Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
It would be pretty easy to say that only primary residences can be listed on Airbnb.
So a Canadian family born in and living in China would only be able to rent out, say, a sensible $80M of Vancouver real estate. One mansion for the husband, one for the estranged homemaker, one for each student child, etc.
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Quebec is actually very aggressive with the rules, it wouldn't work. To list a Quebec property on Airbnb, you need a certificate from the municipality in which the property is located, and to get that, you need to show docs proving that you actually live there. Also a cap could easily be set: if you rent it on Airbnb more than half the time, clearly you're a fraud, as it cannot be your "primary" residence -- you're not there "most of the time".
I'm not surprised by your reaction because here in Canada we're usually pretty stupid about enforcing our in-spirit rules ("as an unemployed homemaker who gets the GST credits and reports $0 in yearly income, I'm selling this mansion right after switching my personal mail to getting sent there for 366 days in a row and pocketing several million entirely tax free", etc.), but in the case of Airbnb in Quebec, the provincial government is very serious about it and they actually have an army of inspectors that check everything, and fines are high enough that it's absolutely not worth it.
As others said earlier, if governments want to be serious about this, it's easy: just set really high fines, and no landlords will be Airbnb'ing anything anymore. Quebec just demonstrated it. QED