By Morgan Lowrie
Metropolis council in March handed a brand new bylaw that can enable individuals to lease their principal residences for intervals of 31 days or lessonly throughout peak vacationer season, between June 10 and Sept. 10. They need to additionally get hold of a $300 allow from the town and meet earlier necessities to register with the province.
Full-time Airbnb items run by industrial enterprises are nonetheless allowed in components of the town, however are restricted to some streets and areas.
Despina Sourias, a metropolis councillor answerable for housing, stated earlier guidelines have been laborious to implement as a result of they allowed some property house owners to keep away from getting fined by stating a rental property was their primary residence.
The brand new guidelines, she stated, will shift the burden of proof onto itemizing house owners as an alternative of inspectors.
“Earlier than it was like, now we have to exit and catch individuals, we’ve acquired to roam the streets,” she stated in a telephone interview.
Banning short-term leases in principal residences for 9 months a 12 months makes issuing fines a lot simpler, Sourias stated. “You don’t have your allow, you get a ticket,” she stated. “In case you’re doing it outdoors the time that you just’re allowed to do it, you get a ticket.”
The brand new guidelines are the following step in a progressive crackdown throughout the province that started after seven individuals died in a fireplace in an Previous Montreal constructing in March 2023. Six of the victims had been staying in Airbnb leases, which the mayor confirmed weren’t allowed in that a part of the town.
After the hearth, the provincial authorities tabled new laws requiring platforms like Airbnb to solely show advertisements that embrace a tourism licence quantity and expiry date. Town additionally employed a squad of inspectors to attempt to crack down.
Earlier than the brand new bylaw, it was simpler for individuals to lease their primary residences for brief intervals, corresponding to throughout a trip.
That led some individuals to make use of totally different schemes to falsely declare a full-time rental as a principal residence, and forcing inspectors into prolonged investigations to show in any other case, the town stated.
Montreal’s mayor stated in January that regardless of the provincial regulation, greater than half of the 4,000 items on short-term rental platforms didn’t adjust to the principles.
The brand new guidelines have acquired pushback from the province’s tourism division, in addition to from platforms corresponding to Airbnb, who declare that they are going to harm the town’s economic system and do little to enhance housing affordability.
Alex Howell, Airbnb’s coverage lead from Canada, known as on the town to reverse what she known as an “excessive and short-sighted” rule change.
“This poorly thought-out resolution will drive up lodge costs and make journey costlier for Quebecers – practically 140,000 of whom stayed in an Airbnb in Montreal final 12 months – and weakens Montreal’s potential to draw guests for main occasions that gasoline tourism all year long,” she stated in an announcement.
Saif Yousif, a property supervisor for Park Place Properties, believes the brand new guidelines are overly restrictive. Yousif manages about 80 short-term leases within the Montreal and Mont-Tremblant areas, together with many owned by purchasers need to lease their houses after they’re travelling.
Yousif feels the present guidelines have been already strict sufficient to stop individuals from falsely claiming an funding property as a principal residence. The regulation, he stated “makes it troublesome for (owners) to take holidays or take a while off and go away the town” and is unlikely to lead to items being returned to the long-term rental pool.
The easiest way to maintain rental costs down can be to construct extra housing, he added.
Likewise, the province’s tourism division stated the brand new guidelines wouldn’t put an finish unlawful leases or the housing disaster.
“Quite the opposite, they may even worsen the state of affairs by pushing extra operators into illegality, returning Montreal to the Wild Internet of earlier than our reforms,” it stated in an announcement to The Canadian Press.
However David Wachsmuth, the Canada Analysis Chair in city governance at McGill College, believes Montreal might succeed the place different cities have failed at cracking down on unlawful leases.
He stated platforms go away it as much as cities to trace down rule-breakers, which forces municipal officers to “play detective” and determine who’s really a principal resident and who isn’t.
He stated enforcement shall be simpler underneath these guidelines, as a result of anybody operating an Airbnb outdoors the designated full-time rental areas could be routinely fined outdoors the summer time season.
“Anyone who’s operating an Airbnb in March, should you’re not on a kind of very small variety of corridors the place you’re allowed to do that (legally), it’s simply assured that you just’re breaking the regulation,” he stated. “In order that’s only a actually basic shift in how the general means of being a brief time period rental host goes to work together with the legal guidelines right here in Montreal.”
He stated most Montrealers who need to lease their principal residence would probably be doing so principally in the summertime in any case. Due to this fact, the principles will solely inconvenience reliable homesharers whereas making it a lot more durable for full-time unauthorized leases to show a revenue.
Wachsmuth additionally dismisses any claims that limiting short-term leases received’t assist alleviate housing pressures, saying the analysis exhibits “past any attainable shred of a doubt” that communities that put short-term rental guidelines in place see their rents rise at a slower price than those that don’t.
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Final modified: June 3, 2025