Although there are still hundreds of illegal advertisements for accommodation offered to tourists on the Airbnb platform in Quebec, the Minister of Tourism, Caroline Proulx, says she is satisfied with the effectiveness of her new law which aimed to order in this market.
“People comply (with the law and) go get their certificate. Those who circumvented the law withdrew from the market. There is a 20% drop in supply,” she said at a press briefing on Thursday, after the unveiling by Tourisme Québec of data on the accommodation supply on Airbnb, while the new law on tourist accommodation has been in force for seven months.
According to this data, 90% of advertisements comply with the law. “There remains a 10% of little rascals. This 10% is (what) we are going to work on,” continued the minister.
In the study “Compliance of offers published on Airbnb” by Tourisme Québec, we learn that last February there were 17,548 advertisements for short-term accommodations offered on Airbnb in the province, and 7,268 advertisements for more than 31 days ( or 29%), for a total of 24,816 active ads, including 7,012 in Montreal.
1838 illegal ads
Among the listings for short-term housing, 10% were potentially illegal, or 1,838 units, according to the study.
The main residences rented on Airbnb represented 3,098 listings, of which 14% were non-compliant. And of the 10,221 advertisements for tourist residences, 6% were non-compliant.
The Tourisme Québec study aimed to verify the proportion of compliant listings on Airbnb, following the entry into force of the new Tourist Accommodation Act last September. In August 2023, 40% of announcements were non-compliant, says the ministry.
However, the research carried out did not make it possible to verify whether the dwellings advertised as primary residences were really such. The ministry only checked whether a registration number granted for a principal residence was used in more than one advertisement. In Montreal, this was the case for 20% of housing with this type of permit, which is illegal.
“Underground Market”
It is specified that in Montreal, the number of active advertisements fell from 8,942 in November 2022 to 7,012 a year later, a drop of 21.6%. Nearly half of these advertisements offered accommodation for a period of more than 31 days, which means that they are not subject to the Tourist Accommodation Act. This proportion is increasing in Montreal and Laval, in particular.
But Tourisme Québec warns on this subject. “A significant volume of offers published on the platforms have now “exited” the scope of tourist accommodation. (…) The migration of many offers towards long-term rental is food for thought. It would be necessary for studies and surveys to be carried out on these offers to understand whether an underground short-term rental market is being set up to circumvent the rules. »
The latest data on inspections carried out by Revenu Québec to verify compliance with the Tourist Accommodation Act were also revealed Thursday.
5 million fines
We learn that, of the 2,888 inspections carried out between 1er April 2023 and March 31, 2024, 891 were found to be non-compliant and led to 1,658 violations. The fines imposed following 1,184 convictions reached nearly 5 million.
Inspections are a little more frequent than the previous year (2,855 inspections) but are down compared to 2021-2022 (3,812) and 2020-2021 (5,629), despite the fact that Minister Caroline Proulx said she wanted an intensification controls.
To the City of Montreal, which has been asking Quebec for several months for access to information allowing it to be determined where an individual’s main residence is located, Minister Proulx responded that this information did not exist.
With Hugo-Pilon Larose, The Press
reference: www.lapresse.ca