Christine Karpinski:  I am Christine Karpinski. Thank you for listening to the How To Rent Vacation Properties By Owner podcast. Today I am going to talk about vacation rental bans. First, I let me to you what a vacation rental ban is. It is basically when a municipality imposes a restriction against you renting your property on a nightly, weekly, or even sometimes a monthly basis. The restrictions typically mean anything less than a full lease of six months or more. These bans are becoming way more prevalent.

And let me tell you what motivated me to bring you this podcast. This past weekend I got an email from a homeowner in Hawaii, and she was requesting that I take some action to help the state of Hawaii vacation rental owners out. Basically, there was a meeting that was going to go forth, through the state, where they were talking about restricting vacation rentals in the whole state of Hawaii. I know it sounds absurd; it's crazy to me as well. This has not been resolved, there are still issues going on with this. I am definitely keeping my eye on this, as you should. Even if you don't own in Hawaii because it is happening throughout the whole country. And if Hawaii passes a ban on vacation rentals in their entire state, this is going to set precedence for other states. So we have to, definitely keep our eye on this.

So let me tell you a little bit about vacation rental bans. Why, first of all, they came about, and what you can do as a property owner to help or prevent it from happening in your area. Basically a vacation rental ban, as I said before, is when a municipality imposes a restriction against you renting your property on a nightly or weekly basis. We are seeing this throughout the whole country. I've seen it in California, in Florida, in Maine, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Arizona is another big one, New York. I have even seen it is part of Canada. These state and local governments are not the only entities that are imposing vacation rental bans. We have seen for a long time, the condominium complexes and homeowner associations are also getting into this act.

This is why of course I advise people when they go to purchase that you should not buy in an area where there is a vacation rental ban, where there's zoning laws against it. So often I will hear from somebody that says, "Oh Christine, we bought this place here in Arizona. We knew it was illegal to rent our property but, you know, everybody else was doing this." This goes back to the principals that your mother taught you, "Just because everybody else is doing it doesn't make it right." Sooner or later somebody is going to figure it out.

And let me tell you something: if there is a law on the books, it is very easy for one single homeowner to raise the point and make it so that the local government has to enforce that law. If there's not a law, there are a lot of things that you can do to help combat and fight that law from happening.

Let me tell you about the three things that are definitely driving vacation rental restrictions around the country. Permanent residents, I think, are the primary reason that we see vacation rental bans. It seems that people who live in the vacation rental areas get upset when people start moving into their secret little paradise. They don't like to deal with the crowded roads, the crowded grocery stores, the restaurants, they can't go out to eat-- it takes an hour or two hours to sit down. That's usually what starts the wheels in motion for a vacation rental ban. The local residents basically get annoyed, they get annoyed with the parking issues, they get annoyed with the partiers, or the crowded beaches, or anybody that has come into their little paradise.

And then there is the other part, the more socioeconomic issue, because what happens is vacation rental properties help drive up the prices for the properties in the area. And the locals can no longer afford to live in their little paradise. So there are a lot of things, and I think that the understanding of that helps you be able to combat it and makes it easier for you to fight.

Another reason is the hotel and bed and breakfast industries. Let's face it: most people who rent by owner think that their main competitors are property managers. Property managers and vacation rental owners are really working toward the same goal. It is the same thing; it is just a matter of who is physically renting that property. While those property managers do share the industry, it is really the hotels and B&Bs who are our biggest competitors. Vacation rental owners, we are edging in on their territories, and I think that is probably the biggest lobby group that we see is hotels. They have really deep pockets and plenty of money to lobby against short term rentals. If you have got somebody who is going to an area and their hotels are no longer booked, but all their vacation rentals are booked, those hotels are going to be coming up on our shirttails and they are going to start fighting.

I would say, probably the biggest problem that we vacation rental owners face is that it is really difficulty for us to band together to fight against the cause. And it is really imperative that individual owners and property managers work together on these issues. We saw this in Big Bear California, where it was brought up (vacation rental bans and restrictions) and hotel and B&B owners were trying to get it on the books. And the property managers were wise enough to get together with property owners and band together to try to fight it. And thus far they have been pretty successful. So, definitely follow their lead on that. You can go to the Owner Community and read a lot of news articles about what happened in Big Bear, California.