Airbnb activity at the current levels has not generated an economically meaningful increase in rents across Canada’s major cities, according to new research from the Conference Board of Canada in collaboration with Airbnb. The study is the first of its kind to use actual Airbnb booking data rather than information gathered from the webpage, and the first to focus on the effect of these short-term rentals on rents in the Canadian market.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in rents across Canadian cities since 2016, as well as an increase in Airbnb activity,” said Tony Bonen, Director, Economic Research at the Conference Board of Canada. “However, contrary to the common narratives around Airbnb listings, of the 30 per cent increase in rents observed in our sample of neighbourhoods, at most less than 1 percentage point can be attributed to increased Airbnb activity.”

The Conference Board of Canada found that despite having a significant effect on the number of active, high-use Airbnb units, regulations restricting short-term rentals to a host’s principal residence haven’t led to lower rents in the areas they were implemented. Additionally, the research found that areas that implemented principal residence restrictions tended to have higher rents, suggesting these cities may have been motivated to introduce restrictions to address broader affordability concerns.

The research focused on high-use, full-time Airbnb listings offered between 2016 and 2022 across 330 neighbourhoods in 19 of the largest cities in Canada. According to the study’s authors, these properties were chosen for their ability to “increase pressure on rents by lowering long-term rental market supply,” as opposed to listings also used as intermittent places of residence.

The Conference Board of Canada found that the number of high-use Airbnbs relative to the number of households in a given neighbourhood is generally low, though it does vary both within and between sample cities.