Prince Edward Island had 880 short-term rental units that could have been used as long-term housing in 2023, according to a new analysis by Statistics Canada.
That represented 1.3 per cent of all housing in the province. Only B.C. registered a higher percentage in the review, at 1.38 per cent.
For the study, Statistics Canada looked at listings on the short-term rental sites Airbnb and Vrbo.
To qualify as a potential long-term residence, a listing had to be up for at least 180 days of the year, and it had to be an appropriate type of listing: for example, a house, apartment or condo, rather than a cottage or bed and breakfast unit.
Overall, Statistics Canada found 4,636 short-term rental listings in P.E.I. in 2023, of which 880 would have been suitable for long-term accommodations.
‘I think it speaks to the priorities’
“I think it speaks to the priorities of the province, in terms of keeping an avenue of unregulated hotels open for tourist season while we’re in a housing crisis, when these are units which could be returned to the long-term housing market and serve as people’s homes,” said Cory Pater, with the group P.E.I. Fight for Affordable Housing.
Across the country, there were 107,266 potential long-term dwellings being offered in the short-term rental market, representing 0.69 per cent of all housing units.
Marie-Christine Bernard, assistant director of Statistics Canada and co-author of the report, noted that the research, which used data up to 2023 from Statistics Canada and short-term rental tracking platform AirDNA, did not look at the impact of short-term rentals on affordability or vacancy rates.
“We wanted to put it in perspective in terms of the housing market. We didn’t want to necessarily say that it’s not significant. It depends on the community,” she said.
