SANTA FE — The number of short-term rentals continues to grow in Santa Fe, which has the 12th-highest number of Airbnb units per capita among U.S. cities, according to a new study.
According to IPX1031, a national company that assists with financing, sale and purchase of second homes through tax-deferred property exchanges, Santa Fe now has 1,627 active Airbnb listings. That’s up from 1,444 in 2018 as reported in a study released earlier this year that was financed by Santa Fe’s Thornburg Foundation.
That local study also said that about 40% of short-term rentals in Santa Fe aren’t registered with the city. Registration requires an annual permit fee of $100 or $325, depending on the type of unit and whether the rental is in a residential area. The city is also losing $3.8 million a year in unpaid gross receipts and lodgers taxes from nonpaying short-term rental operators, the Thornburg study said.
Santa Fe’s per capita rate in the IPX1031 study is 961 Airbnbs per 50,000 people.
That’s just ahead of Honolulu on the IPX1031 list. Santa Fe’s density of Airbnbs exceeds major tourist destinations including New Orleans, Scottsdale, Arizona, Newport Beach, California, Charleston, South Carolina and Las Vegas, Nevada.
Miami Beach, Florida, has the nation’s highest per capita rate of Airbnbs, 3,416 per 50,000 residents. The only Western city in the Top 12 other than Santa Fe is Bend, Oregon, at fourth with 1,658 Airbnbs per 50,000.
The Thornburg-funded report said Santa Fe Airbnbs grew by 38% from 2015 through 2018. The new IPX1031 study says that between the third quarter of 2017 and the same three-month period in 2019, the short-term rental market in Santa Fe grew by 34%.
As in other cities, Santa Fe’s growing number of short-term rentals is controversial. Critics say that the rentals drive up home costs by reducing the number of available regular housing units and that they change the character of residential neighborhoods.
Amid a code change fight last summer that resulted in allowing long-term rentals by absentee landlords of both a house and an “accessory dwelling unit” on the same single-family lot, city leaders vowed to do more to enforce short-term rental laws.
No comment or updated city government data on unregistered short-term rentals or any stepped-up enforcement actions was available from a city spokeswoman or other city officials Tuesday.
IPX1031 has produced a series of research pieces about vacation home and short-term rental markets for their customers. The new study researched 750 cities using data from AirDNA, which analyzes the performance of over 10 million vacation rentals worldwide to provide information for use by property managers, investors and tourism boards.
