A summary of a recent Globe and Mail op-ed by Thorben Wieditz, executive director of the Fairbnb Canada Network, with notes on why it matters for your book.
Ahead of this year’s FIFA World Cup, Airbnb ran a campaign to soften short-term rental (STR) rules across host countries, using the tournament as the rationale. In Canada, the company pointed to a commissioned Deloitte report forecasting that Vancouver would fall roughly 70,000 guest-nights short during a nine-day peak — a shortfall it argued would short term rentaland fans and cost the city tourist dollars.
On that basis, Airbnb lobbied the B.C. government and the City of Vancouver to waive host fees and the principal-residence requirement (the rule that lets owners run an STR only at the home where they actually live) to add inventory before kickoff.
Mid-tournament, the numbers tell a different story. After seven match days, hotels in both Vancouver and Toronto sat less than half full, and are tracking behind a normal June, with Vancouver bookings down about 25 per cent and Toronto down 21 per cent.
The short term rental market didn’t fare better: Toronto’s demand for Airbnb-type stays ranked third-last among the 16 host cities, and Vancouver’s short term rental occupancy is expected to come in about 10 per cent below the same period last year. B.C. Premier David Eby and the City of Vancouver declined Airbnb’s push and kept their rules in place, a call that looks well-judged today.
Why this matters for brokers: rents, affordability, and rate conditions
The same op-ed cites new peer-reviewed research (published June 10 in Regional Science by McGill’s Dr. David Wachsmuth and the University of Waterloo’s Cloé St-Hilaire, funded by SSHRC, with data and code posted publicly).
Using the staggered rollout of principal-residence rules across Canadian cities, it finds a causal link: when STR rules curb Airbnb activity, rents fall in the following years. Rents dropped about $24 a month in the first year after adoption and roughly $55 a month (a 3.3 per cent reduction) by 2023, adding up to an estimated $192-million in monthly rent savings nationally, or about $2.3-billion a year.
Rents and affordability shape the environment your clients borrow into. Borrower capacity, investor cash flow, refinance demand, and the housing-cost narrative all drive policy and rate expectations. STRpolicy is now a measurable input to that picture, not a side issue.
Why this matters for brokers: valuation and underwriting risk
Short term rental income is increasingly baked into how investors value properties and qualify for financing. The World Cup is a live reminder that event-driven and STR-income projections can be wildly optimistic: Airbnb’s own 70,000-night shortfall simply never materialized.
When a deal leans on projected short term rental cash flow, that income faces two risks at once: 1) demand that doesn’t show up, and 2) rules (like principal-residence requirements) that can remove the income entirely.
Both hit the file directly. A property valued on sustainable, supportable income is a safer file than one valued on the hope of a busy season that may not arrive.
The bottom line
Airbnb’s World Cup forecast didn’t pan out. For brokers, the takeaway is twofold:
short term rental regulation is a real driver of rents and affordability, and
short term rental-dependent valuations carry risk that hype can mask.
Underwriting to durable value, not to peak-event projections, protects your clients, your lenders, and your pipeline.
Sources
• Thorben Wieditz, op-ed, The Globe and Mail (FIFA World Cup coverage): theglobeandmail.com/topics/fifa-world-cup
• Wachsmuth & St-Hilaire, Regional Science (2026): tandfonline.com
• Hotel occupancy reporting: BNN Bloomberg