B.C. Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said the short-term rental enforcement team will be similar to the 10-person Residential Tenancy Branch enforcement team, which is led by a retired police superintendent.
Call them the Airbnb police.
Starting next spring, a new provincial short-term rental enforcement team will crack down on illegal Airbnbs, but if there’s lessons to be learned from municipal bylaws, it will take some online detective work to catch scofflaws.
The Short-Term Rental Accommodations Act, which is expected to come into force before the end of the fall legislative session, will ban most short-term rentals that aren’t in the operator’s principal residence, which means people or companies with multiple Airbnbs will have to list them as long-term rentals or risk hefty fines of $3,000 per infraction, per day.
Few details have been released about the budget or personnel assigned to the proposed enforcement team, which will begin looking for illegal short-term rentals when the rules take effect May 1.
But Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said this week that the unit will be similar to the 10-person Residential Tenancy Branch’s enforcement team, which is led by former Victoria police superintendent Scott McGregor.
About 30 municipalities already regulate short-term rentals through bylaws and licence fees. Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna limit short-term rentals to one’s principal residence, meaning the owner or tenant must reside in the home.
The problem is, according to B.C. Premier David Eby, “cities that want to deal with this problem have been trying to figure out how to enforce it.”
“Short of parking a bylaw enforcement officer out front of somebody’s house to watch people go in and out, or search through a website and try to match-up a dot on a map with a specific address and try to pair that up … you have to be basically a private detective to figure it out,” he said during a news conference Monday.
“This new legislation and the registry will create the ability to just spit out a printout of numbers, the business licences that they can match-up with the business licences on the (short-term rental) platforms, which will be legally required to co-operate with us,” Eby said.
In Vancouver, an estimated 40 per cent of the estimated 5,000 active short-term rental listings are breaking the city’s bylaws, which state that a short-term rental can only operate in someone’s principal residence, which includes a laneway house, basement suite or in one’s home or condo while they’re away on vacation.
Vancouver chief licence inspector Sarah Hicks wasn’t available for an interview but said in a statement that unlike the traditional “boots-on-the-ground” enforcement approach for bylaw infractions, the short-term rental enforcement team uses a data-driven model that relies on digital evidence.
“Staff proactively investigates illegal listings and has a variety of options to address suspicious listings such as conducting an audit or inspection, issuing a violation ticket or warning letter, and suspending a business licence,” Hicks said.
Short-term rental operators flouting the bylaws are subject to fines of up to $1,000 per offence and may be referred to the prosecutor’s office for legal action, she said.
Since Vancouver’s bylaws came into effect in 2018, the city has had 2,266 licences flagged for investigations, 136 so far this year. The city has written 1,712 warning letters — 85 in 2023 — and issued 1,040 legal orders, including 161 this year.
Bylaw officers in Victoria can barely keep up with the complaints about short-term rentals, said Victoria Mayor Marianne Alto. The City of Victoria has issued 346 fines worth $91,000 since the bylaw came into effect in 2018.
Bylaw officers are often required to do intensive detective work to prove a property is illegal, Alto said. In four cases, the city fought short-term rental owners in court, including one person who operated an Airbnb despite being denied a licence.
The city won all four cases, resulting in $20,000 in fines and court orders prohibiting five people from operating short-term rentals.
“We have significant investigations that have to happen when someone complains. They can lead to appeals, and that can lead to processes that involve council over months,” Alto said.
Alto said once the rules come into effect May 1, the City of Victoria can identify illegal short-term rentals, share that information with the province and the enforcement team will carry out the investigation. The enforcement team doesn’t replace municipal bylaw teams, rather Kahlon said the provincial team will collaborate with its municipal counterparts.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
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Yuri Kageyama is on X:
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:REI.UN)
The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
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