Short-Term Rental
If you operate a short-term rental (STR) the rules in Kansas City will be changing. Sometime soon the playing field between Hotels and Airbnb etc. will be level or more equal.
“The overriding issue is protecting our city’s neighborhoods and people’s way of life,” says Diane Binckley, a division manager of the city’s Planning and Development Department. “We want to allow the sharing economy and short-term rentals to thrive here, but in a way, that’s respectful of other property owners.”
Local hoteliers and traditional bed-and-breakfast proprietors have slightly different objectives. They want to see the playing field leveled. As Southmoreland on the Plaza innkeeper Mark Reichle said at the June CPC meeting: “I’ve been in business 27 years, generating and paying money to the city. These entities [STRs] are operating as a business also. They should be paying all relevant federal taxes, local sales taxes, state sales taxes, lodging taxes. And they should have to adhere to the same fire safety, alcohol-use, food and zoning codes as well.”
Many real estate investors have bought up property that used to be in the pool of long-term rentals and converted the property to STRs. They avoid the regulations of the hotel industry and accelerate dire housing shortages. In effect, they are cutting supply for residents, driving up prices and turning properties once counted as long-term housing stock for locals into miniature hotels for out-of-towners.
What is coming according to Pitch, to those who seek to rent out their homes as a short term rental:
- Permit fees ($100 the first year, $50 every year after that for owner-occupied; $259 the first year, $50 every year after that for non–owner occupied)
- Non–owner occupied permit holders are required to obtain approval signatures of 75 percent of all adjacent property owners. If you can’t get 75 percent of your neighbors to sign off, you must pay $569. Then you must go through the usual process of applying for a special-use permit.
- All hosts are required to install and maintain smoke and carbon-monoxide detectors, per city building codes.
- If you live in a multi-family housing unit (an apartment complex, for example), you can’t rent out your place as a short-term rental.
- Citing “strict limits on how often one can share their homes as well as the requirement to get a signed affidavit from adjacent neighbors,”
Pitch quotes Airbnb’s Midwest public-affairs manager, Benjamin Breit. He says KC’s short-term rental ordinance as written “would create one of the most restrictive and burdensome short-term rental regulatory structures in the country.”
Some suggest this proposed bill amounts to just another way to increase taxes. Possibly, but there seem to be some good arguments for some of the same regulations and fees that hotels face. We do want to feel safe in a STR.
The commission is due to vote in August. That occurs after a crash course from members of city staff into short-term rentals.
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