Local city may outlaw non-hosted Short Term Rentals

[Pete-and-MJ0]

Hi, we run 2 short term rentals, one at our main residence, and another that is nearby.  Recently the council for that municipality for the second airbnb has begun the process of highly regulating STRs. They currently are investigating how to regulate, tax and monitor the short term rentals in the city. In short, the writing is on the wall that they will ban any short term rental that does not have the host actually be on site during a stay.  The number of stays allowed unhosted will be capped at 21 days a year.  (Last year we had 56 reservations and 169 nights booked) The members who advocate for this argue that it's for safety issues, parking, noise complaints, etc.  We have had no complaints at all in the 3 years we've hosted this home.

My question is, what kind of proactive arguments can we make to try to avoid this outcome, since I am now retired and this is my main source of income? Does anyone know of any Airbnb corporate entity that we could talk to in order to alert them that our city is about to severely hamstring short term rentals?  Thanks for any help in advance

Pete

[Fred13]

@Pete-and-MJ0  The pressure to change those rules I bet is coming from the local yokel hotel entities (which is always a powerful force in small communities). Need to convince them that your offering is a draw for those families (it is all 'about the children') coming to stay in a 'country' setting (by the lake like your place) and if not allowed to do so it will be a loss of income for the entire community because they will go elsewhere and not in their town. Hotels can not offer this so you are not stepping on anyone's toes. Prepare to show how much money the average family that comes to your place drops in the local economy during their stay.

Their mentality (and argument) may be that renting individual homes takes them out of the 'available home' inventory for those moving in, but that may not be a reality nowadays for a town in Upstate, NY.

Good luck.

P.S. Belize had a similar law, till they met me. 🙂