See how short-term rentals are taking over the Hive State

About four years ago, Natalie Porter’s husband became too ill to work. Porter, an elementary school paraprofessional in Antimony, a town of about 100 people in Garfield County, worried she couldn’t make ends meet on just her salary.

Porter called her son and asked if she could put the equity in her home in hers and live in her basement apartment with her husband “until I die,” she said. He said yes – but suggested she try running an Airbnb out of her home first.

Before her son could show up and provide the first notice three weeks later, the room she and her husband Michael had arranged already had three more reservations, Natalie Porter said. Income from guests, she said, allowed them to keep their home while her husband recovered.

(Natalie Porter) Michael and Natalie Porter at their Airbnb in Garfield County.

Garfield County Airbnb hosts like Porter together earned a total of $5.5 million in 2021, according to data recently released by Airbnb to highlight how the platform benefits rural counties.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox this spring blamed Airbnb, Vrbo and other short-term rental schemes for exacerbating the state’s housing shortage. In Garfield County, for example, short-term rentals through platforms such as Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo accounted for 6.2% of the county’s total housing, according to data from a recent report by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah.

The vast majority of short-term rentals across the state are full rentals, which studies have shown corresponds to the rise in house prices.

Natalie Porter can see the impact, she said, and she has qualms about short-term full-house rentals. “We are looking for a new teacher in our primary school and there is no room for them,” she said, so the new teacher will likely have to live in another city and travel daily.

On the other hand, although she now earns about half of what her Airbnb room rental earned before the pandemic, it’s still a “really good second income,” Porter said.

Airbnb shows us the money

Airbnb released revenue numbers for most Utah counties, excluding eight of the smaller and larger markets (such as Morgan, with 14 rentals on various platforms, and Salt Lake County, with 3,420).

Summit County Airbnb hosts were at the top in 2021, earning $57.1 million, the company said. That far outpaced the rest of the 21 counties where Airbnb has released revenue data.

Summit County also has the highest proportion of housing in the state occupied by any type of short-term rental — with its 6,042 sites accounting for 23.3% of its housing in 2021, according to the Gardner report.

In contrast, Salt Lake County’s 3,420 listings accounted for 0.8% of total housing.

Of the 21 counties where Airbnb’s total revenue was reported, seven others also reached or surpassed the $1 million mark: Sanpete, $1 million; Wayne, $1.8 million; San Juan, $4.1 million; Rich, $5 million; Wasatch, $6.4 million; Iron, $9.7 million; and Kane, $16 million.

Among those counties, short-term rentals across multiple platforms occupied the largest percentage of housing in the affluent county, at 16.5%, with 524 rentals.

Utah Law prevents local governments from banning residents from hosting short-term accommodations, but they can regulate how these rentals operate. In May, the Park Record reported that Summit County Council was considering regulate its growing short-term rentals. Previously, the only requirements were for hosts to acquire a license.

The county decided not to put in place a moratorium on new rental licenseslike some resorts like Aspen, Colorado have tried.

But they’re still trying to work out what Summit County Council member and vice-chairman Roger Armstrong called “a complex Rubik’s cube of a problem” balancing zoning, property rights and fire hazards of forest that come into play with the massive number of rentals. in the county.

The median price of a home in Summit County is well over $1 million, “housing prices are rising” and there is a housing shortage for the county’s workforce, Armstrong said. Hiring health professionals is becoming increasingly difficult; at a recent meeting in Park City, the local police, sheriff and fire marshal said less than 40% of their workers live in the county, he said.

With more than 6,000 short-term rentals in the county, Armstrong said he expects a shortage of 1,000 to 2,000 affordable housing units over the next five to six years. He said it would be helpful to “recoup” even a portion of those rents for housing.

“Find That Middle Ground”

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Castle Dale in Emery County, where short-term rentals have increased in recent years, Monday, August 8, 2022.

The new Gardner report focused on tracking the increase in short-term rentals, mapping their number and the total share of all housing they make up in Utah counties.

In 2019, there were 14,782 short-term rentals listed in the state. The total rose to 18,743 in 2021, a 26.8% increase in two years, according to the report.

This growth was concentrated in five counties: Summit, Salt Lake, Washington, Rich and Grand.

After Summit and Salt Lake counties, the only other counties with at least 1,000 short-term rentals were Washington, with 2,803, and Grand, with 1,026.

But these rentals had very different impacts on housing availability. Rentals made up 3.5% of the housing stock in Washington County — and 19.3% in Grand County, behind only Summit County.

In Grand County, home to Arches National Park and Red Rock tourism, hosts earned $22.8 million in 2021 from Airbnb alone.

Despite Cox’s concerns about short-term rentals, the Utah Office of Tourism has a official partnership with Airbnb which started in 2018.

That year, Emery County’s economic and tourism director, Jordan Leonard, told the Salt Lake Tribune he wanted to grow the short-term rental market to support tourism – the county had just 11 Airbnb listings at the time, down from zero two years before.

“We have rock climbing, we have the San Rafael Swell, but we don’t have accommodations,” Leonard said.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) A billboard near Huntington in Emery County promotes recreational tourism Monday, Aug. 8, 2022.

In 2021, the county had 49 short-term rentals, and Airbnb hosts alone earned $667,517.

Leonard, now a Castle Dale councilor, said he was always happy to see the positive impact short-term rentals have had for some people in the community.

Dilapidated homes that had sat vacant for years were “cleaned up” for rental and better maintained with the additional revenue, he said.

And while he acknowledges that the housing shortage is a potential concern, he believes it is possible to benefit from rents without saturating the market. “Hopefully we find that middle ground,” he said.

Short-term rentals made up just 1.2% of the county’s housing stock in 2021, according to the Gardner report.

Compared to long-term rentals, running Airbnbs is “a lot more work and time-consuming, but also a bit more cost-effective, in general,” said McKoy Allred, Airbnb host and real estate agent in the town of Emery. County in Orangeville.

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) A note left by renters at one of McKoy Allred’s Airbnb properties in Orangeville on Monday, August 8, 2022.

He started renting property with his parents about two years ago and has since acquired a handful of properties in Emery County that he manages with the help of his wife and mother-in-law, who clean between the guests. Allred does not believe it would be economical to own a property and use a third-party leasing company to manage it.

For the past seven years as a real estate agent, Allred has gone door-to-door, but only recently has he become able to support himself through Airbnbs alone. For him, it’s a big advantage because he can stay in the area “where I have family and friends”, he says.

It also enjoys the tourism money that comes to town from short-term rentals.

“Over the past three years, the Emery County Travel Office has been working toward a more holistic approach to tourism,” said Adriana Chimaras, Emery County Director of Tourism and Museums. “Instead of just focusing on marketing or increasing short-term rentals, we’re looking to manage the destination as a whole.”

Leto Sapunar is a Report for America member of the body covering corporate responsibility and sustainability for the Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps him keep writing stories like this; please consider making a tax deductible donation of any amount today by clicking here.

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