Today, Toronto city council introduced new rules for short term rentals, including:

- The short-term rental must be your principal residence 

- Homeowners won’t be allowed to list secondary suites, such as a basement apartment, for short-term rental.

- Entire home rentals will be capped at 180 days a year (no caps on renting up to 3 rooms in your principal residence) 

I am wondering how short-term rental hosts have adapted to similar rules and how my fellow Toronto hosts plan on adjusting to the rules.

How does Toronto define a short term rental?

Hi Andrew,

Toronto defines 'short term' as less than 28 days.

Los Angeles is talking about adopting similar rules (though in the current proposal, homeowners WOULD be allowed to list secondary suites), and I'm giving it some serious thought because there's a property I'm close to securing in LA.

In my particular case, the house is a duplex, and the upstairs (more desirable part) is a 2/2 with an attached 1/1 in-law suite ("whole house" is 3/3), downstairs is 2/1.  My plan is to move in to the top unit, primarily in the in-law suite, so that the house is indeed my principal residence.  The 2/2 portion I would rent out full-time - it would technically be a share, though it would feel like a whole house.  I would also rent out the whole 3/3 house for the maximum number of days allowed by law.

What I do with the downstairs unit would depend on the language of the law, if/when it passes. Likely I'll focus it on mid-term rentals of at least 30 days so I don't run into STR regulations.

Obviously, I can make this work for me because of the unique configuration of the house; I'm not sure what owners who have multiple properties will be able to do. 

Originally posted by @Account Closed :

Hi Andrew,

Toronto defines 'short term' as less than 28 days.

 SF Defines short term as less than 30 days, and has similar rules about primary residency.

To adapt, cater your AirBnB with your other rentals to 30 day plus reservations

This will be the case in every major city before long. As it should be. There’s a huge difference between a VACATION rental and a dude that can’t afford a hotel looking for a cheap bed while trying to score a chick at the local bar and bringing her back to the room in the house while telling her it’s his house and making a ton of noises while the people living next door are trying to sleep and they don’t get to leave town the next day to their next scam.
Stop short terming in big cities it messes up the entire rental market.