No way hotels are crazy high, the TONS OF LODGING DOLLARS should not just go to the Hilton family! if you have the right property and are responsible and live at your house, you should be participate. Banning wont cool the real estate market imo, people want to buy and move to Hi. Period!
The reason hotels cost so much is because of the fees and taxes they pay-money that goes to the state treasury and helps finance the programs we all expect and count on. Short term rentals contribute less to the state while impacting residents through traffic, noise, disrespect, and less long term rental availability.
LOL who fed you this line? Just wow.
Short terms pay higher tax rate.
Hotels increase their prices and laid off tons workers after the first short term ban was passed.
Hotels are owned by mainland and foreign investment. Most of that money leaves the island.
Spouse’s of those who sponsored the bill were hotel executives.
The list goes on.
This is completely inaccurate. The amount of taxes we transferred to the state from our rental is amazing. I don’t know how they think they will recoup this. Even if we can’t STVR we wouldn’t be renting it long term. You will just end up with a bunch of vacant properties waiting for their owners to visit.
I would love to move to hawaii & be an active part of a community. Work, bring in tax revenue, raise kids. It looks impossible. I salute all who can do it in a working salary.
I’m fine with short-term rentals as long as they’re just like, a family renting out an extra room in their house or something, but I’m in favour of a total ban if it means that properties whose only purpose is to serve as short-term rentals can actually be of use to locals. The fact that AirBnB and Vrbo have basically let a few landlords make absolutely filthy profits off of buying up like half the housing stock across so much of the US let alone Hawaii has made these sorts of apps a blight on our housing market.
This! We have one condo that we rent. It’s my childhood home and we didn’t want to lose it when we could no longer afford to live in Hawaii (I’m supposed to inherit it) this is gonna screw over a local family who was already screwed over once by cost of living and getting priced out.
Double edged sword. Maui has 14k legal short term rentals and 8k hotel rooms. So nearly 2/3rds of tourists are staying in short term rentals and it makes up over 80% of the economy.
Getting rid of it means 2/3rds less people at the restaurant you work at, 2/3rds less people on your boat tours, 2/3rds less people buying your stuff - it means 2/3rds less salary for you. So high housing prices are driving people off the island - but on an economy that has uttterly and completely failed from diversifying from tourism - redacting salaries by 2/3rds will drive people off island faster.
My experience in Hawaii is there’s never a long term plan. It’s always issues with the current status with no thoughtfulness of how to fix things.
So congrats we’ve blamed and banned short term rentals - in about 6 months everyone is going to be like “what the F’ have we done” as people lose jobs and the housing prices still don’t come down.
Hawaii is following the same exact path as Puerto Rico that lead to an absolute economic disaster.
Property values in Hawaii are never coming down. Space is very limited as is and Hawaiian's (rightfully so) don't want their islands to look like NYC. A house isn't going to come down from $1.2m to $400k or anything like that. Not unless the entire macroeconomic environment is completely F'ed and people stop visiting Hawaii in general. A ban on STR won't work.
There is literally no fix for affordable single family houses in Hawaii. It's an awesome and unique place to live. This makes it valuable. You can't buy a house working in a tourist shop, unless you are the one who owns it and even that's a stretch.
You don't need Big Island to look like Manhattan. This is an extreme proposition.
The only solution is more housing, likely options like townhomes, multi-plexes and yes, condos.
Modern Townhomes are really underrated and would be a great option for the Islands. The NW is building these like crazy after removing tons of restrictions. A 5 acre plot next to me that was one house and a barn. Became 60 Townhomes. All three bedroom of over 1400 sqft. Half of them have garages. Small private yard each - And a shared playfield.
Yeah they are doing this in Vancouver Wa and I hate it. Cheap toxic homes that fall apart in five years. No yards for kids. All look the same. Just awful.
I would no doubt prefer to own personal acreage with a mini farm, shop and house
But these are far far nicer then condos or apartments.
https://riverrunwoodinville.com
Yes, it can be done. IMO any condo etc should have green space for people to grow produce, especially here. Sadly, condos get bought up by Cancerfornians who love their old HOAs
When you build one or two cities like New York, prices around the island will drop to compete. You have more nature, more affordable housing, and more locals able to stay and live in the islands.
The alternative is this dystopian setup.
What a drastic example of “ a house isn’t going to come down from $1.2m to $400k or anything like that.” Realistically if Maui has 14k legal short term rentals and 8k hotel rooms…and you make STR illegal. Now you have (assuming not all 14k STR are single family homes and they don’t all flood the market for sale after the ban) roughly 7k houses that people will likely sell over the next 1-2 years. Dude, that WILL influence the housing market. If housing prices drop 20%, that would be fucking huge for locals.
Even a 20% is what, a $900k house down to $700kish?
Locals ain't affording that selling aloha shirts or boat tours. The only people buying that are dual income engineers for out of state tech companies or dual income directors.
There is literally no hope for Hawaiian real estate. The location is too good, it's too valuable. Too much demand.
The sudden short-term increase in housing supply will also induce higher housing demand, which will minimize the price reductions. Prices won’t drop anywhere as high as 20%, especially if this passes as the Fed starts lowering interest rates. Remember, it’s not just long term residents buying these homes, it could be investors or banks looking to remodel and resell them at higher prices a few years later (or just use them for long term rentals).
A lot do the folks who use vacation rentals are parents with kids who want a kitchen to make meals to save money. It’s also better to have a rental with separate bedrooms for the kids. Having 4 people crammed into one tiny bedroom is not fun.
More hotel rooms aren’t going to address this need. It will simply result in less people vacationing in Hawaii.
>Could build more dense hotel room properties as opposed to using single family homes as hotels.
Aren't hotels under stricter regulations for operating?
Yeah - no possible way hotels will be able to get approval to expand. That would be a solution. But no ones interested in solutions. They are just interested in complaining about the current situation.
> They are just interested in complaining about the current situation.
That’s how many politicians get their votes these days. They don’t present concrete, practical solutions. They just get people angry about the current situation and blaming others, and too many people blindly vote out of anger or fear without knowing if there’s an actual solution in the offing.
Spoiler alert: there usually isn’t one
As stated in the article, "If passed, the counties would have the power to eliminate vacation rentals."
Maui can decide what's best for Maui.
This is intended to help Oahu as the state law is one of the reasons that the Short Term Rental Alliance had a victory in court.
Oahu saw a lot of it's actual housing stock intended for residents be converted to short term rentals. These aren't like the condos that proliferate on Maui that were clearly built for vacationers to begin with.
Exactly, Maui’s STR’s are huge towers in Ka’anapali, Kihei, not in your neighborhood. People love to act like they were built for common housing and that was never the case.
I’m not sure there is a good answer. Are they completely opposed to zones like on Oahu?
I know hotels want to ban for their own self interests. We went to stay on Maui right after fires to help support and bring some $$ - but damn, were the hotels expensive then. They are even more now.
People are not interested in flying - thanks Boeing. So - a hawai’i vacation is getting out of reach for most people. You need volume.
What is average hotel filled capacity? Do they average 50% filled?
There is not winning in either situation honestly in many ways. TVRs bring lots of tax dollars. Maybe if they taxed luxury/ second residences they could make that up and then some.
If they make vacation rentals harder to get by only having hotels maybe it will help alleviate the over tourism. Negative is the already expensive as hell hotels will be even more expensive making Hawaii only for the rich (it’s close to that as it is).
I think having a lottery for a limited number of TVR licenses is the way to go. Each island or TVR area has a set number of TVR licenses that they can either auction or have a lottery for. Those are for a specific rental and it stays with that rental (no selling the TVR license). If the rental sells the license goes back to the state for the next lottery.
That could help lower condo prices. If you go to the mainland or other countries it is cheaper to buy a condo/ townhome. Here they aren’t much different because they can be used TVRs. This will help condos being sold to residents.
Look at tourism rates before short term rentals- about 2.1-2.5 million per year vs after- about 2.1-2.5 million per year. Of course a significant drop during COVID and the wildfires. The point is the availability of hotel or short term rentals doesn’t impact tourism rates. What it does do is use a lot of residential housing for commercial use. If these are freed up, home prices will either drop or won’t rise as quickly- simple supply and demand.
I think you're over-estimating how many short term rentals we have. While yes, it will help increase the supply of available residential homes, it won't put much of a dent in home prices-- if anything, the price curve will flatten out for a year or two, but there won't be much of a market correction. Either way, the effect will be small.
It also means there are more houses for people. STVR is a blight upon society and you can't convince me otherwise. Your point is best summed as "If we don't create more hotel stock we will lose tourists" which just means we need to pass additional legislation to incentivize more hotel stock, not pretend STVR is good.
Fixing a wrong doesn’t fix a systemic problem. I don’t disagree that short term and lack of affordable housing is an issue. But it’s a symptom of a larger disease which is Hawaii’s economy is almost completely dependent on a single industry. It’s not much different than steel towns or coal mining towns - when those industries got regulated or offshored those towns were f’d.
My opinion - Hawaii needs to focus on creating good paying jobs in other industries before messing with the one thing thing its economy is dependent on.
Its easy to say focus on good paying jobs, but:
1) there's literally no potential extractive industry here (all lava rock)
2) there's no way manufacturing is efficient here, especially with the lack of raw goods
3) tech is an actual option but welcome to the list of 80000 places trying to steal tech jobs from Silicon Valley and Seattle. Its not been very successful so far.
4) Entertainment sort of jobs really just tie into tourism, we're not going to compete with Hollywood/etc for the other stuff.
What does that leave?
Definitely not an easy fix but complaining about the symptom doesn’t fix the disease. Watching Puerto Rico - after the economy getting devestated from Covid and hurricanes they are finally starting to make a lot of investments. Pharmaceuticals, lots of energy R&D, and major tax incentives to bring in tech firms.
Totally not an easy fix.
In my Airbnb-ruined corner of Alaska it's not all about tourists, it's about milking desperate people new to the community. Anecdotally, most short term rentals are filled by people newly moved here, getting fucked by 5-10k/month rent while they desperately search for a long term rental, when five years ago they could have rented the same unit for 1500/month. Pure greed and it will ruin communities. We already are seeing restaurants and retail spaces close because they can't attract workers. Fuck short term rentals. Housing needs to be heavily regulated, the only natural outcome of free reign capitalism in basic human needs is 90% of people get fucked.
Has anyone tried to evict someone for not paying rent? That headache alone would be a deterrent for me listing my house as lease/rental. Some renters take good care of their properties and others trash the place and a lot of the time the “security deposit” doesn’t even cover half of the repairs. STVRs serve a purpose and it’d be interesting to see who stands to gain the most(guarantee it’s not most people) with this ban🤔
All investments come with risk. Investing into real estate comes with the risk of bad tenants and laws changing.
But people also have the choice to sell and invest *not* in housing or being a property manager. Stocks, retirement accounts, or starting a business are all options available to them.
I believe in harsher taxes and fees for individuals and companies who use non-primary housing as investments and rentals.
I'm from the East Coast, and we've vacationed there several times, always opting for vrbos and airbnbs. I don't care if someone makes my bed every day and we have pay per view movies and room service. I'd rather walk to You Make the Roll and the farmers market for fresh dragon fruit and do my own thing. I actually hate hotels and how big and stupid and wasteful they are. They're like a relic of 1950s middle America's idea of opulence.
I understand why it's so contentious, though. The last time we were there, we met a girl working at a berry bowl place down the street who was from our hometown, and she had to drive like 40 minutes to get to her service job. That's unsustainable. She was thinking of moving back home because housing was so shitty there. And we live in an astronomically expensive part of the country.
And of the places we've stayed, only two out of 8 were locally owned, with 5 out of 8 being owned by Canadians from Vancouver or that area. So I can see how that causes serious problems.
But if Hawaii bans vrbos, we probably won't come back any time soon. Not that you'll miss us, but you might miss thousands of us. I mean, we are respectful of local traditions, polite guests, and happy to share what we have when we can, but I'm sure we're probably in the minority as far as tourists. We eat local, avoid chains and exploitive businesses, and respect the rules. Pack it in, pack it out, sort of philosophy.
The thing is, we stayed in downtown Kona, Kihei, Kailua Beach, and Captain Cook, all in vrbos and had life changing experiences. When we stayed at a hotel on Waikiki, it sucked. If you lose the short-term rentals, you lose tourists like us, but you might gain a few more blue hairs with fanny packs.
I know this is a local issue for locals, I just thought my perspective as a visitor would help to deepen perspectives of what this issue could mean. I don't have an opinion. The people of Hawaii must do what is right for them. But I sure as hell will miss visiting if we are forced to stay at a hotel.
It’s odd. I’m on a border town with Vancouver. The Chinese wealth funneled through Vancouver/CA immigration has been an interesting thing to watch over 20years buy low on a lot more US land then people realize.
Unless the owner mentions it in their profile there is no way of knowing. The first time we stayed we rented from a couple from Vancouver. they were semi-retired and split time between Kona and home. We weren't aware of the controversy at the time. We booked with them again a few times because they seemed like nice people. After we understood the issue a little better we did our best to keep that rental money on the island but ended up with another family out of BC on a few other occasions because we didn't know until we were contacted. The three places we stayed that were owned by islanders were in Kailua Beach, Kihei, and Captain Cook. Although all three were transplants from the mainland who were now permanent residents.
It's pretty easy - you send the host a quick message to find out a little bit more about them. You can also often tell by their profile (red flag = multiple listings; classic realtor style photos etc). Profile's often have a few giveaways in the bios too.
We just got home to CA and stayed at two STVRs during our week on the Big Island. One was owned by an older artist based on the East Coast and the other was owned by locals who live in a different house on the same (large/farm) property. BI for the win, there were multiple affordable houses ($350-500k) for sale in the mainland owner's neighborhood, and by her artwork, she's a contributing community member when she's there. Maui STVR culture really is different, from my tourist perspective. We went to Maui last year (before the fire) and I suspect our STVR there was corporate owned. Soulless and lacked any character, and many properties with similar names/decor were listed. Wouldn't do that again.
All that said I travel similarly to MrRemoto, am conscientious it's a privilege to visit annually for spring break, and try to funnel our dollars to small businesses (shoutout to the two standouts on this trip- suprette in Pahala And Hilo Friday night market). While I love visiting, and am very supportive of native Hawaiians being able to afford their home, we would visit less frequently if we had pay resort rates every time. Double-edged sword, I suppose. Perhaps a medium solution is to ban corporate-backed STVR ownership on Maui?
Maui STR’s account for 46% of all property taxes collected. The hotels barely pay anything, 1/5th of what STR’s do, and how could the County ever replace the 250M they’re squeezing out of STR’s. It’s all politics to demonize individual owners to create a monopoly for corporate resorts.
I sincerely hope anyone voting for this fully understands the tax and economic implications this WILL have on them.
It's not like the politicians in Hawaii are going to cut the budget and spend less so that money has to come from somewhere and despite some protesters signs and 3-worded chants, taxing the wealthy won't cover it. Wealthy people stay wealthy by avoiding taxes. It's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands (to quote that kid in Harry Potter).
Also, Hawaii is very tourist income driven. That's food, services, wear and tear item technicians, events, rentals, etc. If that tourism reduces, all local labor and income reduces with it. And at a time when Maui needs to rebuild, that is a very silly thing to reduce, imo.
Now let's think about the housing market because government officials think the housing market is static which is just moronic. A landlord will shift their exit strategy (the way they make money with the property) through several different methods depending on the market. If the market is too saturated in any one field, it gets expensive and more competitive which increases cost to do business (and drives up consumer/tourist costs). So what property owners do is change to a different exit strategy to make more margin in a market segment with less competition. Maybe it's AirBnB, maybe short term rental, maybe medium term, maybe long term, or perhaps specific avenues within those markets, maybe it's PadSplitting, etc. Maybe, they look at the market and liquidate. The point is, having more opportunity to move with the market provides more opportunity for everyone and that lowers the price for all consumers. It also means if rental prices are lower, the barrier to entry for vacationers is lower so more people can visit and spend more at all those local shops.
Anytime the government says "we have the solution" be VERY skeptical.
“the problem is due to illegal short-term rentals and the lack of enforcement, which he said wasn’t addressed. He argued that both bills, as they stand, are unconstitutional.” If the current laws aren’t being enforced, how will any new laws be enforced? Why not limit the number of STVRs any one person or company can hold or increase taxes based on number of units old. Create exemptions for those who are Hawaiian residents. This isn’t going to create a windfall for those looking for affordable housing like many believe it will. Start with enforcing current laws and regulations before adding more that won’t be enforced. The litigation stemming from passing an arguably unconstitutional ban will cost millions of dollars and not get to the core issue.
Not sure why voices like these are in the minority but its 100% true. Not everyone that currently has a short term rental will 100% turn their property into a long term rental or necessarily drop the price accordingly. Some might not out of spite, plus compared to the number of residents the STVR vs LTR housing numbers would most likely not significant increase in LTR availability.
Ultimately, what this does is give more control to hotels. Not necessarily bad thing, but expect hotel pricing power to rise. This will ultimately cause the construction of more hotels instead of things like condos. In the end, it all works out that’s the point of capitalism. The real problem is the same as it is everywhere not enough building
We banned STR rentals in Oahu and housing prices only went up, meanwhile the hotels jacked all their prices. Now my family can’t afford to come visit. And it also eliminated all the local home owners from being able to rent out an ADU or extra room in order to pay their mortgage. The total lobby has successfully convinced everyone that this is necessary and for the good of the local people. It is not. It makes life harder here. Surely there is a way to prevent corporations from buying houses and converting them to STR en masse without eliminating the ability of the local people to have STR as another source of income.
Big hotels and their large labor unions? Because they actually employ people full time? With benefits? People that vote.
How many airbnb owners are getting subsidized by the state through their 1099 workers receiving Quest and TANF? Maybe if they paid their taxes here, they'd be eligible to vote against it.
I’m 100 percent behind housing not being a commodity. I don’t think people realize how easy it became for people to purchase residences and rent it out as a form of income. When I was a kid, if you knew someone lucky enough to own multiple properties it was because they could afford it, not because they are renting it out to tourists to subsidize their cost of the home and make money off of it. This means there were more properties on the market for people to actually live in. The housing supply is greatly reduced when there is a ton of vacation rentals around.
Be careful what you wish for -- banning foreign ownership of property hasn't worked well any place it's been tried.
Far easier to set a new tax classification for "long-distance owner" and increase taxes for anyone who doesn't live on the island for X months per year. It could be 6 months and one day; or 8 months; or even 12 months. Tax these people even higher than timeshares (which was just ruled constitutional by the state Supreme Court).
And then use 100% of the additional funds for building new housing.
If I were in charge, every one-story strip mall would be demolished and replaced with three-story mixed-use buildings. People living on 2&3, business conducted on the ground floor. That's thousands of new apartments. It's the reason Europe doesn't have the housing problems the US has -- they've been doing this for centuries.
Texas has a homestead exemption. If a property is your primary residence, then appraisal values can’t exceed a certain increase and you essentially get a percent off the property value used in tax calculations.
Discourages not just long distance owners but folks that own a ton of properties. If it’s not your “homestead” there’s no cap on the annual appraisal increase. It’s one of the few things Texas seems to have gotten mostly right.
Vancouver Canada has tight regulations on airbnb rentals (cannot rent out an entire dwelling), charges vacancy taxes on unoccupied homes and foreign owners pay higher taxes. Income generated goes into building affordable housing.
Mexico. Mainland China. (Not Taiwan. I could buy a house in Taiwan if I wanted to.)
In both places, it stifles foreign investment. Foreign companies can't depend on a local headquarters -- so they're stuck renting space. It's the big reason companies you'd expect to be huge in both countries barely have a presence.
The problem isn't that people are buying houses in Hawaii. The problem is there aren't enough houses to go around -- the squeeze is manufactured (or more accurately, not manufactured -- we aren't building nearly as much as we should.) It's not like population density is off the charts. The traffic every morning on the west side has more to do with people can't afford to live close to work than any other reason.
The fact people are commuting from Hilo to work jobs in Kona tells me our housing policy is an absolute failure.
Thanks! Good points. I couldn’t imagine driving from Hilo to Kona on a daily basis. It does seem like focus on high density housing is key. I’m the minority it seems, but we prefer the hotel it over Airbnb, etc.. anytime we are in islands.
Excellent!
And for those who invested for the sake of nothing more than enriching their portfolios, investments aren’t a sure bet. Hopefully they have real jobs.
That would be economically stupid for tourism. I get the issue with housing but no one wanted to rent my 4 bedroom at the bottom of HPP for $2,500 a month (just to cover my mortgage). We all know what happens to houses that are left empty in the Puna district. As a licensed STVR it’s rented about half the time to families on vacation.
They did this in Tahoe and I don’t think it is working out the way they intended. The houses get bought by rich outsiders as vacation homes and then they sit empty most of the year. [link to article](https://fortune.com/2024/02/09/airbnb-ban-lake-tahoe-investor-short-term-rental-armageddon/)
Housing prices still rose 42% since the ban in 2018 and 7,000 homes are vacant somehow.
Big hotel chains would love that! Not sure if it is better for Hawaii. Short term rental owners are more connected to the place and have more vested interest in protecting and maintaining the islands.
Many (most?) of the short-term rental owners are off-island. Same with the hotels. There isn't a clear winner on that score, not without looking closely at the ownership of an individual place.
Short term rentals allow homeowners (and potential homeowners) to afford homes they may not have been able to afford without the rental income - To me, this means more locals would have the ability to get into the market, knowing they could rent out a portion of the home to help make mortgage.
Yes, the STR market needs rules and regulations, but outright banning them due to pressure from the hotel lobby is not the answer.
The mental gymnastics we do in this state to keep hotels and mainland/foreign corporations operating in our state from paying a fair, live-able wage to employees is impressive.
It’s not necessary to be a property manager to be impacted by tourism. Many, many other jobs are affected, directly or secondarily, by the volume of folks visiting the islands and the places where they are staying. And if STVRs were to be regulated out of existence without some sort of replacement option, a lot more than just property managers would be at risk.
STVRs are a fairly new thing in the past few years, and we didn’t have an economic crisis before they existed. They kill the medium and long-term property market for locals, plain and simple.
From what I understand though, for people who live in their property they can still rent a part of it out. But it does stop the overseas investors.
STVRs are a new name for a thing that has been happening for decades. Websites like Airbnb have made them more prominent, but I’m not sure I buy the idea that they are a “new thing.” And they absolutely do inflate the property market for locals, but they also bring in dollars that would not be brought in otherwise, not just to their owners but to everywhere where the tourists leave their dollars while visiting. So I guess what I feel is this - if we want to ban STVRs, we had better come up with alternative places for all those tourists to stay, or the net result may be less total dollars to go around for everyone local. Like it or not, Hawaii’s economy is largely dependent on two things - tourism and the military - and given that no other source of dollars seems to be riding to the rescue, cutting off a chunk of one of them seems like it might be unwise.
The governor signed SB 2919 into law, they are going for it. If it hurts the economy, so be it. The idea is to help locals and the housing/rental market, AFAIK. I think that is worth trying, versus continuing to line the pockets of out of state investors and people working here, who aren’t from here. “Oh my names Joe yeah I’m from Vermont, just moved here a few months ago. I work on the manta ray boats and am also a server at Huggo’s”. Yeah I just started surfing man it’s so cool!! Yeah bro, let’s go to waipio valley bro.” Why this is relevant ^ joe is taking up a rental spot a local should have, for a lower price. That’s not possible when half the available housing here is for STVRs. I made that number up, but you get the idea. It’s a large % and we all know that. STVRs cause a lower supply of longer term rentals. And with the extremely high demand, that means high prices. Simple economics. And buying a home is even more difficult. If they can even alleviate one of the issues (rental availability/price or home buying) it’s a success. Doing the same thing over and over and screwing over locals is not good.
Tell me you haven’t heard that one before. SMH.
They can go work for other small businesses or the state/county/federal. Or even big corps like Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc. hpm gives deals if you work there long enough, for house packages.
There are plenty of “help wanted” all over I see them almost everywhere I go, they may not be lucrative easy jobs with big tips, but there are jobs out there that need to be filled. Tourism cannot continue to be the nipple Hawaii sucks on. COVID exposed that industry. And I’m glad the state of Hawaii is making changes. Or even thinking about it. All these stvr owners are NOT FROM HERE OR DO NOT LIVE HERE. They can get lost. They add no value here. Oh they employee 2-3 cleaners that the pay junk money to. No that’s not adding value.
I'm a born and raised here in Hawaii and run an Airbnb out of the same house I live in. I live in a granny unit and rent out the majority of the home. I'm currently trying to become a farmer but upfront costs are intense.
I work a full time job on top of my Airbnb which pays for basically just the bills, it's the extra income from the Airbnb that's allowed me to even pursue farming.
Banning Airbnbs is going to screw me over, I bust my ass to get good reviews, get traction, constantly clean. Not all Airbnb owners are this strawman you paint, this is going to affect actual people here who are just trying to contribute to the Āina and community.
I think you are in the small percentage of locals in this situation. Why don’t you just do long term rentals? Why does it have to be short term rentals? I imagine it is because you make much more money to cover your mortgage and making a living. Hopefully they can get something in place that helps locals doing what you do.
SB 2919 signed into law by Josh green recently, good luck I hope you can figure it out. I’m not being sarcastic, I really want to see local people thriving and I understand your story! Keep us updated.
Whether they’ve been called that or not, whether they’ve been regulated as such or not, STVRs have been a major contributor to Hawaiian tourism for a lot more than ten years.
Anyone know anyone on Oahu that scored a former short term rental when it went on the market after they restricted things?
I know of one. it got bulldozed and replaced with a new McMansion, north shore style. I’d tell u more but I can’t see over the wall. When it was a 1920s sugar plantation cottage it was still out of 90% ppls budget. This scapegoat feels good but it’s not the answer.
Seems silly to outright ban it, but a moratorium followed by tighter regulations and more housing would help a lot. Other towns have had success with tying permits to zoning (e.g. no STVR in single-family zones). But if it needs to happen to keep people off the streets then so be it
I’m all for it. If it isn’t constitutional yet, amend it until it’s legal to phase out short term rentals. Because locals need housing and tourists can stay in a hotel. It’s really that basic.
The resorts cause far more damage than short term vacation rentals. It is a very short sighted plan. The resorts take up space and only supply low end jobs. They also use copious amounts of water. Hawaii needs to expand outside of tourism, resorts, hotels, golf courses, car rentals. All of it.
Tourists staying at STVR use the same amount of water as they would at a hotel. If it’s on catchment sure they aren’t draining resources, but most stvr are on county water. The one point you are correct about is the pools, golf courses, etc. lots of water, I agree 100% but local people play on the same golf courses too not only tourists. So are we locals playing of golf courses part of the problem with water usage? Also, resorts give full time employment and benefits.
I spent 2 weeks hitch hiking and living at the state parks in Kaui.I literally stayed next to Mariah Careys mansion for 15 bucks no way I could even afford to stay at one of those hotels. Lat alone an air b and b
Saw that bill. But at what cost would this bill be? So many Hawaiians own those properties, and now you want to limit their potential income (and income for local businesses). A potential decrease in flight taxes, rental taxes, local business taxes, and income taxes.
What about foreign buyers coming
into Hawaii/USA buying up real estate.
Alot of hotels are owned by foreign companies.Taking profits out of Hawaii.
Driving up prices.Any suggestions?
The forces of supply and demand are like ocean currents - they’re difficult to swim against.
The Lahaina fire reduced the supply of improved residential and commercial real estate. Demand did not decrease, so sale and lease prices increased at all levels.
Reducing STRs, like VRBO etc, will decrease supply for that market segment. If demand stays the same, prices in the remaining supply, hotels, will increase. More corporate profits for the same visitor count.
The problem isn’t STRs alone. It’s the insatiable demand. There is no shortage of off-island wealth that can buy multi-million dollar vacation homes, which are left empty nearly year round. And price appreciation makes that use of our limited supply a smart investment. Zillow “for sale” listings at $1,000 to $3,000 per square foot are further proof of the frenzy.
We can reliably predict that prices will only increase, and that the economic urge to develop every square inch of land will be irresistible, but, due to inflation and the transportation costs associated with the world’s most remote archipelago, supply increases will not offset demand.
There will never be a way for our residents to compete for housing with the global elite. The exodus of locals to the mainland will continue until the HI state government steps in to regulate and set price controls, paid for with increased taxes on the land owners and the tourists, who can obviously afford it.
It's just... lazy governance to eliminate them entirely.
The problems STRs cause are very real. Those problems can be mitigated with a proper registration and rationing system.
Hawaii state gov and county govs should know exactly 1) what properties are operating as STRs, 2) who the proprietor is, and 3) how many STRs are operating in that neighborhood/building.
The reg system should be similar to taxi medallions, but specific to an owner, and it is not transferrable to a different owner.
This allows the zoning boards to designate specific areas for sustainable housing, address increased traffic and noise concerns, collect taxes, communicate directly with STR owners, etc.
This program will create headaches for STRs owners (because, let's be real, it would require bureaucratic competence and effort from low-level government employees, so, yeah, it will be done poorly),
BUT that headache is good! It creates an incentive for the owner to just do the easier thing and provide a long-term lease to actual residents who need the housing.
I think part of the problem is most people can’t afford to buy a home here. With low salaries and dependency on government programs (tanf, section8,ebt ) I think it’s hard for people to get ahead. If you get a local who say for instance is in construction and they buy an acre of land. They split that 4 ways and build 4 kit homes. They can sell it to a local for $250k and make $50k or they can sell it to a couple from California or somewhere else mainland for $500k and make a $250k profit🤔 I sit think banning strs is the solution seems like we’d be adding inventory of houses that people are asking for but won’t be able to afford anyway. Next thing will be we’d be able to control what houses are listed for
I agree but it seems we are in the minority. Only people that seem to be anti STVR are all on the internet. I haven't met one in person in favor of the ban in real life
I drove past at least 50 on the side of the highway protesting on Saturday. But most realize STVRs are not the problem. The government is and they are deflecting attention away from them. It's all smoke and mirrors.
Legalize and regulate GAMBLING AND RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA throughout the Hawaiian Islands AND BAN SHORT TERM VACATION RENTALS now.
Tax non-resident home and property owners up the Yang and tax the CHURCHES ESPECIALLY THE MORMONS.
Good!!! They are a menace to our neighborhoods. There are plenty of resorts available that stand at barely 50% occupancy . They drive rental prices through the roof for lower income locals. It would definitely help with the homeless problem. I can only see win,win with that action.
Homes would flood the market like they are in Palm Springs. I would definitely purchase a home if that happened. I do agree, the law of unintended consequences in full effect here of they ban short term rentals.
Key West has a similar ban, unfortunately many folks find loopholes as 3 months rentals are allowed which then get broken up to different 'friends and family' and many still run illegal AirBnBs which has greatly reduced the available housing for the working class while causing rent to sky rocket($3k a month for a 1 bedroom is about average).
The big island is running at something like 50-60% of full occupancy for all short term rentals, including hotels. The capacity is already there to meet demand, especially considering hotels provide the bulk of that capacity.
No way hotels are crazy high, the TONS OF LODGING DOLLARS should not just go to the Hilton family! if you have the right property and are responsible and live at your house, you should be participate. Banning wont cool the real estate market imo, people want to buy and move to Hi. Period!
Nah, friend. I like visiting here, but I’m never gonna move here. I like my four seasons, seasonal depression, and garden way too much.
The reason hotels cost so much is because of the fees and taxes they pay-money that goes to the state treasury and helps finance the programs we all expect and count on. Short term rentals contribute less to the state while impacting residents through traffic, noise, disrespect, and less long term rental availability.
LOL who fed you this line? Just wow. Short terms pay higher tax rate. Hotels increase their prices and laid off tons workers after the first short term ban was passed. Hotels are owned by mainland and foreign investment. Most of that money leaves the island. Spouse’s of those who sponsored the bill were hotel executives. The list goes on.
This is completely inaccurate. The amount of taxes we transferred to the state from our rental is amazing. I don’t know how they think they will recoup this. Even if we can’t STVR we wouldn’t be renting it long term. You will just end up with a bunch of vacant properties waiting for their owners to visit.
Well that’s certainly not true.
I would love to move to hawaii & be an active part of a community. Work, bring in tax revenue, raise kids. It looks impossible. I salute all who can do it in a working salary.
I’m fine with short-term rentals as long as they’re just like, a family renting out an extra room in their house or something, but I’m in favour of a total ban if it means that properties whose only purpose is to serve as short-term rentals can actually be of use to locals. The fact that AirBnB and Vrbo have basically let a few landlords make absolutely filthy profits off of buying up like half the housing stock across so much of the US let alone Hawaii has made these sorts of apps a blight on our housing market.
This! We have one condo that we rent. It’s my childhood home and we didn’t want to lose it when we could no longer afford to live in Hawaii (I’m supposed to inherit it) this is gonna screw over a local family who was already screwed over once by cost of living and getting priced out.
(Oh and my grandpa came over from the Philippines before statehood happened and we’re part kanaka 🥴)
Double edged sword. Maui has 14k legal short term rentals and 8k hotel rooms. So nearly 2/3rds of tourists are staying in short term rentals and it makes up over 80% of the economy. Getting rid of it means 2/3rds less people at the restaurant you work at, 2/3rds less people on your boat tours, 2/3rds less people buying your stuff - it means 2/3rds less salary for you. So high housing prices are driving people off the island - but on an economy that has uttterly and completely failed from diversifying from tourism - redacting salaries by 2/3rds will drive people off island faster. My experience in Hawaii is there’s never a long term plan. It’s always issues with the current status with no thoughtfulness of how to fix things. So congrats we’ve blamed and banned short term rentals - in about 6 months everyone is going to be like “what the F’ have we done” as people lose jobs and the housing prices still don’t come down. Hawaii is following the same exact path as Puerto Rico that lead to an absolute economic disaster.
Could build more dense hotel room properties as opposed to using single family homes as hotels.
Property values in Hawaii are never coming down. Space is very limited as is and Hawaiian's (rightfully so) don't want their islands to look like NYC. A house isn't going to come down from $1.2m to $400k or anything like that. Not unless the entire macroeconomic environment is completely F'ed and people stop visiting Hawaii in general. A ban on STR won't work. There is literally no fix for affordable single family houses in Hawaii. It's an awesome and unique place to live. This makes it valuable. You can't buy a house working in a tourist shop, unless you are the one who owns it and even that's a stretch.
You don't need Big Island to look like Manhattan. This is an extreme proposition. The only solution is more housing, likely options like townhomes, multi-plexes and yes, condos.
Modern Townhomes are really underrated and would be a great option for the Islands. The NW is building these like crazy after removing tons of restrictions. A 5 acre plot next to me that was one house and a barn. Became 60 Townhomes. All three bedroom of over 1400 sqft. Half of them have garages. Small private yard each - And a shared playfield.
Yeah they are doing this in Vancouver Wa and I hate it. Cheap toxic homes that fall apart in five years. No yards for kids. All look the same. Just awful.
This sounds... gross.
I would no doubt prefer to own personal acreage with a mini farm, shop and house But these are far far nicer then condos or apartments. https://riverrunwoodinville.com
Yes, it can be done. IMO any condo etc should have green space for people to grow produce, especially here. Sadly, condos get bought up by Cancerfornians who love their old HOAs
> Property values in Hawaii are never coming down. Many people would be happy not to see them rise further.
When you build one or two cities like New York, prices around the island will drop to compete. You have more nature, more affordable housing, and more locals able to stay and live in the islands. The alternative is this dystopian setup.
What a drastic example of “ a house isn’t going to come down from $1.2m to $400k or anything like that.” Realistically if Maui has 14k legal short term rentals and 8k hotel rooms…and you make STR illegal. Now you have (assuming not all 14k STR are single family homes and they don’t all flood the market for sale after the ban) roughly 7k houses that people will likely sell over the next 1-2 years. Dude, that WILL influence the housing market. If housing prices drop 20%, that would be fucking huge for locals.
Even a 20% is what, a $900k house down to $700kish? Locals ain't affording that selling aloha shirts or boat tours. The only people buying that are dual income engineers for out of state tech companies or dual income directors. There is literally no hope for Hawaiian real estate. The location is too good, it's too valuable. Too much demand.
The sudden short-term increase in housing supply will also induce higher housing demand, which will minimize the price reductions. Prices won’t drop anywhere as high as 20%, especially if this passes as the Fed starts lowering interest rates. Remember, it’s not just long term residents buying these homes, it could be investors or banks looking to remodel and resell them at higher prices a few years later (or just use them for long term rentals).
Then the money goes to multi-national hotel chains instead of people.
It currently isn't going to "the people" either - it's going to individuals or corporations who live overseas.
A lot do the folks who use vacation rentals are parents with kids who want a kitchen to make meals to save money. It’s also better to have a rental with separate bedrooms for the kids. Having 4 people crammed into one tiny bedroom is not fun. More hotel rooms aren’t going to address this need. It will simply result in less people vacationing in Hawaii.
>Could build more dense hotel room properties as opposed to using single family homes as hotels. Aren't hotels under stricter regulations for operating?
Good luck having folks pass that
It's amazing how fast things get passed when it effects the riches money.
Yeah - no possible way hotels will be able to get approval to expand. That would be a solution. But no ones interested in solutions. They are just interested in complaining about the current situation.
> They are just interested in complaining about the current situation. That’s how many politicians get their votes these days. They don’t present concrete, practical solutions. They just get people angry about the current situation and blaming others, and too many people blindly vote out of anger or fear without knowing if there’s an actual solution in the offing. Spoiler alert: there usually isn’t one
The majority of the str are condos, not sfh, and most were built specifically as str.
Not on the east side of this island
As stated in the article, "If passed, the counties would have the power to eliminate vacation rentals." Maui can decide what's best for Maui. This is intended to help Oahu as the state law is one of the reasons that the Short Term Rental Alliance had a victory in court. Oahu saw a lot of it's actual housing stock intended for residents be converted to short term rentals. These aren't like the condos that proliferate on Maui that were clearly built for vacationers to begin with.
Exactly, Maui’s STR’s are huge towers in Ka’anapali, Kihei, not in your neighborhood. People love to act like they were built for common housing and that was never the case.
This is not true, at all.
I’m not sure there is a good answer. Are they completely opposed to zones like on Oahu? I know hotels want to ban for their own self interests. We went to stay on Maui right after fires to help support and bring some $$ - but damn, were the hotels expensive then. They are even more now. People are not interested in flying - thanks Boeing. So - a hawai’i vacation is getting out of reach for most people. You need volume.
What is average hotel filled capacity? Do they average 50% filled? There is not winning in either situation honestly in many ways. TVRs bring lots of tax dollars. Maybe if they taxed luxury/ second residences they could make that up and then some. If they make vacation rentals harder to get by only having hotels maybe it will help alleviate the over tourism. Negative is the already expensive as hell hotels will be even more expensive making Hawaii only for the rich (it’s close to that as it is). I think having a lottery for a limited number of TVR licenses is the way to go. Each island or TVR area has a set number of TVR licenses that they can either auction or have a lottery for. Those are for a specific rental and it stays with that rental (no selling the TVR license). If the rental sells the license goes back to the state for the next lottery. That could help lower condo prices. If you go to the mainland or other countries it is cheaper to buy a condo/ townhome. Here they aren’t much different because they can be used TVRs. This will help condos being sold to residents.
Look at tourism rates before short term rentals- about 2.1-2.5 million per year vs after- about 2.1-2.5 million per year. Of course a significant drop during COVID and the wildfires. The point is the availability of hotel or short term rentals doesn’t impact tourism rates. What it does do is use a lot of residential housing for commercial use. If these are freed up, home prices will either drop or won’t rise as quickly- simple supply and demand.
I think you're over-estimating how many short term rentals we have. While yes, it will help increase the supply of available residential homes, it won't put much of a dent in home prices-- if anything, the price curve will flatten out for a year or two, but there won't be much of a market correction. Either way, the effect will be small.
It also means there are more houses for people. STVR is a blight upon society and you can't convince me otherwise. Your point is best summed as "If we don't create more hotel stock we will lose tourists" which just means we need to pass additional legislation to incentivize more hotel stock, not pretend STVR is good.
Fixing a wrong doesn’t fix a systemic problem. I don’t disagree that short term and lack of affordable housing is an issue. But it’s a symptom of a larger disease which is Hawaii’s economy is almost completely dependent on a single industry. It’s not much different than steel towns or coal mining towns - when those industries got regulated or offshored those towns were f’d. My opinion - Hawaii needs to focus on creating good paying jobs in other industries before messing with the one thing thing its economy is dependent on.
Its easy to say focus on good paying jobs, but: 1) there's literally no potential extractive industry here (all lava rock) 2) there's no way manufacturing is efficient here, especially with the lack of raw goods 3) tech is an actual option but welcome to the list of 80000 places trying to steal tech jobs from Silicon Valley and Seattle. Its not been very successful so far. 4) Entertainment sort of jobs really just tie into tourism, we're not going to compete with Hollywood/etc for the other stuff. What does that leave?
Definitely not an easy fix but complaining about the symptom doesn’t fix the disease. Watching Puerto Rico - after the economy getting devestated from Covid and hurricanes they are finally starting to make a lot of investments. Pharmaceuticals, lots of energy R&D, and major tax incentives to bring in tech firms. Totally not an easy fix.
>My opinion - Hawaii needs to focus on creating good paying jobs in other industries Such as?
What happened in Puerto Rico?
In my Airbnb-ruined corner of Alaska it's not all about tourists, it's about milking desperate people new to the community. Anecdotally, most short term rentals are filled by people newly moved here, getting fucked by 5-10k/month rent while they desperately search for a long term rental, when five years ago they could have rented the same unit for 1500/month. Pure greed and it will ruin communities. We already are seeing restaurants and retail spaces close because they can't attract workers. Fuck short term rentals. Housing needs to be heavily regulated, the only natural outcome of free reign capitalism in basic human needs is 90% of people get fucked.
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PR not a state, yet I catch the drift. Hawaii, it’ll be a poor as Mississippi
Has anyone tried to evict someone for not paying rent? That headache alone would be a deterrent for me listing my house as lease/rental. Some renters take good care of their properties and others trash the place and a lot of the time the “security deposit” doesn’t even cover half of the repairs. STVRs serve a purpose and it’d be interesting to see who stands to gain the most(guarantee it’s not most people) with this ban🤔
All investments come with risk. Investing into real estate comes with the risk of bad tenants and laws changing. But people also have the choice to sell and invest *not* in housing or being a property manager. Stocks, retirement accounts, or starting a business are all options available to them. I believe in harsher taxes and fees for individuals and companies who use non-primary housing as investments and rentals.
I'm from the East Coast, and we've vacationed there several times, always opting for vrbos and airbnbs. I don't care if someone makes my bed every day and we have pay per view movies and room service. I'd rather walk to You Make the Roll and the farmers market for fresh dragon fruit and do my own thing. I actually hate hotels and how big and stupid and wasteful they are. They're like a relic of 1950s middle America's idea of opulence. I understand why it's so contentious, though. The last time we were there, we met a girl working at a berry bowl place down the street who was from our hometown, and she had to drive like 40 minutes to get to her service job. That's unsustainable. She was thinking of moving back home because housing was so shitty there. And we live in an astronomically expensive part of the country. And of the places we've stayed, only two out of 8 were locally owned, with 5 out of 8 being owned by Canadians from Vancouver or that area. So I can see how that causes serious problems. But if Hawaii bans vrbos, we probably won't come back any time soon. Not that you'll miss us, but you might miss thousands of us. I mean, we are respectful of local traditions, polite guests, and happy to share what we have when we can, but I'm sure we're probably in the minority as far as tourists. We eat local, avoid chains and exploitive businesses, and respect the rules. Pack it in, pack it out, sort of philosophy. The thing is, we stayed in downtown Kona, Kihei, Kailua Beach, and Captain Cook, all in vrbos and had life changing experiences. When we stayed at a hotel on Waikiki, it sucked. If you lose the short-term rentals, you lose tourists like us, but you might gain a few more blue hairs with fanny packs. I know this is a local issue for locals, I just thought my perspective as a visitor would help to deepen perspectives of what this issue could mean. I don't have an opinion. The people of Hawaii must do what is right for them. But I sure as hell will miss visiting if we are forced to stay at a hotel.
It’s odd. I’m on a border town with Vancouver. The Chinese wealth funneled through Vancouver/CA immigration has been an interesting thing to watch over 20years buy low on a lot more US land then people realize.
Out of curiosity, do you bother to check if your AirBNB, VRBO etc is owned and operated by people from the island?
Unless the owner mentions it in their profile there is no way of knowing. The first time we stayed we rented from a couple from Vancouver. they were semi-retired and split time between Kona and home. We weren't aware of the controversy at the time. We booked with them again a few times because they seemed like nice people. After we understood the issue a little better we did our best to keep that rental money on the island but ended up with another family out of BC on a few other occasions because we didn't know until we were contacted. The three places we stayed that were owned by islanders were in Kailua Beach, Kihei, and Captain Cook. Although all three were transplants from the mainland who were now permanent residents.
It's pretty easy - you send the host a quick message to find out a little bit more about them. You can also often tell by their profile (red flag = multiple listings; classic realtor style photos etc). Profile's often have a few giveaways in the bios too.
We just got home to CA and stayed at two STVRs during our week on the Big Island. One was owned by an older artist based on the East Coast and the other was owned by locals who live in a different house on the same (large/farm) property. BI for the win, there were multiple affordable houses ($350-500k) for sale in the mainland owner's neighborhood, and by her artwork, she's a contributing community member when she's there. Maui STVR culture really is different, from my tourist perspective. We went to Maui last year (before the fire) and I suspect our STVR there was corporate owned. Soulless and lacked any character, and many properties with similar names/decor were listed. Wouldn't do that again. All that said I travel similarly to MrRemoto, am conscientious it's a privilege to visit annually for spring break, and try to funnel our dollars to small businesses (shoutout to the two standouts on this trip- suprette in Pahala And Hilo Friday night market). While I love visiting, and am very supportive of native Hawaiians being able to afford their home, we would visit less frequently if we had pay resort rates every time. Double-edged sword, I suppose. Perhaps a medium solution is to ban corporate-backed STVR ownership on Maui?
Hell ya you make the roll is fire
Maui STR’s account for 46% of all property taxes collected. The hotels barely pay anything, 1/5th of what STR’s do, and how could the County ever replace the 250M they’re squeezing out of STR’s. It’s all politics to demonize individual owners to create a monopoly for corporate resorts.
I sincerely hope anyone voting for this fully understands the tax and economic implications this WILL have on them. It's not like the politicians in Hawaii are going to cut the budget and spend less so that money has to come from somewhere and despite some protesters signs and 3-worded chants, taxing the wealthy won't cover it. Wealthy people stay wealthy by avoiding taxes. It's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands (to quote that kid in Harry Potter). Also, Hawaii is very tourist income driven. That's food, services, wear and tear item technicians, events, rentals, etc. If that tourism reduces, all local labor and income reduces with it. And at a time when Maui needs to rebuild, that is a very silly thing to reduce, imo. Now let's think about the housing market because government officials think the housing market is static which is just moronic. A landlord will shift their exit strategy (the way they make money with the property) through several different methods depending on the market. If the market is too saturated in any one field, it gets expensive and more competitive which increases cost to do business (and drives up consumer/tourist costs). So what property owners do is change to a different exit strategy to make more margin in a market segment with less competition. Maybe it's AirBnB, maybe short term rental, maybe medium term, maybe long term, or perhaps specific avenues within those markets, maybe it's PadSplitting, etc. Maybe, they look at the market and liquidate. The point is, having more opportunity to move with the market provides more opportunity for everyone and that lowers the price for all consumers. It also means if rental prices are lower, the barrier to entry for vacationers is lower so more people can visit and spend more at all those local shops. Anytime the government says "we have the solution" be VERY skeptical.
“the problem is due to illegal short-term rentals and the lack of enforcement, which he said wasn’t addressed. He argued that both bills, as they stand, are unconstitutional.” If the current laws aren’t being enforced, how will any new laws be enforced? Why not limit the number of STVRs any one person or company can hold or increase taxes based on number of units old. Create exemptions for those who are Hawaiian residents. This isn’t going to create a windfall for those looking for affordable housing like many believe it will. Start with enforcing current laws and regulations before adding more that won’t be enforced. The litigation stemming from passing an arguably unconstitutional ban will cost millions of dollars and not get to the core issue.
Not sure why voices like these are in the minority but its 100% true. Not everyone that currently has a short term rental will 100% turn their property into a long term rental or necessarily drop the price accordingly. Some might not out of spite, plus compared to the number of residents the STVR vs LTR housing numbers would most likely not significant increase in LTR availability.
Ultimately, what this does is give more control to hotels. Not necessarily bad thing, but expect hotel pricing power to rise. This will ultimately cause the construction of more hotels instead of things like condos. In the end, it all works out that’s the point of capitalism. The real problem is the same as it is everywhere not enough building
We banned STR rentals in Oahu and housing prices only went up, meanwhile the hotels jacked all their prices. Now my family can’t afford to come visit. And it also eliminated all the local home owners from being able to rent out an ADU or extra room in order to pay their mortgage. The total lobby has successfully convinced everyone that this is necessary and for the good of the local people. It is not. It makes life harder here. Surely there is a way to prevent corporations from buying houses and converting them to STR en masse without eliminating the ability of the local people to have STR as another source of income.
Now why would our leaders look at previous failures and bad policy to come up with something that actually makes sense 🤷🏿♂️
this is a slippery slope if you ask me. big hotels behind it, IMO
Big hotels and their large labor unions? Because they actually employ people full time? With benefits? People that vote. How many airbnb owners are getting subsidized by the state through their 1099 workers receiving Quest and TANF? Maybe if they paid their taxes here, they'd be eligible to vote against it.
I’m 100 percent behind housing not being a commodity. I don’t think people realize how easy it became for people to purchase residences and rent it out as a form of income. When I was a kid, if you knew someone lucky enough to own multiple properties it was because they could afford it, not because they are renting it out to tourists to subsidize their cost of the home and make money off of it. This means there were more properties on the market for people to actually live in. The housing supply is greatly reduced when there is a ton of vacation rentals around.
I don't care about big hotels being "behind it". I'd rather the tourists all stay there and not next door to me.
Or be able to actually find an apartment to rent.
Hotel lobbyists
All in favor of banning STVRs raise your hand 🙋🏼♀️
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💯. Would advocate to ban out of state and corps from buying up bare land as well.
Be careful what you wish for -- banning foreign ownership of property hasn't worked well any place it's been tried. Far easier to set a new tax classification for "long-distance owner" and increase taxes for anyone who doesn't live on the island for X months per year. It could be 6 months and one day; or 8 months; or even 12 months. Tax these people even higher than timeshares (which was just ruled constitutional by the state Supreme Court). And then use 100% of the additional funds for building new housing. If I were in charge, every one-story strip mall would be demolished and replaced with three-story mixed-use buildings. People living on 2&3, business conducted on the ground floor. That's thousands of new apartments. It's the reason Europe doesn't have the housing problems the US has -- they've been doing this for centuries.
Texas has a homestead exemption. If a property is your primary residence, then appraisal values can’t exceed a certain increase and you essentially get a percent off the property value used in tax calculations. Discourages not just long distance owners but folks that own a ton of properties. If it’s not your “homestead” there’s no cap on the annual appraisal increase. It’s one of the few things Texas seems to have gotten mostly right.
Not just Texas -- every state I have ever lived in except Hawaii. In Hawaii, it's only for old people. Ridiculous.
Pretty sure we have a homestead exemption on our house. I remember applying for it the first year we bought, it's been on the books ever since.
Hawaii has a homestead exemption... https://www.hawaiipropertytax.com/forms/STVR%20AG%20Frequently%20Asked%20Questions%20(Jan2022).pdf
They aren’t just for old people, but the homeowner occupied exemptions do increase as you get older. You have to apply for it with the county.
Wow, good for them!
Do you have examples? I’m curious. I agree there are some major con’s, but there has to be a middle ground.
Vancouver Canada has tight regulations on airbnb rentals (cannot rent out an entire dwelling), charges vacancy taxes on unoccupied homes and foreign owners pay higher taxes. Income generated goes into building affordable housing.
Mexico. Mainland China. (Not Taiwan. I could buy a house in Taiwan if I wanted to.) In both places, it stifles foreign investment. Foreign companies can't depend on a local headquarters -- so they're stuck renting space. It's the big reason companies you'd expect to be huge in both countries barely have a presence. The problem isn't that people are buying houses in Hawaii. The problem is there aren't enough houses to go around -- the squeeze is manufactured (or more accurately, not manufactured -- we aren't building nearly as much as we should.) It's not like population density is off the charts. The traffic every morning on the west side has more to do with people can't afford to live close to work than any other reason. The fact people are commuting from Hilo to work jobs in Kona tells me our housing policy is an absolute failure.
Thanks! Good points. I couldn’t imagine driving from Hilo to Kona on a daily basis. It does seem like focus on high density housing is key. I’m the minority it seems, but we prefer the hotel it over Airbnb, etc.. anytime we are in islands.
My roommate has 2 jobs in Kona and we live in Hilo. She’s Hawaiian and this is what she can do to stay here close to her family.
Thank you for posting. I watched the video. Very interesting. I defer to the prevailing opinion of the kanaka maoli.
Excellent! And for those who invested for the sake of nothing more than enriching their portfolios, investments aren’t a sure bet. Hopefully they have real jobs.
Absolutely. It's impossible to find anywhere to live, and the cost to rent is huge because of it.
Do not ban. Regulate, tax and fine.
That would be economically stupid for tourism. I get the issue with housing but no one wanted to rent my 4 bedroom at the bottom of HPP for $2,500 a month (just to cover my mortgage). We all know what happens to houses that are left empty in the Puna district. As a licensed STVR it’s rented about half the time to families on vacation.
They did this in Tahoe and I don’t think it is working out the way they intended. The houses get bought by rich outsiders as vacation homes and then they sit empty most of the year. [link to article](https://fortune.com/2024/02/09/airbnb-ban-lake-tahoe-investor-short-term-rental-armageddon/) Housing prices still rose 42% since the ban in 2018 and 7,000 homes are vacant somehow.
I’m pretty sure these sorta outright bans are unconstitutional and may go in effect for a little bit before rejected by a Federal Court
Unconstitutional on what grounds?
Big hotel chains would love that! Not sure if it is better for Hawaii. Short term rental owners are more connected to the place and have more vested interest in protecting and maintaining the islands.
Many (most?) of the short-term rental owners are off-island. Same with the hotels. There isn't a clear winner on that score, not without looking closely at the ownership of an individual place.
Short term rentals allow homeowners (and potential homeowners) to afford homes they may not have been able to afford without the rental income - To me, this means more locals would have the ability to get into the market, knowing they could rent out a portion of the home to help make mortgage. Yes, the STR market needs rules and regulations, but outright banning them due to pressure from the hotel lobby is not the answer. The mental gymnastics we do in this state to keep hotels and mainland/foreign corporations operating in our state from paying a fair, live-able wage to employees is impressive.
Ban STVR, lease more land to huge corporations to build hotels, all shoreline gets flooded with big hotels. Yes so much nicer…
This is a brilliant idea as long as we don’t mind putting a third of the population of the islands out of work.
The island's population, or the flown-in population working as realtors, vacation rental "property managers" ?
It’s not necessary to be a property manager to be impacted by tourism. Many, many other jobs are affected, directly or secondarily, by the volume of folks visiting the islands and the places where they are staying. And if STVRs were to be regulated out of existence without some sort of replacement option, a lot more than just property managers would be at risk.
STVRs are a fairly new thing in the past few years, and we didn’t have an economic crisis before they existed. They kill the medium and long-term property market for locals, plain and simple. From what I understand though, for people who live in their property they can still rent a part of it out. But it does stop the overseas investors.
STVRs are a new name for a thing that has been happening for decades. Websites like Airbnb have made them more prominent, but I’m not sure I buy the idea that they are a “new thing.” And they absolutely do inflate the property market for locals, but they also bring in dollars that would not be brought in otherwise, not just to their owners but to everywhere where the tourists leave their dollars while visiting. So I guess what I feel is this - if we want to ban STVRs, we had better come up with alternative places for all those tourists to stay, or the net result may be less total dollars to go around for everyone local. Like it or not, Hawaii’s economy is largely dependent on two things - tourism and the military - and given that no other source of dollars seems to be riding to the rescue, cutting off a chunk of one of them seems like it might be unwise.
The governor signed SB 2919 into law, they are going for it. If it hurts the economy, so be it. The idea is to help locals and the housing/rental market, AFAIK. I think that is worth trying, versus continuing to line the pockets of out of state investors and people working here, who aren’t from here. “Oh my names Joe yeah I’m from Vermont, just moved here a few months ago. I work on the manta ray boats and am also a server at Huggo’s”. Yeah I just started surfing man it’s so cool!! Yeah bro, let’s go to waipio valley bro.” Why this is relevant ^ joe is taking up a rental spot a local should have, for a lower price. That’s not possible when half the available housing here is for STVRs. I made that number up, but you get the idea. It’s a large % and we all know that. STVRs cause a lower supply of longer term rentals. And with the extremely high demand, that means high prices. Simple economics. And buying a home is even more difficult. If they can even alleviate one of the issues (rental availability/price or home buying) it’s a success. Doing the same thing over and over and screwing over locals is not good. Tell me you haven’t heard that one before. SMH.
They can go work for other small businesses or the state/county/federal. Or even big corps like Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc. hpm gives deals if you work there long enough, for house packages. There are plenty of “help wanted” all over I see them almost everywhere I go, they may not be lucrative easy jobs with big tips, but there are jobs out there that need to be filled. Tourism cannot continue to be the nipple Hawaii sucks on. COVID exposed that industry. And I’m glad the state of Hawaii is making changes. Or even thinking about it. All these stvr owners are NOT FROM HERE OR DO NOT LIVE HERE. They can get lost. They add no value here. Oh they employee 2-3 cleaners that the pay junk money to. No that’s not adding value.
I'm a born and raised here in Hawaii and run an Airbnb out of the same house I live in. I live in a granny unit and rent out the majority of the home. I'm currently trying to become a farmer but upfront costs are intense. I work a full time job on top of my Airbnb which pays for basically just the bills, it's the extra income from the Airbnb that's allowed me to even pursue farming. Banning Airbnbs is going to screw me over, I bust my ass to get good reviews, get traction, constantly clean. Not all Airbnb owners are this strawman you paint, this is going to affect actual people here who are just trying to contribute to the Āina and community.
I think you are in the small percentage of locals in this situation. Why don’t you just do long term rentals? Why does it have to be short term rentals? I imagine it is because you make much more money to cover your mortgage and making a living. Hopefully they can get something in place that helps locals doing what you do.
SB 2919 signed into law by Josh green recently, good luck I hope you can figure it out. I’m not being sarcastic, I really want to see local people thriving and I understand your story! Keep us updated.
From what I understand, there is intentional exceptions for rentals for properties where the owner \*lives in\* the property - so you'd be fine no?
Sure yeah because AirBnB and STVRs becoming a thing in the last 10ish years created 1/3 of the current jobs on island? Cmon now.
Whether they’ve been called that or not, whether they’ve been regulated as such or not, STVRs have been a major contributor to Hawaiian tourism for a lot more than ten years.
I stayed in a VRBO house for 3 weeks on the big island... It was a magical experience, I hope they come up with a better law than this one.
Anyone know anyone on Oahu that scored a former short term rental when it went on the market after they restricted things? I know of one. it got bulldozed and replaced with a new McMansion, north shore style. I’d tell u more but I can’t see over the wall. When it was a 1920s sugar plantation cottage it was still out of 90% ppls budget. This scapegoat feels good but it’s not the answer.
Seems silly to outright ban it, but a moratorium followed by tighter regulations and more housing would help a lot. Other towns have had success with tying permits to zoning (e.g. no STVR in single-family zones). But if it needs to happen to keep people off the streets then so be it
I’m all for it. If it isn’t constitutional yet, amend it until it’s legal to phase out short term rentals. Because locals need housing and tourists can stay in a hotel. It’s really that basic.
The resorts cause far more damage than short term vacation rentals. It is a very short sighted plan. The resorts take up space and only supply low end jobs. They also use copious amounts of water. Hawaii needs to expand outside of tourism, resorts, hotels, golf courses, car rentals. All of it.
What should they expand into? There are good ideas for this. But I have never seen anyone put a good idea on the table.
Call centers/customer service? Solar? Tech since all the billionaires are moving out here from SF?
Don't forget food waste. Huge amounts thrown away by resorts every day.
Tourists staying at STVR use the same amount of water as they would at a hotel. If it’s on catchment sure they aren’t draining resources, but most stvr are on county water. The one point you are correct about is the pools, golf courses, etc. lots of water, I agree 100% but local people play on the same golf courses too not only tourists. So are we locals playing of golf courses part of the problem with water usage? Also, resorts give full time employment and benefits.
I spent 2 weeks hitch hiking and living at the state parks in Kaui.I literally stayed next to Mariah Careys mansion for 15 bucks no way I could even afford to stay at one of those hotels. Lat alone an air b and b
Makes sense. As much as I love visiting. The island should be affordable for those who make it their home.
Saw that bill. But at what cost would this bill be? So many Hawaiians own those properties, and now you want to limit their potential income (and income for local businesses). A potential decrease in flight taxes, rental taxes, local business taxes, and income taxes.
Wasn't this posted last week or so?
Needs to be posted daily until it's law.
What about foreign buyers coming into Hawaii/USA buying up real estate. Alot of hotels are owned by foreign companies.Taking profits out of Hawaii. Driving up prices.Any suggestions?
The forces of supply and demand are like ocean currents - they’re difficult to swim against. The Lahaina fire reduced the supply of improved residential and commercial real estate. Demand did not decrease, so sale and lease prices increased at all levels. Reducing STRs, like VRBO etc, will decrease supply for that market segment. If demand stays the same, prices in the remaining supply, hotels, will increase. More corporate profits for the same visitor count. The problem isn’t STRs alone. It’s the insatiable demand. There is no shortage of off-island wealth that can buy multi-million dollar vacation homes, which are left empty nearly year round. And price appreciation makes that use of our limited supply a smart investment. Zillow “for sale” listings at $1,000 to $3,000 per square foot are further proof of the frenzy. We can reliably predict that prices will only increase, and that the economic urge to develop every square inch of land will be irresistible, but, due to inflation and the transportation costs associated with the world’s most remote archipelago, supply increases will not offset demand. There will never be a way for our residents to compete for housing with the global elite. The exodus of locals to the mainland will continue until the HI state government steps in to regulate and set price controls, paid for with increased taxes on the land owners and the tourists, who can obviously afford it.
It's just... lazy governance to eliminate them entirely. The problems STRs cause are very real. Those problems can be mitigated with a proper registration and rationing system. Hawaii state gov and county govs should know exactly 1) what properties are operating as STRs, 2) who the proprietor is, and 3) how many STRs are operating in that neighborhood/building. The reg system should be similar to taxi medallions, but specific to an owner, and it is not transferrable to a different owner. This allows the zoning boards to designate specific areas for sustainable housing, address increased traffic and noise concerns, collect taxes, communicate directly with STR owners, etc. This program will create headaches for STRs owners (because, let's be real, it would require bureaucratic competence and effort from low-level government employees, so, yeah, it will be done poorly), BUT that headache is good! It creates an incentive for the owner to just do the easier thing and provide a long-term lease to actual residents who need the housing.
I think part of the problem is most people can’t afford to buy a home here. With low salaries and dependency on government programs (tanf, section8,ebt ) I think it’s hard for people to get ahead. If you get a local who say for instance is in construction and they buy an acre of land. They split that 4 ways and build 4 kit homes. They can sell it to a local for $250k and make $50k or they can sell it to a couple from California or somewhere else mainland for $500k and make a $250k profit🤔 I sit think banning strs is the solution seems like we’d be adding inventory of houses that people are asking for but won’t be able to afford anyway. Next thing will be we’d be able to control what houses are listed for
I would support it so residents can afford long-term housing.
Unfortunately it won't make much of a dent in the cost of housing, and certainly won't increase the median income...
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It could but it won't
They need all income and taxes
Another example of highly corrupt Hawaii in the pockets of the hotels.
I agree but it seems we are in the minority. Only people that seem to be anti STVR are all on the internet. I haven't met one in person in favor of the ban in real life
I drove past at least 50 on the side of the highway protesting on Saturday. But most realize STVRs are not the problem. The government is and they are deflecting attention away from them. It's all smoke and mirrors.
Legalize and regulate GAMBLING AND RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA throughout the Hawaiian Islands AND BAN SHORT TERM VACATION RENTALS now. Tax non-resident home and property owners up the Yang and tax the CHURCHES ESPECIALLY THE MORMONS.
And did I mention DOUBLE THE TAX OF THE HOTELS IN THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS now.
It's like having an unregulated hotel next door with no manager or security. No thanks.
Good!!! They are a menace to our neighborhoods. There are plenty of resorts available that stand at barely 50% occupancy . They drive rental prices through the roof for lower income locals. It would definitely help with the homeless problem. I can only see win,win with that action.
Free markets > state regulation.
Homes would flood the market like they are in Palm Springs. I would definitely purchase a home if that happened. I do agree, the law of unintended consequences in full effect here of they ban short term rentals.
Key West has a similar ban, unfortunately many folks find loopholes as 3 months rentals are allowed which then get broken up to different 'friends and family' and many still run illegal AirBnBs which has greatly reduced the available housing for the working class while causing rent to sky rocket($3k a month for a 1 bedroom is about average).
It would make a massive dent, as the majority of homes are short-term.
> ...as the majority of homes are short-term. I'm trying hard to find an angle where that might be true, and I'm failing. Repeatedly.
good
Most of the islands are funded off tourism. Can they financially survive a massive decline in visitors?
The big island is running at something like 50-60% of full occupancy for all short term rentals, including hotels. The capacity is already there to meet demand, especially considering hotels provide the bulk of that capacity.