If you rent your property under Airbnb in Jamaica, watch this because the rules might be changing soon!

Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says he’s pushing for a review of the Tourism Act so that the Airbnb sector can be formalised. 

And I say Airbnb, but I’m using the term to refer to all short-term rentals, which are 30 days or less. 

Airbnbs are massively popular here and growing. According to Bartlett, the sector brought in over US$100 million last year.  And nearly one out of every three stay over visitors to Jamaica stayed at an Airbnb. That’s as much as 500,000 people.

But because Airbnbs are still relatively new to Jamaica, there are no laws to regulate the industry, which could be a problem in the making.

Now Bartlett’s statement comes after New York City basically banned Airbnbs across the city! 

On September 3, New York City began enforcing its Local Law 18 or the Short-Term Rental Registration Law.  That imposes some strict regulations on the industry.

For starters, hosts – the people renting out their spaces, must register with the city and receive approval to act as short-term rental hosts. Okay, this one is not so bad, especially when you consider the safety aspect. Registering with the city implies some kind of background check, which would put guests’ minds at ease.

But then the law adds that only residents of New York are allowed to register as hosts. So you can’t live in Jamaica and own an apartment in New York and rent it out. And hosts must agree to be present in the actual space, while the guests are there. Oh, and no more than two guests are allowed at a time. What?!

So technically, the city didn’t outright ban short term rentals, but with all the hoops landlords will have to go through, they pretty much did ban it.

Airbnb has already come out to say the law is a “de facto ban” on its business and they’ve had to cancel thousands of stays.

On the other hand, a lot of New Yorkers believed the drastic measures were necessary. New York City was already infamous for high rent and property prices.  New Yorkers reportedly spend up to 69% of their income on rent!

And lawmakers said Airbnbs drove those prices up even higher.  Landlords were charging more for rent because there were so few apartments available because everybody was doing Airbnb. 

And the same thing has been happening here in Jamaica.  It’s so hard to find a decent long-term rental at an affordable cost because investors are buying up all the new apartments to convert them into Airbnbs.  And like we always say, when the demand is great and the supply is few, prices go up.

Now the law was actually passed back in January. Airbnb has been trying to fight it in court since then, but it’s a losing battle.

And now that we have Minister Bartlett saying they want to formalise our industry here, what does it mean for the local Airbnb industry?  Whose side will the government ultimately favour?  The renters who want to profit from Jamaica’s lucrative tourism industry?  Or the tenants who are being priced out of affordable housing?