The short answer is Sell it Now or Sell it Later.

Faced with a massive shortfall of rental properties in Ottawa, vacancy rates were 1.7% at the beginning of 2019 and speculated to be below 1% now, the City of Ottawa is preparing to enact by-laws to limit short term rentals like AirBnB in order to rebuild the rental stock available in the city.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: City of Ottawa Approves Tough But Fair Rules for Airbnb. #onlab #ottcity #onpoli #fairbnb #airbnb pic.twitter.com/jCK5PQtPsy— Fairbnb Canada (@Fairbnbcanada) November 27, 2019

If you currently own a short term rental property, that you don’t live in, you’ll want to consider transitioning it into a regular rental property with long term tenants and leases or selling it before the new by-laws are created in 2020.

Option 1 | Sell it Now

Currently (Dec 2019), Ottawa is in a “Sellers Market” for resale real estate. This is mostly driven by the current lack of inventory (properties for sale) which down to 25% of it’s peak in 2015. Another 1,100 properties listed for sale (which is currently the speculated number of AirBnB’s in the Byward Market alone) would propel the Ottawa real estate market out of it’s current seller’s market.

Doubtfully all the AirBnB’s in Ottawa will immediately try to sell, and given that it will probably take the City of Ottawa the better part of a year to design and implement these new by-laws, the rush to sell will be spread out. However, if you are considering selling your AirBnB properties the earlier you do it the better. For an idea of what your property could sell for in today’s market get a personal real estate market assessment.

Option 2 | Sell it Later

While in the short term, which I’ll define as the next 2 years as opposed to the city’s 28 days, the market will begin to swing out of a seller’s market as more properties come up for sale the overall trend of Ottawa real estate over the last 60+ years has been an average growth of 5.6%.

Holding onto your income properties will continue to grow your net worth and allow you to make passive income as tenants pay your mortgages.

Whether you choose the short term or the long term if you’d like to discuss these changes to your real estate portfolio or other strategies for building your net worth through real estate give us a call at 613-788-2113