Council to consider regulating vacation rentals

[leilanidude]

What housing shortage? Not in Puna, there are plenty of empty houses and plenty of cheap ones too. Check any real estate website!
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Not rentals! Which is what The typical 2 job holding 19 hour a week employee has to have since they cannot afford to buy a house.

[PaulW]

How cheap does a house have to be before it's deemed to be "affordable"? It does cost something to build them, you know.

[PaulW]

I saw the story in the HTH today. Thanks robguz for exposing that fraud.

[leilanidude]

VRBOs need to be regulated and heavily taxed.
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at MarkD - They already are!

[My 2 cents]

Several valid points have been made on this thread. Perhaps the most important is that tourists spend money here that was generated elsewhere and that is an ideal situation for an economy that we should try to nurture, not restrict. Competition in business is good and generally evens itself out. If the hotels are having trouble competing with the VRBOs then perhaps they need to be more creative with the services they offer. The wider the variety of accommodations we provide the wider the variety of tourists, and they all spend money here.

I don't believe that VRBOs reduce low income housing. It's a different class of housing. When an owner fixes up a rental to the point where it will be acceptable for a tourist it will no longer be affordable for the low income people. The real issue with low income housing is the government obstructionism. If some of the codes could be relaxed to make it easier to provide a low income rental AND an easier avenue for dispute resolution (i.e., getting the undesirables out of your house without spending months of time and thousands of dollars) then the issue would begin to repair itself.

[MarkD]

Here is a study on the link between vacation rentals and increases in housing costs. Quote:

"Using rental and home price data from Zillow, the researchers found that for every 10 percent growth in Airbnb listings, a ZIP code’s average rent increased by 0.4 percent."

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/08/w...ts/535674/

Of course as many posters have noted, we generally do not have a housing affordability problem in East Hawaii Island. But for some reason we have assertions that the only or primary party being affected by the vacation rental business is hotels.

* * * *

This topic also goes off in a somewhat radical direction: Maybe what we are seeing nationwide with the vacation rental thing is, in part, a reaction to many states being dismissive, even hostile to landlords who are having legitimate problems with tenants. As in excessive tenant protections. As in some instances costing landlords thousands of dollars.

So some landlords might be saying: So you want to continue siding with deadbeat/problem tenants, causing me all these problems? OK, f--k you. I won't rent long-term anymore.

Being a landlord I'm highly sympathetic to this possible perspective. And I would call that chickens coming home to roost to landlord-hostile states like Hawaii.

[My 2 cents]

It's also been noted that the tenants recognize how easy it is to scam. If it wasn't so easy it wouldn't be as common, low income renters would behave themselves better so as to not be on the street again, and landlords would be more willing to rent to them.

[PaulW]

After hearing the horror stories here, I would never rent out my house long term in Hawaii. Let them fix that first.
A happy consequence is that many landlords are turning to airbnb and benefiting many.

"Using rental and home price data from Zillow, the researchers found that for every 10 percent growth in Airbnb listings, a ZIP code’s average rent increased by 0.4 percent."
Correlation is not causation. And 0.4 percent?? Meaningless.

[MarkD]

"And 0.4 percent?? Meaningless."

I agree. But that's 0.4 percent "for every 10 percent growth."

Above I posted this and the link: "In 2016 Airbnb posted its total Hawaii listings: 10,000"

We would have to do the math for the total increase. I imagine it's a lot higher.

[kalakoa]

tourists spend money here that was generated elsewhere and that is an ideal situation for an economy that we should try to nurture, not restrict

I'm thinking County should implement restrictive policies, then fail to enforce them, just like they do with everything else.

Consider a hypothetical $200/night rental. TAT is $20.50. County receives a 4% share, or about 82 cents. What's the incentive for enforcement, and how do we pay for it?