One year after B.C.’s short-term rental crackdown, has it made housing cheaper?

Marv Gandall says living in one of Victoria’s largest residential buildings a year ago meant a parade of people with suitcases, stuffed visitors parking and slow elevators.

Gandall, who has lived in the Era on Yates complex for a decade, described long waits, packages going missing and scratched walls from the high number of visitors using some of its 157 units as short-term rentals.

He said residents began to call their building a “ghost hotel.”

“The major concern was the disruption, the maintenance issues and the issue of theft. We did have more frequent break-ins in our storage lockers,” he said.

“There was some vandalism in the parkade, and we think that was also because when you have short-term renters, it’s much easier for short-term renters to have other people access the building.”

In the year since British Columbia implemented regulations cracking down on short-term rentals, Gandall said things had improved, and it appeared more Era units were being used long term. But it hasn’t completely prevented people trying to dodge the rules.

“My impression is that since the passage of the provincial legislation last May, coupled with some initiatives by the local city council, there has been a dip in the noticeable (short-term rental) activity, not only at the Era, but also when I’ve spoken to other concerned residents in some of the other major highrises,” he said.

The regulations that came into effect on May 1, 2024, cover most communities of more than 10,000 people. They restrict short-term rentals to principal residences, a secondary suite or a structure like a laneway house on the property.

B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon is declaring victory, pointing to dropping rents and thousands of units being removed from websites like Airbnb and VRBO. But experts say market forces are too complex to credit one factor for the changes.

Kahlon said thousands of properties that used to be on short-term-rental websites are now on the market or being used as long-term rentals.

“All my colleagues have stories from their communities of people that are moving into what used to be a short-term rental and is now available for families long term,” the minister said in an interview earlier this month.

“And we’re seeing rents come down across the province, in every community.”

Property owners have until May 1 to add their properties to a provincewide registry in order to be able to legally use them for short-term rental.

Kahlon said about 15,000 properties were on the registry at the beginning of April, and his office reported more than $3 million had been collected in registration fees.

“Before the registry was launched, we estimated roughly about 22,000 short-term rentals were on the different platforms. We have 15,000 that are registered to date, so that we (have) about 7,000 operators that either haven’t applied or perhaps have decided not to stay in the business of short-term rental operating. So that’s significant,” he said.

Hosts who do not register their properties will have their listings taken down starting May 1, and have future bookings cancelled starting June 1.

Data provided by the Ministry of Housing shows that from May 2024 to February 2025, many communities saw a significant drop in the number of entire properties listed on short-term rental sites.

The ministry says such listings in the City of Kelowna dropped 31 per cent, while those in Victoria dropped 24 per cent and Vancouver listings dropped 22 per cent.

The communities also saw an increase in vacancy rates from 2023 to 2024, according to the data.

Numbers published by the website rentals.ca show average rent in B.C. was down 0.6 per cent year-over-year in March, based on listings posted on the site, while Vancouver saw a 5.7 per cent drop. It was the 16th straight decline in apartment rents in the city, which has had various short-term rental rules since 2018, although it remains the most expensive place in Canada to rent.

The website’s monthly report says average asking rents in Canada fell 2.8 per cent to $2,119 in March. Rent for apartments in Toronto was down 6.9 per cent, the 14th consecutive decline in the city, which also recently implemented restrictions on short-term rentals.

But it hasn’t been one-way movement. Rent in Victoria was up three per cent in March. And in February, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation forecast that while B.C. would see higher vacancy rates over the next few years due to lower population growth, average rents would rise as more new, higher-priced units come to market.

The corporation’s most recent rental market report, for fall 2024, said average Vancouver rent for a two-bedroom apartment was up 5.5 per cent in October from a year earlier, although that rate of growth had slowed.

Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said while some data suggest rent and condo prices have gone down, there are too many competing factors to be able to specifically credit the short-term rental rules.

Other factors could include interest rates, the general economic situation, or changes in immigration, he said.

“There’s a lot of noise trying to figure out what the signal looks like. And I think that that’s the big challenge, really trying to filter through what has happened in the one year since B.C. adopted the short-term rental laws,” he said.

Will Gladman, with the Vancouver Tenants Union, said its members haven’t been reporting rent decrease, but rather “quite reliably” are being hit with increases.

He said even if some numbers suggest rents are dropping slightly, the cost to live in the city remains very high.

“(It’s) still unbelievably expensive and way out of reach, even for people making a pretty decent income in the city,” he said.

Gladman said the group didn’t expect the changes to short-term rentals to make a significant difference, though they are in favour of any improvements that don’t involve displacing people from their homes.

“Those were units that, from our perspective, were wasted and are now becoming homes for people. So obviously, that’s positive,” he said.

“But when you have a provincial government that is trying to rely on these kind of supply-side tweaks, and nonetheless to rely on the market to provide some kind of an affordable housing strategy, we would never expect it to go very far.”

Brendon Ogmundson, chief economist for the B.C. Real Estate Association, said while the government’s goal of increasing housing supply is understandable, the rules may have done more harm than good overall, considering impact on tourism.

He said decreases in rents have more to do with factors like new units hitting the market and population growth falling, particularly among groups with high demand for rentals, such as international students and temporary foreign workers.

“(It’s) hard to determine how much of an impact (the new law has had). My guess is pretty small. It’s certainly impacting things in tourism. It’s a lot more expensive to get a hotel now, in a lot of areas, there’s not a lot of choice. But I don’t think it’s had a major impact on things like rental affordability,” he said.

In Victoria, Gandall worried that as hotel prices climbed, the government may be tempted to roll back some short-term rental rules.

In an interview this week with Chek News, B.C. Premier David Eby said when the province gets “back to healthy rental levels in communities” the government would reduce restrictions on short-term rentals.

Gandall said Airbnbs still run in his building. He also suspects not everyone is being honest when they claim a unit as their primary residence.

But Kahlon said the government goes through a lengthy process to confirm whether a short-term rental qualifies.

The minister said there will always be people looking for ways to break the rules, but that the fines — $5,000 a day for those who are caught — are a significant deterrent.

“I think that we’re going to see other provinces that are going to move down the same direction as us,” he said.

“And we’re hearing from our local government partners in particular that this system is working much better in their communities, and we’re going to continue down this path because it’s the right thing to do to ensure people have access to affordable housing in our communities.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2025.

Ashley Joannou, The Canadian Press