San Francisco follows NYC rentals ban, VRBO fights back

Wednesday, August 18th 2010 - comments (4)

The US vacation rentals business could be forgiven for feeling pretty victimized right now after another city moved to enforce a ban on short term lettings. San Francisco has now gone the way of New York City by clamping down on rentals.

Yet again it's another mess of mixed messages from politicians and local authorities.

A city ordinance dating back to 1981 that was supposed to prevent rentals of less than 30 days is now being enforced. Apparently it's to prevent rentals putting pressure on local housing stocks by effectively removing them from the residential market. That didn't stop authorities taking taxes from vacation rentals for years without first checking that they were legal.

While San Francisco's politicos are putting the boot into vacation rentals for causing a housing problem, President Obama is blaming a housing over-suppy for hobbling the economic recovery.

Confused? So are we.

Luckily VRBO (part of HomeAway) is riding to the rescue of embattled owners. With over 500 adverts in San Francisco, they are rightly concerned and have published a range of case studies to help fight rental bans.

comments (4)

10th October 2010 21:15 GMT | Cheryl Franklin, Australia wrote...

I am intending to travel to New York for 12 days in August next year with my husband for the World Police & Fire Games. My husband is a Firefighter from Sydney Australia and he was going to compete in the games and we were intending to rent an apartment in New York as the hotels were a little out of our price range. We may not be able to attend now because of this law. I hope that this law is not implemented, but instead, apartment rentals to be closely monitored to protect landlords and vacationers. I would have thought America would only be too happy to welcome overseas visitors to spend money and boost your economy.

12th November 2010 03:51 GMT | B wing wrote...

We are, we want you to stay in a hotel that pays the taxes. We are talking about NYC here, not angola. Smug Australians...

16th December 2010 21:31 GMT | Darik Eaton wrote...

Many of us vacation rentals due pay taxes. Not all possibly, but those of us that do why should we be treated any differently than a hotel? Just because we don't have lawyers and lobbies that spend millions of dollars on politicians? What happened to our rights as property owners. If zoning laws allow it, why should we not be allowed to rent our properties as we see fit!

14th January 2011 12:28 GMT | NYC hotels wrote...

This will continue to happen in the us as we have no control over the millions of dollars that are handed over to politicians, governors , mayors and lobbyists from the massive hotel chains. The apartments will go into foreclosure as owners wont be able to pay their ridiculous mortgages that they agreed to considering they would be able to rent short term. What happened to rights?

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