Under revamped rules, short-term rentals are available in Montreal for the summer
Montreal mayor said she hopes rules will bring more units back into housing market
Starting today, most Montrealers wishing to rent out all or part of their main residence for a short period of time will be allowed to do so as long as they hold a permit.
The city's tourist accommodation bylaw, passed earlier this year, says short-term listings — whether they advertise a bed, a room or an entire unit — will only be allowed in Montreal between June 10 and Sept. 10.
After struggling against illegal short-term tourist rentals, Mayor Valérie Plante said she hopes the city's rules will simplify enforcement and bring more units back into the housing market given the current housing crisis.
"I feel like we're doing what is right. We're on the right side of the story," Plante told reporters last week.
"We're going to make it very simple this time. So, after Sept 10, if there's an ad out, if you're putting it out there — that's it, it's illegal."
The city charges $300 to process a host permit. As of Monday, it had received 890 applications and granted 329 permits, a city spokesperson said in a statement.
A list of the documents needed for the permit application is available on the city's website.
Though the permit is a universal requirement, some boroughs have their own rules and regulations while others, like Lachine, Saint-Laurent and Saint-Léonard, have prohibited tourist rentals altogether.
People who want to rent a home that isn't their primary residence to tourists full time throughout the year need a different permit and can only do so in very specific areas, like along part of Ste-Catherine Street in the Ville-Marie borough.
McGill University Prof. David Wachsmuth, who studies the short-term rental market, said Montreal's new rules are a "culmination of a very frustrating process."
Quebec's 2021 law regulating short-term rentals created a permit requirement, but lying on the application about your primary residence was fairly easy, and there was a strong incentive for doing so, said Wachsmuth.
"In Montreal, it's been true that you make more money with an Airbnb than you do getting long-term tenants if there's no rules in place," he said.
"That was the situation before the pandemic, it was the Wild West here, and it was very clear that, in many parts of the city, you're just leaving money on the table if you're not evicting your tenant and replacing them with an Airbnb."
For Plante, the system was "clearly" not working. According to her, it took too much time and resources to take down a single illegal ad in Montreal.
Quebec has been tightening regulations around short-term rentals especially after a fire at an Old Montreal building killed seven people in 2023. Almost all of the victims were staying in illegal Airbnb units.
But changes at the provincial level aren't being done with the objective of easing the housing market like Montreal is doing, said Wachsmuth.
He says the new regulations should help rents go down, adding that the strict time window during which short-term tourist rentals are now able to operate in will also make it harder for people who want to break the rules to fly under the radar.
Plante said the City of Montreal will adjust its bylaw as needed based on how things unfold.
Airbnb has called the bylaw "extreme and shortsighted" and said it would hurt "industries that rely on tourism year-round like retail, restaurants, and other small businesses."
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With files from Natalia Weichsel