Airbnb in Victoria, British Columbia

According to recent reports, Victoria has the lowest apartment vacancy rate of any major city in Canada - at 0.6 per cent (down from 1.8 per cent last year).

City council, concerned about the impact on housing of illegal Airbnb rentals, has asked staff to develop policy for vacation rentals by September, 2016:

"if there are condos or rental units that would be housing but are now being used as short-term rentals, that’s what we’re trying to prohibit....very few vacation rental properties are operating within the current rules." Councillor Jeremy Loveday

The Law

"Home Occupation" zoning By-laws, Schedule D, state that "Bed and Breakfasts" are prohibited except in single family dwellings, where "up to two bedrooms may be used for transient accommodation" (Section 11), and the owner must be present. They also add that a one parking space be provided for each room available.

The City of Victoria Department of Planning also indicated that "Single family dwellings that have a secondary suite are not permitted to have bed and breakfast as a home occupation."

There are also specifically zoned areas for Bed and Breakfast or Transient Accomodation, such as the RK-18 Zone, Linden Bed & Breakfast District and the T-1 Zone, Limited Transient Accommodation District. It's interesting to compare the disrespectful, arbitrary approach of platforms like Airbnb and their hosts to zoning; compared to the accountable, democratic processes of City Zoning By-laws.

Individual Strata By-laws for an apartment building may also specifically prohibit or permit transient or vacation rentals, and if they were inconsistent with City By-laws, it's unclear what would take precendence.

Airbnb data for Victoria

Inside Airbnb

A conservative occupancy model has been built in order to estimate Occupancy Rates, Income per Month and Nights per Year. More information on the methodolgy of the occupancy model can be found in the disclaimers.

Inside Airbnb: Victoria uses the following parameters:

A high availability metric and filter of 90 days per year

metric and filter of A frequently rented filter of 90 days per year

filter of A review rate of 50% for the number of guests making a booking who leave a review

of for the number of guests making a booking who leave a review An average booking of 3 nights unless a higher minimum nights is configured for a listing.

unless a higher minimum nights is configured for a listing. A maximum occupancy rate of 70% to ensure the occupancy model does not produce artifically high results based on the available data

If you are a data scientist, urban or public policy planner, researcher or journalist, get the data, analyze and publish your results.

Airbnb

Airbnb provides NO PUBLIC DATA to help understand the use of their platform and the impact on cities around the world.

Airbnb also provide NO DATA to cities or states to assist them in ensuring that Airbnb hosts and Airbnb are following the local laws.

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