Nearly 1 in 5 Vancouver Airbnb listings non-compliant

Nearly one in five Airbnb listings are non-compliant, according to a platform scan I completed last night. Out of the 4428 active units my scan picked up, 818 units are non-compliant for one or more of the following reasons: Hosts with multiple entire home/apartment listings 620 Licences used for multiple home/apartment listings 238 Dubious Exemptions […]

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Airbnb quietly drops licence requirements for Vancouver listings

The agreement between City of Vancouver and Airbnb requires the platform to make the licence field mandatory for all listings. Airbnb deactivated all unlicensed listings last fall and for a while enforced this rule. But our latest scan of Airbnb data show that Airbnb has quietly dropped this requirement. As a result we have seen […]

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578 new Airbnb listings added in the last 10 days

Vancouver’s chief licencing officer announced with much fanfare that the number of Airbnb listings in the city have dropped from around 6,600 in April to just 3,742 in September. But in just 10 days since the City of Vancouver’s September 5 announcement, hosts have added 578 news listings, bringing the total to 4,320. Out of […]

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Vancouver has a fake Airbnb licence problem

Airbnb hosts seem to be getting around the new City of Vancouver’s licensing requirements by using brazenly fake licences. Some fine examples include “12345678str”, “000000000” and “Exampp”. To meaningfully protect our long term rental market from being decimated by Airbnb and other short term accommodation platforms, we must take the following steps: Introduce licence auto-verification, […]

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Aribnb listings using licences issued for other businesses

Airbnb hosts seem to be getting around the new licensing requirements by using licences issued for other businesses, including licences for massage therapist, computer services and health services. To meaningfully protect our long term rental market from being decimated by Airbnb and other short term accommodation platforms, we must take the following steps: Introduce licence […]

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Only 5% of Vancouver Airbnb listings deactivated

  City of Vancouver’s short term accommodation bylaw fully came into force today. There was much talk of “2,000” Airbnb units being deactivated. But did it really happen?   It appears that Airbnb has deactivated approximately 5% of the listings that were active on August 31.   I took a random sample 832 of City […]

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Wikiwashing Westbank: Who’s editing developer Ian Gillespie’s Wiki page?

Someone’s been deleting sections of Vancouver developer Ian Gillespie’s Wikipedia page1)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gillespie_(developer). Gillespie owns Westbank of the “if the Chinese market doesn’t want it, I have no interest in it” fame. So who’s Wikiwashing Gillespie’s page? Wikipedia edits leave behind an audit trail. In this case, we know the person who edited Gillespie’s page had the […]

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