If a property is available to rent for a period of 30 days or less, this is called a short term rental. One common example is Airbnb. Various jurisdictions within California have laws limiting short term rentals and requiring permits. You may be wondering why short term rentals are treated differently from standard rentals. There is actually a good reason for this.
In many respects, a short term rental is actually more like a hotel stay than a rental. Even though the definition allows for stays up to 30 days, both short term rentals and hotel stays tend to be significantly less than a month. In both situations, the rooms change hands frequently. Being quite similar to a hotel in this respect, it makes sense that short term rentals would be regulated as a business rather than a real estate transaction. And in fact, hotels may actually be less of a problem for the real estate market — they were never designed to be stayed in for long periods, while short term rentals detract from available housing supply. With reduced supply, this also increases rent prices and forces out some longer term renters. That’s why large cities with high rent prices like Los Angeles and San Francisco require owners of short term rentals to restrict the number of days per year that the property is rented out, or to reside in the property themselves a certain length of the year.
Photo by Devon Janse van Rensburg on Unsplash
More: https://journal.firsttuesday.us/californias-short-term-rental-bans-examined/75817/