Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner Dillon Moran has proposed legislation establishing a registry for short-term rentals (STR) in the city.
I am very much in support of the need for the city to establish reasonable controls over STRs. There are issues of city liability, the safety of renters, the potential negative impacts of poorly managed rentals, and its potential impact on the rental and home sales market.
Unfortunately, this proposed legislation represents a pattern with Commissioner Moran of taking a basically well-intentioned idea and failing to take seriously the need to rigorously go through the less dramatic work of scrupulously crafting the legislative language required for success.
Moran’s approach is to throw together legislation relying on pushback by the public and potential legal challenges to refine it.
Moran was able to pull off his outdoor dining program because he was basically giving away public property to restaurants and bars that would not raise objections to his plans. I FOILed for any city documents related to how he arrived at his fees for this and was advised that no such documents existed.
With STRs, his cavalier methods have run into reality checks from affected constituencies.
As just one example of how poorly thought out his legislation is, under “Definitions” item 1.j:
“Unhosted short term rental” means the owner will not be present on the short term rental premises for the entire duration it is being rented. or will not be, at a maximum twenty-five (25) minutes (JK: my emphasis) from the short term rental premices during the duration it is being rented.
STR Item 1.j
I am not sure who (or if) the attorney who reviewed this was, but I was told by an attorney that travel time is never used in this context. The proximity of something is always measured by distance. Using time as a measure would make determining the validity of an application nearly impossible.
Similarly, the registration fee of $1,000.00 was arbitrary and inappropriate as numerous people have pointed out. This approach failed to consider the difference between a landlord with a large house who expects to frequently rent their property and someone briefly renting a room. Moran is now reconsidering the fees, but something as obvious as this should have been dealt with during the crafting of the legislation.
Moran defends all this by assuring people that all of this will be worked out over time. Now I grant that no legislation is perfect and that invariably it will evolve over time, but a legislator has the obligation to minimize the need for such changes. It is unfair to expect the public to correct obvious errors.
Saratoga Springs Politics 
A study (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3006832) found that a 1% increase in Airbnb listings in an area leads to a 0.018% increase in rents and a 0.026% increase in house prices.
This means that if we assume 10% of Saratoga residences are used as airbnbs, this results in a $500,000 house becoming a $501,300 house. That different equates to about a 4 dollar per month difference in a standard 30 year mortgage. In sum, airbnbs are not the reason property prices are up, they are just a convenient boogeyman.
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I assume they have already have a Revenue line based on the $1000 per rental….
MORAN’S FEE base formula…. TOTAL City Deficit divided by total rental properties – round to nice easy number to make it look arbitrary, BRILLANT!!!!
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I too believe that the City must establish reasonable control over Short Term Rentals. And yes, Commissioner Moran’s proposal to do so needs to evolve into a document that recognizes the very real problems posed by the explosion of the very profitable commercial short-term rental units He needs to differentiate such uses from the seasonal rentals by home owners which have been a part of life in Saratoga Springs for many decades.
Residents have been renting out their homes to track and SPAC patrons and workers with little or no adverse impacts on neighborhoods. These practices have been providing a way for Saratogians to earn extra income from the homes which they occupy for most of the year. I am not sure that it is necessary for each of those residents to register with the City and have a fire inspection of their homes given the fact that such dwellings are primarily devoted to residential use. Imposing a $1,000 fee as well as a fire inspection fee for such a limited rental use seems much too excessive.
The commercial Short-Term Rentals are an entirely different use and have very different impacts. Such housing units are not occupied by anyone as a residence. They are dwellings that are used only as short-term rentals. They are basically mini-hotels. Most of the time, the units are empty while the owner or their property manager prepares for the next group of short-term occupants. Over the past eight years, hundreds of houses that used to be occupied by Saratoga Springs families have been bought up by entrepreneurs who are using those houses solely as very profitable short term rentals. These are commercial uses and they are often taking place in areas of the City designated as residential only.
While John Kaufmann mentions his short-term rental concerns including City liability, safety of renters, the potential impact of poorly managed rentals and the potential impact on the rental and homes sales market, he doesn’t mention neighborhood character. In 2016, when residents first started complaining about commercial short-term rentals, the biggest factor cited by long-term residents was the change in neighborhood character. Homes that had always been occupied by neighbors were suddenly left empty except for their intermittent use by strangers. My wife and I are now experiencing what it is like to live among four recent commercial short term rentals units in our sub-division. It is a drastic change and not in a positive way.
There are parts of the City where commercial Short Term Rentals might work without negative impact on neighborhood character. The Transect Zones (formerly designated as T-4, T-5 and T-6), the commercial districts and the corridors where Bed and Breakfasts are allowed would be logical places for commercial short-term rentals. And yes, it makes sense to require a license, a fire inspection and impose a fee ($1,000 is probably reasonable) for commercial short-term rentals. But there are so many zoning restrictions in residential areas (such as U-R 1, U-R-2, U-R-3, S-R-1, S-R-2), it is hard to imagine how a such a purely commercial use could conform.
Think of how many families used to live in the hundreds of houses that are now being used only for commercial short-term rentals. Those residents used to shop in our stores and eat in our restaurants. They used to look out for their neighbors and establish personal relationships. They are gone and they are missed.
Chris Mathiesen
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Chris,
While it is awful that there happens to be several clusters of commercially owned full time STRs, including one near your home, there is likely not 100’s of them. There has been no info regarding what percentage of the ~1400 STRs are owner occupied(won’t be changing) vs the ones that are corporate owned. In addition, there needs to be data regarding how many of those corporate owned units are simply a local person with a rental property or two that has put them into a single owner LLC. That is the way most attorneys will advise one to handle their rentals. While you have a cluster near you, that is not indicative of most neighborhoods. Dillon needs to figure out a way to identify the truly big corporate owned units and set his target on them. There is no reason to push out the owners renting to Skidmore/navy/travelling nurses and then to the track in the summer. If your neighborhood is having to deal with loud and late parties and noise, please utilize our existing system and report it. No one should have to deal with that.
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SSRRA,
Who is pushing out the landlords who are renting to Skidmore/Navy/travelling nurses and then renting to track people? This has been going on for decades and those units would not be considered primarily short term rentals. Commissioner Moran’s legislation would not apply.
If you are contending that there are not hundreds of houses used exclusively as commercial short term rentals in residential districts, then you should have no objection to curbing that practice in Saratoga Springs.
Chris Mathiesen
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John Kaufmann, A well said and balanced review of the proposed legislation. What missing from Commission Moran’s proposal presented to residents of Saratoga Springs is any semblance of data. Nothing presented so far provides anything more than a hunches/WAGs of how many supposed short-term rentals exists either now or in past years. As you point out, there are decades of history of homeowners in this city making their properties available for track rentals. To knowledge they have not been a problem or if they were existing laws, (I.e. noise ordinances, occupancy limits) already cover . If this is true, why is Commissioner Moran treating all short term rentals as equals in the city’s eyes?
The proposed legislation targets ‘owner occupied’ properties defined as properties where the owner is a New York resident for at least 185 days per year. Where or when has Commissioner Moran established how many dwelling units (or bedrooms) this currently applyies to? These dwelling units currently fulfill a well-established and longstanding need for ‘surge demand’ in periods of high tourism. So is the goal to build another 30 to 50 100-room hotels within the city limits to fulfill this demand? Do we want or need that many hotels built to satisfy the short term demand for 2-3 months year? How would that affect ‘neighborhood cohesion’? Does it make financial sense for a hotel corporation to build that many hotel rooms? Finally, why are we looking to regulate supply & demand economics in a way that will result in significant loss of income for either local residents and local businesses?
Has Commissioner Moran estimated how many properties will no longer be available if the proposed $1000 ‘registration fee’ is imposed? Note: the proposed fee is the same for a 6 bedroom home available year round as for a 1 bedroom studio made available only for Travers weekend when there aren’t enough hotels within 30-40 miles to satisfy the demand in town for short term stays? Where has he estimated the loss in sales tax revenue currently spent in Saratoga Springs that will be spent elsewhere if this proposal is accepted? I agree with the author that this proposal while perhaps(?) well intentioned is not well designed or based on much more than ‘guesstimates’ and the desire to fix a problem that’s not been proven to be true.
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How are other municipalities managing to purchase this software, create and run a registry on a $100 fee per home and Commissioner Moran thinks he needs $1000 per home?
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