Canada Has Enough Short-Term Rentals to Fill an Entire City

A few hundred thousand Canadian homes are being used as short-term rentals for tourists and other visitors, according to a new report — and that has implications for housing supply and, consequently, affordability.

By Josh Sherman | 5 minute read

Short-term rentals are more popular than ever in Canada, and some are concerned that this is contributing to higher housing costs for local residents.

There are enough Canadian rooms, apartments, and houses listed on short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb and Vrbo to accommodate an entire city.

So suggests a new report from Statistics Canada that looks at how many potentially permanent dwellings are being lost to hotel-like arrangements via online marketplaces.

According to the StatCan analysis, some 355,070 Canadian homes are being used as short-term rental (STR) units.

That inventory could more than house the population of the Greater Toronto Area city of Oshawa, Ont., or Halifax, N.S., for example.

Although that may seem like a lot, the national statistical agency is quick to point out that it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 15 million existing housing units in Canada. “STRs still account for a small proportion of total housing units,” according to the analysis.

In fact, short-term rentals make up less than 1% of Canada’s housing stock, the report notes. (Statistics Canada defines STRs as homes that are either fully or partly available for rent through online platforms, generally for periods of anywhere from one to 28 days.)

The report also notes that not all SRTs would be put up for sale or rent on the open market if their owners weren’t able to operate them as Airbnbs: “There are many reasons why a property or dwelling may be rented as an STR unit but would never enter the long-term housing market — for instance, a secondary vacation property rented while the owner resides in their primary residence.”

Though STRs may only represent a sliver of Canada’s supply of housing, they have become more prevalent in recent years, reaching an all-time high in 2023 after declining during the pandemic.

And they do have potentially significant consequences for housing supply. Although some STRs wouldn’t enter the long-term market under any circumstances, some certainly would become available to longer-term tenants or homebuyers.

To gauge how many units are being removed from the general housing market in favour of short-term rentals, StatCan broke the numbers down further. Researchers focused on what the report defines as potentially long-term dwellings, or PLTDs for short. These entire units that are available for short-term rent more than 180 days a year, excluding vacation properties or rooms/partial rentals. Across Canada, StatCan identified 107,266 PLTDs.

Coastal Provinces Lead the Way for Short-Term Rentals 

PLTDs are most common in B.C., where 29,643 of these units represent about 1.4% of the province’s homes. Prince Edward Island, which has 880 such units — or 1.3% of its housing stock — followed.

Ontario placed fourth, with 38,955 PLTDs accounting for 0.7% of all homes. Ontario trailed the Yukon, which had 0.9% of its homes (a total of 165 units) available for quick stays rent for most of the year.

On the local level, Statistics Canada notes that STRs are more highly concentrated in popular vacation destinations. “The shares were higher in tourist areas, especially in ski towns,” according to the analysis.

At 8,266 units, Toronto has the most PLTDs of any major Canadian city, surpassing Montreal’s tally of 7,185 and Vancouver’s 4,714.

While Toronto has made headlines for its so-called ghost hotels — condo towers brimming with so many Airbnb units that there are reports of vandalism and disturbances — the share of PLTDs in the city (0.36%) is lower than in both Vancouver (0.45%) and Montreal (0.39%).

Are Short-Term Rentals and Housing Affordability at Odds?

Housing advocates say that short-term rentals harm housing affordability by taking long-term supply off the market.

In response to the StatCan report, Thorben Wieditz, a housing advocate, says it’s crucial to put the number of short-term rental numbers into the proper context. “Data can be interpreted in different ways,” he tells Wahi.

Comparing the more than 100,000 PLTDs to the total number of homes in Canada “appears to minimize the impact that short-term rentals have,” says Wieditz, executive director of the non-for-profit Fairbnb Canada Network.

Instead, he says you should look at the rate of homebuilding, which fell 7% in Canada last year, with contractors breaking ground on 223,513 units. Or the national rental-vacancy rate, which was 1.5% last year, suggesting a similar number of homes are available for tenants for the entire country.

An extra 100,000 PLTDs doesn’t seem so inconsequential in comparison to these figures, Wieditz adds: “Basically those commercial short-term rental units that are unavailable to people to live in represent about half of the available units in Canada — and that is huge.”

On the subject of affordability, the StatCan report says that more research is needed to determine exactly to what extent short-term rentals truly impact it. “This analysis has shown that the subset of STR units capable of serving as long-term housing, defined as PLTDs, is generally small in most Canadian markets,” the report continues.

StatCan also notes that a variety of dynamics are driving high housing costs, and solving the affordability crisis is likely a complex undertaking. “[I]t is important to acknowledge the influence of many other factors affecting affordability and supply, including, but not limited to, multiple-property owner investors, the housing supply in relation to population growth, and factors relating to interest rates and financing,” the report notes.

Wieditz agrees these factors are worth attention. “I’m not saying that short-term rentals cause our housing issues,” he says. “But I’m saying that Airbnb adds fuel to the fire,” he continues, noting Fairbnb doesn’t take issue with home owners renting out their primary residences occasionally. 

It becomes a big problem, though, when a city’s worth of housing is being operated as illegal hotels, he suggests. “We should not spend taxpayers money on subsidizing and incentivizing the building of new homes in Canada only to have these being siphoned off by short-term rental platforms like Airbnb as hotel inventory.