A “vacation rental investor” and “owner of great Airbnbs”, user X dried up South Lake Tahoe’s short-term rental ban yesterday in a post with over a million views.
Rohin Dhar, who says he has Airbnbs in Sonoma, Kauai, Taos, Mount Hood, Yosemite and Asheville, wrote that the resort town’s near-total ban implemented more than five years ago has created an “Armageddon of short-term rentals.” However, instead of alleviating the housing affordability crisis within the city, he argues, “house prices have collapsed and people have taken them up as second homes,” and he claims some of them are empty.
“There is still a housing affordability crisis… when a tourist area bans Airbnb, the only thing that happens is wealthy people get good deals on second homes that are mostly empty,” Dhar wrote on the social media platform, mocking the so-called Measure T.
Measure T was a citizen-initiated ballot measure intended to regulate vacation or short-term home rentals in South Lake Tahoe, the city website states. It went into effect in late 2018 and required the phase-out of all vacation rental permits in residential zones and all multifamily properties over a three-year period. Of course, new permits for renting holiday homes in residential areas are also prohibited. But Measure T does not apply to existing or future short-term rentals in nonresidential areas, and some people can still rent their homes if they are permanent residents and rent the entire home for up to 30 days a year.
In the summer of last year, an appeals court upheld Measure T’s ban on short-term rentals after the South Lake Tahoe Property Owners Group filed a lawsuit, albeit an issue, regarding permanent residents’ ability to rent their homes, was sent back to the court of first instance. , according to Tahoe Daily Tribunea local newspaper.
From the end of 2018 to the end of last year, home prices in South Lake Tahoe increased about 42% to a median home value of $649,322, according to Zillow (though they were down from last year). The average rent for all one-bedrooms and all property types in the city is $2,975, which is nearly 50% higher than the national average.
An opinion piece recently published on Tahoe Daily Tribune written by Amelia Richmond, president of Locals for Affordable Housing, pushed for a vacancy tax, arguing that “as home prices have doubled over the last decade, a staggering 44% of all housing in South Lake Tahoe – over 7,000 homes – now sit empty most of the year Since 2000, the increase in vacancies has outpaced new housing construction, resulting in more vacant homes and fewer homes for residents The housing crisis, he wrote, was pushing locals out of town.
Clearly there is still an affordability issue, which must have been exacerbated by the pandemic-fueled housing boom, which drove home prices up substantially nationwide, followed by a surge in mortgage rates. But it’s important to note that some research has shown that Airbnbs can have an impact on long-term rentals. One article, for example, found that a short-term rental ordinance in a city in Southern California led on average to a 2.7% drop in contracted long-term rental prices, meaning that when If Airbnbs are removed, rents generally drop.
“You have an oversupply in the market, so people have stopped renting their properties short term [and] they started renting it long-term,” a researcher said at the time. “This is an increase in supply, and so it should put downward pressure on prices, and it has.”
However, it may not be a universal phenomenon, when it comes to rental properties or even location. But more often than not, Airbnb will be accused of contributing to unsustainable real estate costs, while property owners and Airbnb investors will argue the opposite. Airbnb has even hired its first senior real estate economist, aiming to address “misunderstandings” about the real estate market and Airbnb, according to Skift.
Dhar did not respond to a request for comment.