of Toronto homes being used as tourist rentals has nearly doubled, report says

Thestar.com
January 10, 2019
Tess Kalinowski

There are as many as 6,500 homes in Toronto being used as short-term tourist rentals rather than full-time residences -- a number that has nearly doubled in two years, according to a report released Wednesday by Fairbnb, a coalition of hotel workers and condo residents.

The coalition wants the province to consider curbing short-term rentals as a means of boosting the permanent housing supply.

A new report argues that short-term rentals have proliferated in Toronto in recent years with the popularity of platforms such as Airbnb.

Fairbnb says the number of short-term rental listings has grown 25 per cent in Toronto in the past year alone as regulations approved as a bylaw amendment by the city in Dec. 2017 await an August hearing at the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT). The appeal was to be heard last summer but was delayed a year when several short-term rental hosts applied for standing there.

The city’s regulations “are fair and within the law,” said Councillor Joe Cressy at a news conference Wednesday.

“We have a vacancy rate of 1.1 per cent. If we can find 5,000 new rental units, we’ll have a healthy vacancy rate of 3 per cent,” he said.

Short-term rentals listed on platforms such as Airbnb are especially prevalent downtown along the waterfront and subway lines, said Thorben Wieditz of Fairbnb. They increase noise, traffic and garbage and, sometimes, serious crime.

Cabbagetown resident Patricia Marson says a short-term rental operator split a house on her street into four units. The upper deck has become a noisy party zone, parking is an issue and, when the landlord isn’t there, his tenants sometimes knock on neighbouring doors or loiter about the street waiting, she said.

“The (area) is peppered with these places. This is just one of them. People are afraid to speak up. They’re afraid of repercussions from the owners of these places,” she said.

Up to half of some downtown condo buildings are effectively functioning as “ghost hotels,” said Wieditz. He said that Airbnb’s marketing and public statements point to the majority of home-sharing hosts as ordinary people looking for extra income.

“To some extent they are correct. Seventy per cent of their hosts are these ordinary people. It’s the 30 per cent of the host community that owns two, three or leases up to 60 units and uses these as ghost hotels,” said Wieditz.

Seventy-three per cent of Airbnb’s $260 million estimated Toronto revenue was generated by 30 per cent of the company’s hosts who control 8,241 listings, says Fairbnb.

Airbnb has about 10,000 Toronto hosts and about 80 per cent of those are sharing a primary residence so those homes wouldn’t be on the housing market, said the company’s director of public policy Alex Dagg. Those are not likely to find their way onto the housing market. But she said the private company does not share financial information.

In addition to private homes Airbnb also lists some full-service hotels and furnished-suite providers.

Dagg said home sharing hosts have a democratic right to appeal the city’s regulations. Airbnb engaged extensively with the city on the short-term rental regulations and it will wait for the appeal to play out, she said.

She said Airbnb is the only platform complying with Vancouver’s regulations licensing rules. “We’re happy to work with cities but we need our competitors to come on board too. Otherwise, people who want to get around the regulations will jump to other platforms,” said Dagg.

A report compiled by some condo owners at 300 Front St. and 20 John St. says that the number of short-term rental guests at the Front St. building grew from 145 in 2014 to more than 4,000 in 2017. There have been over 10,000 short-term renters using the building since 2014 and that figure is based on Airbnb listings alone. But the condos are listed on other sites as well, adding to their utility, security and maintenance costs, says the residents’ report.

More than 600 of about 1,300 condos at the Ice buildings on York St. north of Queens Quay are being used as short-term rentals, said Wieditz.

Forty-two per cent of Airbnb’s 19,255 Toronto listings would not meet the proposed Toronto regulations for short-term rentals, says Fairbnb. The report is based on data compiled by Murray Cox, a self-described New York-based “data activist” who runs a site called, Inside Airbnb.

The Toronto regulations approved more than a year ago would allow short-term rentals in a host’s principal residence. Hosts would be allowed to rent up to three private bedrooms, or their entire home for up to 180 days a year.