Updated at 6:03 p.m.
Montréal is one of many destination cities across the globe that is trying to ease the negative impacts of short-term rentals on its long-term real estate market. Northbound travelers might have heard about that city’s new regulations during the non-summer months on Airbnbs, Vrbos and other similar hosting services. In reality, though, those websites are still offering plenty of places to lay your head.
Enacted this spring, a new municipal “bylaw” targets properties not previously restricted: homes that owners identify as their primary residence. They are now off-limits on vacation rental websites outside of a three-month summer window, from June 10 to September 10.
As in the U.S., rents have increased in Montréal amid a severe housing shortage, and the city is looking to encourage landlords to lease more apartments long-term. Some owners have pulled their properties from short-term rental sites.
Finding a place for the night isn’t difficult, though. The Gazette, Montréal’s English-language newspaper, reported last week that “hundreds of owners appear to be flouting the bylaw.”
Ellyn Drysdale, 20, a University of Vermont senior, keeps a folder of her past Montréal trips in her Airbnb account. She recently reviewed it to book a weekend accommodation. Drysdale noticed that about half of her favorite spots had disappeared from the booking site. Still, she had no trouble finding something in the Little Portugal neighborhood that cost $250 for a two-night stay.
Drysdale and a group of friends take a Montréal trip every spring and, like most of the students she knows who travel north, always stay in an Airbnb, she said.
Montréal’s 19 boroughs each have their own rules for short-term rentals, which are banned in many residential areas. Some restrict them to certain commercial sections and specific streets. In those areas, owners who don’t identify their properties as a primary residence can continue to offer them for short-term bookings any time of year.
Yaya Baumann, a doctoral candidate studying geography at the Université de Montréal, has created a website called À Bas Airbnb, or “down with Airbnb,” to track listings and cross-check them against the city’s permitting requirements. About 8,900 properties are currently available in Montréal on Airbnb, down about 10 percent from the same time last year, Baumann told Seven Days.
He estimated that more than 500 of those are operating illegally. Baumann says the city should ban short-term rentals outright.
“Every regulation that is passed, there will always be ways to work around it,” Baumann said.
An Airbnb host named Louis currently lists dozens of Montréal properties for short-term stays through the winter. Several of those listings identify the location as Little Italy, a neighborhood in the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie borough, which prohibits any “tourist accommodation establishment” that is not the host’s primary residence.
When contacted by a Seven Days reporter through the website, Louis wrote that he would refer an interview request to the owner of one of the properties and added, “Rest assured, we are in full compliance with the new law, and our permit is grandfathered.”
Another apartment in the Tétreaultville neighborhood of the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough, where short-term rentals are prohibited, was available to reserve this coming weekend.
Baumann and other tenants-rights activists have said Montréal has too few inspectors to monitor and enforce regulations on the huge number of rental locations. When city officials announced the new off-season rules, they pledged to add additional inspectors for a total of 10 across the city. Montréal still has just seven inspectors, with two additional support staff members to assist and answer residents’ questions, according to city spokesperson Camille Bégin.
Sachin Persaud, Airbnb’s spokesperson in Canada, declined an interview request and wrote via email that the company is “unable to disclose” the number of listings in a specific market but encourages hosts to follow Montréal’s rules.
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