With word this week that Air BnB, the peer-to-peer accommodations technology app, has offered a $250 bonus to prospective Vancouver landlords, we decided to look closer at the popular rental website listings for Greater Victoria.
A simple search using “Victoria, Canada” as the search parameters, turns up an astounding 2,025 individual active unit listings. They range from a simple furnished room in a shared apartment, to entire houses with five and more bedrooms.
The website indicates the average nightly rental rate for all units is $121. The “entire home” average rental rate is $140 per night. That can include anything from a one-bedroom apartment right up to detached houses, but where no bedrooms, kitchens or bathrooms are shared.
In light of traditional monthly rental vacancy rates lower that 1% in Victoria, Victoria councillors in June directed staff to provide a report and possible policy guidelines for short-term rentals, and that’s due as early as this September, according to CTV News Vancouver Island. Any policy decisions by the Victoria council would not apply to Air BnB or other short-term rentals in the other twelve Greater Victoria municipalities.
