The City of Kelowna is in the process of revising its short-term rental bylaws to align with provincial legislation.

This comes a year after the city enacted rules making it more restrictive and cutting down the number of legal short-term rentals in the city from more than 1,200 in 2023 to 427 last year.

There have always been two camps when it comes to short-term rentals, those who purchased property specifically for STR’s and those residents fed up with the constant noise and disruption from weekend partiers.

During a one-on-one interview with Castanet News, Mayor Tom Dyas believes the new bylaws will strike the right balance because the owner will still need to be at the home.

“What we were encountering which was creating the problem was it was potentially a numbered company that was owning the property,” said Dyas.

“They weren’t even a resident of the community. They had someone else managing the property and if bylaw knocked on the door, the individual renting the property was just responsible for renting it. You had to deal with the owner but they weren’t present on the property.

“We will have that oversight where if there is havoc being created within a neighbourhood, the neighbourhood will have direct contact with the owner of that property to say maybe we can get this under control.”

None of that was available to the city before.

Dyas says all a neighbourhood could do was ask that the licence be revoked, but they often didn’t have one to begin with.

“It’s a matter of trying to manage and get greater control over it and that’s what I believe we are trying to do.”

With the chronically low rental vacancy rate suddenly up to a healthy 3.8 per cent, Dyas believes the direction the city took a year ago played a part but, at the same time, he says they don’t want to lose tourist dollars from visitors who prefer an Airbnb over a hotel room.

“We are trying to do what we can to bring it back to a middle ground.”

A healthy vacancy rate could also allow properties such as Aqua or Playa Del Sol to jump into the short-term rental market.

Cities with a vacancy rate of better than three per cent over two consecutive years would open the window for that.