The recent increase in property tax assessments has made it clear to anyone who owns property in the county that the real estate market has significantly changed over the last five years. Homeowners are now feeling the negative impact of a rapidly changing market that renters have been experiencing for years with the decline in affordable rental units.
As with economic growth, gradual increases in property values over time are a sign of a healthy economy and an attractive quality of life. However, rapid and dramatic increases are the sign of an inflated real estate market that threatens to displace both renters and homeowners.
Although there is no single reason for these changes, the short-term rental (STR) market has definitely been a contributing factor. In just two years, between 2021 and 2023, the number of new STR licenses more than doubled. Homeowners in parts of the county with the highest concentration of STRs, like along the Shenandoah River, are reporting the highest increases in their property valuation — some with increases of 300 percent or more.
Shifts in the real estate market impact renters first, in part because rental rates fluctuate quickly based on supply and demand, but also because long-term rentals can easily be converted to short-term rentals, and rental properties are often the first to be sold to investors looking to build STRs. In many cases, small homes or trailers that have provided affordable housing to the county’s workforce have been sold to investors and redeveloped as short-term rental units to serve the tourism industry.
Short-term rentals are an important part of attracting tourism and supporting the local economy. However, like all businesses, STRs need reasonable regulations to ensure their impact on the county and its residents is a net positive. As a previous letter writer mentioned, currently, the owners of over 50 percent of STRs in Page County are not located in the county, which means the revenue from those rentals is leaving the county and primarily benefiting outside investors.
Page County needs to pass STR regulations that make it easy for individual property owners to be able to rent part of their home or a single accessory dwelling unit in order to bring in supplemental income. These “Mom and Pop” STRs, which platforms like Airbnb were originally designed to support, ensure tourism revenue primarily benefits local residents. At the same time, regulations should make it harder for corporate investors from outside Page County to flood the market with multi-unit STRs, pushing out renters, raising property values, and making it harder for local STR owners to compete for tourism dollars.
Regulating STRs won’t solve our affordable housing crisis — that will require public investment in protecting existing and building new affordable housing — but it can let some air out of our rapidly inflating real estate market. As jurisdictions all over the state and the country have discovered, well-designed regulations can effectively mitigate the negative impact of STRs on housing prices and ensure that revenue from the STR market primarily benefits local residents.
This is not a new idea. Most jurisdictions with robust tourism have already regulated their STR markets. It’s time for Page County to catch up.
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