The City of Nelson has started reviewing its policies around Short Term Rentals. It’s been a year and half now since the City started to regulate Airbnbs. Some recommendations were presented to council this week. Alex Thumm with Development Services says proposed changes included relaxing some of the fees including the $500 deposit.
The deposit was implemented as a best practice from other cities to help recover costs for bylaw enforcement. Thumm says things have gone very well since the regulations came into place with only a few bylaw tickets being issued for people operating without a license.
Thumm says something council wasn’t in favour of was slightly reducing utility costs for secondary suites used as short term rentals.
Thumm says another adjustment they want to make is limit the time a guest home can be available to 182 days which helps ensure the property is a primary residence.
There’s just over 60 short term rentals in operation, although 110 are allowed. The proposed changes may be adopted as early as August.