How will province’s crackdown on Air BNB impact Prince George?

While this could have big implications for several cities in the province, Managing Broker at Team PowerHouse Realty Janine Phillips believe Prince George and other communities in North B.C won’t be impacted too heavily, if at all.

“When there are these kinds of policies coming down provincially or federally, one size fits all generally doesnt work, because B.C is different from the rest of Canada, and Northern B.C is a lot different from the rest of B.C even,” she said.

With only around 200 Air BNB listings in Prince George, Phillips believes even if Prince George were to feel the effects of less short-term rentals, it would be minimal. However, unlike the provincial government, Phillips believes these short-term rentals serve an important role in our community.

“Short term rentals are often summertime based and are rented in a longer term to students when school is in season as well. So they have students in over the school year and then just rent it out in little blips over the summer when the students are gone,” she said.

Tourism Prince George’s CEO Colin Carson also believes the impacts of the provincial legislation won’t be massive for Prince George, but if Prince George does follow through it could provide a boost to our local economy.

“I think this is a pretty great stance for the provincial government to take. What we focus on here at Tourism Prince George is we want to be supporting all of our stakeholders, and hoteliers are a really important part of our industry. So this legislation really protects them and makes sure that it’s more of a level playing field,” Carson said.

“Hoteliers are huge employers in Prince George, the amount of staff they have to have, whether that’s just to have the rooms themselves or if they have food and beverage services in the hotels, these types of protections in place for them just makes sure that we can have their employees busy and that they’re consistently working all the time,” he continued.

Both Phillips and Carson highlighted the fact that Prince George may be exempt from this legislation, should city council choose to move forward that way. Phillips says this is because the legislation allows an exemption to municipalities with a vacancy rate of 3 per cent or higher, which Prince George currently has.

This short-term rental legislation is targeted towards the housing crisis felt across the province, but Phillips wanted to point out that Prince George isn’t quite in a crisis the same way the rest of the province is. She acknowledged inflation and rising prices have made things more challenging, but Prince George was voted Zolo’s most affordable city in B.C for 2023.

“Our market, we have a historical steady growth rate, we aren’t as volatile as some of the other areas of the province. So looking at it in the past 10-20 years, we’re in a really good place, it’s helping people build equity and a lot of people are using that for their retirement, helping their kids go through school, things like that. So when people are able to get into the housing market it’s a really good investment and it helps them hedge their funds against inflation as well, so once people are in it it really can help serve as a starting point,” Phillips said.

With the cyclical nature of the housing market, Phillips expects prices could eventually work their way back down, especially if we see an eventual end to inflation.

by Tommy Osborne

How will province’s crackdown on Air BNB impact Prince George?

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