The coastal markets are for the affluent, and the supply is shaping itself to the demand. We are seeing wholesale changes in places like downtown Carlsbad, where the quaint older homes and businesses are being bulldozed for redevelopment, mostly for higher-end condos.
Another change is how Airbnb and VRBO.com has fueled a cottage industry of short-term rentals. Properties that made no sense as monthly rentals are now catering to tourists and other short-termers to pick up more income.
There will be some turbulence along the way, but vacation rentals are here to stay. There aren’t enough hotels to satisfy the demand (LINK), and if you don’t mind the additional hassles, the short-term rentals can be very lucrative. Now a city councilman in Los Angeles thinks he needs to regulate it (H/T daytrip):
http://www.latimes.com/
An excerpt:
“Commercial ventures have purchased large numbers of rental units or even entire apartment buildings and converted them into de facto hotels, reducing and threatening the city’s stock of rental housing and affordable housing, and that is wrong,” Bonin said.
If you need more housing you need to re-zone and build more, if you’re unwilling to rezone and allow building, then you have to accept that you don’t WANT more biz and you don’t WANT more people.
Now depending on where that is, it either gets real expensive or real cheap. In coastal SoCal it most likely means a LOT more expensive.
This is the inconvenient truth.
We’ll see – this is the same city council that said they are going to cause 100,000 new units to be built in L.A. County. Once they see how hard that will be, maybe they will re-think the blocking of this natural evolution of free enterprise. If the demand is strong, then vacation rentals should be allowed to flourish.
Rob Reiner says “except Malibu.”
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2014/10/26/rob-reiner-steve-soboroff-spar-in-heated-measure-r-debate-over-malibu-development/
IMHO rezoning is a “taking” from the neighbors that invested based on the existing zoning. An apartment building displacing a SFR is most certainly going to impair the quiet use of adjacent properties.
La Jolla Light has been running articles on complaints about short term vacation rentals in La Jolla.
http://www.lajollalight.com/news/2014/oct/15/la-jolla-short-term-rentals/
I found a foreclosure that got auctioned in La Jolla shores earlier this year that had been listed by the prior owner on Airbnb. Even though the house was foreclosed in 2012, it had comments from renters as recent as early 2014. While looking at Airbnb, it was surprising how many residences in the nearby area were listed. Might be the kind of thing to check before you make a very expensive purchase in a new neighborhood.
“IMHO rezoning is a “taking” from the neighbors that invested based on the existing zoning.”
All of which if fine you just have to accept that your Kids (assuming you have more than one) will not likely be able to afford to live in the area and that there will likely be less business less economic activity in the area as well.
For coastal SoCal I think it means becoming a boutique community for rich people. Gradually forcing low income out.
What I meant to say is if your not going to allow re-zoning, expect a Rich peoples boutique community as a result (for coastal Socal).
Not saying that is bad (or Good), just not somewhere that low income people will be living (or even middle income in larger and larger areas over time).