short-term rental registry

A short-term rental advocacy group is claiming that online “pirates” are stealing registration numbers from the city of Toronto’s website and using them to post fake listings on Airbnb.

“The city attempts sweeping enforcement actions to take down pirates, but pirates easily repost fake listings by reusing the permit data the city leaves unprotected,” contests Fairbnbhosts.ca on its website. “Visitors can’t be sure if they are booking a pirate space or a legal operator.”

Since September 2020, Toronto has required all short-term rental operators to register with the city. This is to “prevent the proliferation of ‘ghost-hotels’ and protect critical rental stock by maintaining access for tenants to long-term accommodations,” the city said in an email.

Airbnb rolling out ‘anti-party’ technology in Canada and U.S.

As part of this process, operators receive a registration number from the city, which they use to set up their listing. But all 6,277 of these registration numbers are publicly available online, along with the first three digits of the short-term rental’s postal code. Scammers can access the registration numbers and use them to set up fake listings.

There’s a simple solution, says George Emerson, director of Fairbnbhosts.ca, which describes itself as a travel industry trade association protecting the interests of Toronto’s Airbnb operators. “The city says [the registration numbers are] how they verify with the booking platforms,” he says. “But if your website and my website want to exchange information, we don’t have to do that in a way that’s exposed to the public finding it. We do it on a secure shielded website. We would use a database. Every website has a database, and we would use that method to exchange information.”

Emerson adds that this is commonly done. “Computers verify large datasets all the time through secure ways without revealing identities.” But when he asked the city whether it could privately exchange registration information with booking sites, staff told him it wasn’t a priority.

The city is aware of the fake listings being posted. To combat the issue, it performs compliance audits using data discovery techniques. “The city compliance audits flag listings that have missing, inaccurate, or incomplete information that prevents the city from verifying registration status and operators who are not in compliance with the bylaw,” the city said.

But these compliance audits are part of what’s wrong with Toronto’s short-term rental regulations, Emerson argues. When setting up a listing, the rental’s information must match the city’s registration data. “The address mismatches are so tiny, like whether there’s a ‘St.’ or ‘St’,” he says.

Other incorrect listing information includes operators using nicknames instead of their full name as listed on government-issued IDs, using incorrect postal codes, adding in building names rather than street addresses, not including unit numbers, or placing unit numbers in the wrong field.

If a listing’s information is flagged as incorrect during a compliance audit, the city will take the listing down. When the city flags a “pirated” listing, it may also take down the legitimate listing, penalizing an operator who’s following the bylaws.

“No other type of business gets this kind of a shakedown, this kind of level of harassment,” Emerson argues.

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New amendments are coming to Nova Scotia’s provincial short-term rental registration system this spring, the province announced.

Three major revisions to the act were approved in April 2022 including:

The removal of a registration exemption for short-term rentals operated in primary residences (meaning single-room rentals and bed-and-breakfast style operations must now register annually).
Short-term rental owners are now required to include their registration number in their online listings.
All rental owners will have to attest to their property’s compliance with municipal land-use bylaws when registering.

Anna Moran, director of research and policy at the department of communities, culture, tourism, and heritage, says these changes will help the province and municipalities get a better understanding of the short-term rental situation in Nova Scotia. “The intent of the amendments is to support us—the province—to gather comprehensive data that we can then give to municipalities to help them with their land-use bylaws,” she says.

Moran says these changes were introduced in response to the demands of municipal leaders. “What we were hearing from municipalities was ‘you don’t require primary residences to register—that’s an issue for us. We’re going to set up our own registry.’ Nobody wants that kind of duplication of effort,” she says.

Nova Scotia became one of the first provinces in Canada (after Prince Edward Island) to regulate short-term rentals at a provincial level when they introduced the Tourist Accommodation Registration Act in the spring of 2020.

Moran says the act established the provincial registry for short-term rentals to assist local governments in enforcing their own regulations. “What municipalities asked us for is support to get a clear picture of the short-term rental situation in their communities,” says Moran.

The registration act requires that every short-term rental property owner register with the Tourist Accommodations Registry annually. The cost of registration depends on the size of the accommodation—for properties with one to four bedrooms, the fee is $50; for properties with five or more bedrooms, the fee is $150.

The act defines short-term rentals as any operation with a fixed roof being rented to the public for less than 28 days at a time. This means the act applies to a broad range of accommodations including hotels, motels, apartments, homes, vacation properties, and more, says Moran.

The province is emphasizing an education-first approach to enforcement, working with hosting sites to ensure all listings are in compliance with the provincial regulations, says Moran. However, the province can also enforce fines starting at $1,000 per day, capped at a maximum of $7,500 annually, for rental owners who do not comply with the act. To date, just over 1500 accommodation providers have registered with Nova Scotia. Rental owners are required to register with the province through their online portal by April 1, 2023.