Property Management Brainstorm

Episode 4 - The Future of Short Term Rentals, Featuring Dwight Worden, Mayor of the City of Del Mar, California

• Bob Preston / Dwight Worden • Season 1 • Episode 3

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Bob discusses the future of Short Term Rentals (STRs) with Dwight Worden, the Mayor of Del Mar, California. Bob and Dwight cover the new ordinance put in place in Del Mar to regulate rentals, room sharing, and house exchange of less than 30 days in duration. Sometimes referred to as Vacation Rentals, STRs have grown in popularity in many communities and neighborhoods throughout North County San Diego (Cities of San Diego, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Encinitas, and Carlsbad). The growth of the "sharing economy" and the online explosion of STR websites such as Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, and FlipKey have increased the number of property management companies and individual homeowners offering furnished homes to vacationers. This is not unique to North County San Diego, but is occurring in residential neighborhoods all over the world. This has rapidly become an emotionally charged topic, as conflict can occur between property owners who want to profit from short term renting and others who see STRs as turning their neighborhoods into commercial hotel zones. This episode is not intended to determine a right or wrong answer to this issue, but rather explores what City Councils are doing, now and in the future, in regard to STR regulation, zoning, and enforcement. This episode is always available for listening, sharing, or download at Property Management Brainstorm. See a complete time-stamped transcript of This Podcast Episode 4. 

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the property management brainstorm shell with Bob Preston. Bob Is the president, owner and broker of North County property group, the fastest growing and top ranked property management company in North County San Diego. This podcast is for property owners and investors for considering hiring a professional property management company to manage their property assets. You'll hear from leading professionals on the best practices surrounding the San Diego rental market, what's involved in successfully renting your property, and how to make sure your property is managed correctly. Now, here is your host, Bob Preston.

Bob Preston:

Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the property management brainstorm podcast. I'm Bob Preston, the host, the show, and we're broadcasting here today from our little studio in Del Mar, California and the North County Property Group office. Today we're going to be talking about short term rentals, which are sometimes called vacation rentals and the current situation regarding new city ordinances, not only in Del Mar, but in many of the cities along the southern California coast and sort of for the abbreviation, these are known as STR's and this topic has been getting a lot of attention, particularly in the Del Mar area and I'm fortunate enough to have here today to discuss this topic a person who has been right in the thick of some of these decision processes. Our new mayor of Del Mar Dwight Worden. So Dwight, thank you for joining us today.

Dwight Worden:

Oh, I'm pleased to be here, Bob.

Bob Preston:

Yeah, this is fun. We're neighbors and I rarely get a chance to sit down with you. So our dogs are dogs bark on the driveway. Yeah, that's pretty, pretty funny when that goes on. And so what I thought we could dive right into it as maybe you can just start by telling us briefly about yourself. How you got into being a part of the city council in the process of becoming mayor of Del Mar?

Dwight Worden:

I've been in the area since 1970. In fact, I used to live across the street from your office here. Uh, I graduated from law school here. I opened a law practice in 1975. I retired from active practice in 2001 while I was in practice, I was the city attorney for Del Mar for about seven years and I represented local governments throughout the county.

Bob Preston:

Oh, no kidding.

Dwight Worden:

Yeah. And I have served a stint on the coastal commission as a governor's appointee and also was a president of the Senate appointee. I served a term on the slot on the Solana Beach school board. So I've been engaged in local government as a lawyer and a participant for years. And then when I turned 68, I went, you know, I've always thought before I die, it would be interesting to be on the other side of the table and, and make policy instead of be the advisor and then realize, oh my gosh, I'm getting old. I don't run now where am I going to do. So in 2014 I did run for Del Mar to city council and was elected to the council.

Bob Preston:

Okay. And then what was the process of becoming mayor? Not an official election as it a sort of a.

Dwight Worden:

Right, in California there are two kinds of cities, strong mayor governments where the mayor is independently elected and has a lot of power. And then council manager forms. And we're a council manager form, meaning all five council members have equal power and we rotate the mayorship every year.

Bob Preston:

Okay. So like the gavel sort of gets passed.

Dwight Worden:

Right, so the only difference is I have some control over the agenda and there's babies to be kissed or ribbons to be cut.

Bob Preston:

Right, you're the public PR person. The point person for doing things like this too. We're really glad. We're really glad you're here. Well, it's got to be an interesting time to take over. As mayor and I had the pleasure of reading your little Sandpiper writeup. I'm assuming that once you put that in there about your priorities and are there any priorities in your agenda that are more emotionally charged perhaps in the short term rental?

Dwight Worden:

Ahh, probably not. Although we have some that are close, we are in the midst of the debate whether we're going to divorce the sheriff and start our own police department or whether we're going to stay with the sheriff for the longterm and we're starting to get some controversy around our sea level rise planning.

Bob Preston:

Right?

Dwight Worden:

Uh, but I think it's fair to say short term rentals has been the most contentious issue we've had, although we're not unique in Del Mar, in that up and down the coast, coastal cities.

Bob Preston:

San Diego is dealing with it. I saw that they struggled to get something passed.

Dwight Worden:

Solana Beach, Carlsbad, Laguna Beach.

Bob Preston:

Do you stay tapped into those communities and kind of what's going on?

Dwight Worden:

On short term rentals, absolutely. Yes I do.

Bob Preston:

And all of them are kind of struggling with this issue?

Dwight Worden:

They're all struggling and they all have different circumstances and they don't all share a common approach. But I think the, I'll call it a situation rather than a problem because it depends on your perspective. The situation is the same for all these cities, which is in the last five years or so, the number of short term rentals has just exploded because of the Internet. Uh, historically there were always some of these, but if you had to run an ad in the paper or you had to personally interviewed tenants, a lot of people didn't want to do that where now you can list with Airbnb or VRBO.

Bob Preston:

And these individual homeowners can do that instead of using companies like us, right?

Dwight Worden:

I saw a nationally, the number of short term rentals has tripled in the last, I think five years, and in Del Mar and in coastal California, it's been even higher than that.

Bob Preston:

What might be good is to take just a minute and make sure all our listeners are aware of what exactly we're talking about in my defining short term rental and my understanding, and I think this is probably pretty commonplace, and so if we're talking about rentals that are less than 30 days, yes, there are accommodations that are fully furnished and all the amenities provided. Typically utilities are paid, there's cable, there's Wifi, there's kitchen utensils, everything. You need to come in and enjoy your vacation while you're on a short term stay.

Dwight Worden:

That's the most typical experience, but there are variants of that. For example, you can have somebody who stays in their house and just rents a room on a short term basis, and that is called an in home rental.

Bob Preston:

Okay.

Dwight Worden:

You can have home exchanges.

Bob Preston:

Swaps, sure.

Dwight Worden:

And and the, those are a little bit different, but the most common experience is a family that for whatever reason doesn't want a hotel or a motel experience. They want to have a house and they want to come in and be able to cook in the kitchen and hang out and do that. So what you described as the most common.

Bob Preston:

Okay, and the term vacation rentals is tossed around sometimes. Is that essentially the same thing or do you prefer to use short term?

Dwight Worden:

I think short term rentals to me is a little more precise because most short term rentals are vacation rentals. But for example, if you want to go visit your parents on the east coast over Christmas and you want to rent your house out, or if you've got a visiting professor from another university, those can fall in the short term category but are not really vacation there. Are there other motivations.

Bob Preston:

Thirty, they might be 30 days or longer too.

Dwight Worden:

If they're 30 days or longer, they're not a short term rental.

Bob Preston:

Right, but there could be a vacation rental, I guess it might.

Dwight Worden:

It could be a vacation rental.

Bob Preston:

We have a lot of 30 day rental pluses in our portfolio. A lot of condo associations, for example, have that as part of their HOA. We have a lot of snowbirds that come in during the winter. They'll stay for two or three months and we still call those vacation rentals, but they're not technically short term.

Dwight Worden:

Well, that's. That's a good point too. You can have a rental for a vacation that's longer than 30 days.

Bob Preston:

That would be perfectly legal. Okay, and what's the magic number with 30 days? Is there.

Dwight Worden:

Why is that a magic number? I think the fairest answer is as follows, there is no magic to it. Would it be just as good if it was 31 days or 29 days? Probably, but in zoning and government, it's a process of lawn drop. Law Line drawing is 65, the right speed limit on the freeway, but not. Why not 67 or 63? Well, there isn't a reason other than when you have to draw a line somewhere and the 30 day limit does have some precedent in that under California landlord tenant law, if you are there longer than 30 days, that triggers certain rights in your tendency where if it's fewer than 30 days, then you're treated as a licensee rather than a tenant and it's different, but there's no real magic to that other than it's kind of a rule of thumb that's been accepted in the industry.

Bob Preston:

That's interesting. We actually have two different agreements that the BAR, the California Bureau of Real Estate requires of us. It's less than 30 days. It's a vacation rental agreement. If it's longer than it's actually a lease, you're leasing for more than 30 days.

Dwight Worden:

So you probably know more than me about this, but if it's fewer than 30 days and you want to get the person out for whatever reason, you don't not have to go through a formal unlawful detainer action and all of that if 30 days or longer. You do.

Bob Preston:

That's correct. Right. Okay. So I think one thing that makes Del Mar kind of unique is that vacation rentals in Del Mar, go all the way back as race rentals to the days of heyday of the, of the racing season, Desi, Lucy, Jimmy Duranti, all this kind of thing. So I think you've talked a little bit about what has changed with the Internet. Is that the only thing that's changed in Del Mar or the price of homes that the amount of rent that can be collected, maybe the number of outside investors. You guys track other factors as well?

Dwight Worden:

We do and lots of other things have changed. Well, let me comment on the first premise because, and I'll do this carefully because it's an important issue in its charge. In our community plan, there is one paragraph that talks about transient rentals.

Bob Preston:

Sure.

Dwight Worden:

As historically existing in Del Mar and it describes people coming for the racing season or owners that own a vacation home in Del Mar and income for the summer. It doesn't say anything about short term renting and the way that we know it now. Now there are people who anecdotally say, yeah, well my parents were doing it back in the seventies or my family did it in the eighties, so there's some indication that it was going on, but it was at a pretty low level and it really the major change is the explosion of intensity from the Internet, but other things that have changed and from my perspective as a city person, we have obligations under state law and under our own community plan to meet designated affordable housing goals, which means we have to have available rental stock at certain rates and one of the unintended consequences of short term renting is some of those properties in that rental inventory are being you converted to short term rentals.

Bob Preston:

Interesting.

Dwight Worden:

If you own a home and let's say you're renting it in del Mar for$1,400 a month and then you realize I can read this in three day increments and make 10 times that amount, you might take that out of that market.

Bob Preston:

You're blocking a percentage of the population from being able to stay.

Dwight Worden:

Right, and that impacts us as a city because it, its, it's an erosion of our housing stock.

Bob Preston:

Yep. I read a quote of yours. I think it was a quote that you said, gee, there are very few issues worth kind of fighting for the city level and one of them is the protection of our neighborhoods. I'm paraphrasing, but it was along that line.

Dwight Worden:

I said there are very few issues were dying. Now I'm thinking about it and that is an odd way to say it, but that are seminal to me and and that's not just my personal value, but to me at the core of this whole issue of how to manage and regulate short term rentals is we start with our community plan which was voter adopted in our zoning. What do the rules allow, and my principle duty as an elected official is to the best of my ability and enforce those rules and those rules written through our community plan and zoning, say the number one priority is to preserve the residential neighborhoods of Del Mar and to separate commercial from resident.

Bob Preston:

Okay. Because there are some zoning issues that have been identified on the new proposed ordinance will get into those a little bit later. I think a more detailed, but there's the residential commerce, the RC zone, which is more where hotels or retail, right?

Dwight Worden:

If you know Del Mar, Camino del Mar is our business district and its own central commercial. If you go a block towards the ocean, it switches to residential and our zone, but in between it's zoned RC, which is residential commercial, which basically says you can use your properties. Sixty percent commercial, 40 percent residential. Intended to be a transition zone and we have interpreted that song to allow unlimited short term renting.

Bob Preston:

And is that what you called visitor commercial, VC?

Dwight Worden:

No, that's a separate zone. We have an RC which is the residential commercial, and we have a VC which is called visitor commercial and in the visitor commercial zone, hotels, motels and short term renting is allowed and so this is part of the schema where residential uses are separated from the commercial and what short term renting at least at the full time property managed, mini hotel kind of thing. In my opinion, that breaks that down. You're introducing any areas that should be residential, these more intensive commercially.

Bob Preston:

So neighborhoods like where you and I live, those are clearly homes that are meant for full time residents.

Dwight Worden:

Right.

Bob Preston:

And that's, those are the neighborhoods were really talking about.

Dwight Worden:

Yes.

Bob Preston:

Okay. So if I am clear, I'm kind of summarizing what I've read and what I've heard about kind of the two points of view. The pro and the con.

Dwight Worden:

Go for it.

Bob Preston:

I'm Switzerland here. I don't, I'm not going to go on either side, but maybe you could just kind of confirm and I had some comments. So one side you have property owners who want to rent short term and they see regulation is a violation of their civil rights in some ways, right. And a disservice to vacationers would like to come stay and some have even pointed to financial hardship of the regulations with the need to rent their house to be able to afford living here and also a harm to the city's retail business by discouraging tourism. So that's one side, I think. And then the other side is the full time residents who've see short term rentals as you wrote in their neighborhood, turning their quiet residential streets into commercial hotel zones, people coming and going, lots of party perhaps, unregulated parking, noise control and things like that. Is that a fair?

Dwight Worden:

I think that's thats quite fair. And it's well summarized. There's a third perspective and that's the one I mentioned about affordable housing goals and housing stock, inventory issues.

Bob Preston:

That sort of out of the mind of the typical resident though, right? I mean you guys have to.

Dwight Worden:

Yeah, that's for us. That's on our plate.

Bob Preston:

Okay. Interesting. And so where are we today? Maybe that's a good place to jump to. This has come before the city council. You guys have done some voting on this. You past what you hope will become a law or ordinance. So maybe using the proper vernacular and at the scripture maybe you can kind of bring us up to speed on where we are.

Dwight Worden:

Okay, I'll summarize where we are. Last spring we did a formal interpretation of our zoning at, to clarify which zone short term renting is currently allowed in, which it isn't, and we identified that that's okay. That's the existing rules, that's the baseline. Now we wanted to take a look are are those doors shut to tightly should should there be a loosening?

Bob Preston:

Sure.

Dwight Worden:

And so the second phase we went into was to look at that perspective and that perspective resulted in an ordinance that we just adopted last month I think, which we call the 7:28, which says in all the residential zones where it's not currently allowed at all, you will be able to rent your place short term meaning for less than 30 days in a minimum seven day increment and for a maximum of 28 days per year.

Bob Preston:

Okay, and owners are required to register, I understand somehow?

Dwight Worden:

Yea, but it's like we're, we're trying to make that very simple like a postcard. You just tell us your name, your address, and the dates you intend to rent it.

Bob Preston:

Okay, and no limit like we mentioned on rentals of 30 days or more?

Dwight Worden:

You want to rent more than 30 days, you can do it to your heart's delight, so for example, let's say you own a house in the beach colony in Del Mar and you would really like to do something for the summer and you look at this and say, well how can I do that in 28 days while you can rent for the racing season, which is typically six, six weeks and that's not using up any of your short term rental allocation. Then you can do another 28 days in seven day increments and you can pretty much cover the summer season if that's what you want to do.

Bob Preston:

Okay, and if I'm interpreting this right, it's somewhat of a compromise your new ordinance. It's an in between kind of.

Dwight Worden:

I'd describe it as a compromise because I think it is a compromise. There was a, as you summarized, one half of our community that said, stop these things all together. Just shut them down. Just just even one for one day is too much. It was the other side that said, look, these are our property rights. We have a right to do this as much as we want to, so this is a compromise in that sense, although there's a lot of people that are unhappy with it.

Bob Preston:

Sure. Well, like you say, like we've already talked about there people on both sides of the fence and this is kind of an in between solution that allows people to do it with some regularity, right? Maybe not as much as I would like to and also limited.

Dwight Worden:

Yeah, and if I can explain why we think that's a compromise. The issue is we wanted to preserve the integrity of our residential zoning in our residential neighborhoods and the council concluded after hundreds of hours of testimony and study that if you own a house and you go away maybe for Thanksgiving and Christmas are you go away for a month in the summer and you want to rent it out to somebody else. You haven't fundamentally changed the nature of the neighborhood. You're still there most of the year. Your kids are still in the local school, you're still participating in community activities. The fabric of that neighborhood isn't broken and that justifies the seven, 28 opening of the door as legitimately a residential use. It's loud there, but now on the other hand, if you were a property manager and you're going to have a stable homes and rent them full time on a short term basis, now you're breaking the fabric of the community. We've just said we've defined that as that's commercial. You could do that in Del Mar, but go to the RC zone or the visitor commercial or one of the.

Bob Preston:

Okay, perfect. In this ordinance applies to those other two categories. We've talked about the house swapping and also renting a room. Is there a proper term that's used for the kind of the airbnb rental room thing?

Dwight Worden:

I think it's called a does have a either home sharing, sharing, sharing and property exchanges. What we did, which is what most cities have done, if you just trade homes. If I trade homes with you for a week, that's not subject to these regulations, but if I trade my home to you through a broker so that there's money being exchanged, now it is subject to the 7:28, so a commercial exchange is subject to the 7:28 rules, but a noncommercial homeowner to homeowner is not.

Bob Preston:

Okay. Alright, makes sense. And is this a done deal at this point or are there other hurdles that still have to be?

Dwight Worden:

It's a done deal in this sense in that we went through two years of hearings. We've adopted the.

Bob Preston:

This was not a fast, I know you've been in.

Dwight Worden:

No, a lot of political blood, sweat and tears on the ground from all parties, including me, but we do have a final ordinance first reading, second reading. The 30 days have passed, so it's final in that sense. It's not final in that we have to go to a coastal commission and get them to certify it as part of our local coastal program and it's not final in that some homeowners have sued us over it.

Bob Preston:

Some alliances formed. I understand that a.

Dwight Worden:

A judge could have changed what we've done or overturn it, so it's kind of final, but not really.

Bob Preston:

What kind of time frame are we looking at?

Dwight Worden:

For coastal, which to me is the most significant hurdle and we can talk about their perspective if you want, but we are filing our new ordinance this month with Coastal Commission and the latest word is we'll probably get heard in about a year. Okay. Because they're backed up so it'll sit there and then probably in 10 months or so they'll pick it up and start studying. We will then be dealing with them and having public hearings at coastal. If they approve it then it is a done deal except for litigation.

Bob Preston:

Right. So you're looking probably a couple of years out. In the meantime, are we under the moratorium that will adopt it or what?

Dwight Worden:

Moratoriums have a time limit under California law. They can't go longer than a certain time period. So ours we ended a little bit early, but we adopted what we're calling a forbearance period.

Bob Preston:

Okay, I was going to ask you about that.

Dwight Worden:

Meaning, if you were operating a short term rental and you qualified under our moratorium, meaning you, you didn't have to shut it down, you met certain criteria, then we will not take enforcement action against you unless and until coastal commission approves it, but what we don't want to do is tell somebody, hey, you're in violation. You've got to shut down, and then coastal makes us change it in some way so it's kind of a hold the phone until coastal makes a final decision for those people who qualified under the moratorium. Now if you want to go out tomorrow and start a new one, we probably are going to come after you for enforcement, but if you've been doing it for years, you can still do it under the forbearance period.

Bob Preston:

So if you had qualified under the moratorium, most of those people had already submitted their information and documentation to the city.

Dwight Worden:

Most people did. And to qualify for the moratorium, you just had to prove up that you'd actually been doing this for some period of time, that you were legitimately engaged in it.

Bob Preston:

We had several properties that met that criteria. So in terms of future bookings for companies like ours, I mean, what, what would you recommend? I mean, should we be just blindly booking people how to future or what happens when the coastal commission, if they approve it, what's going to happen to all those people who may have booked stays, you know, outside of that timeframe?

Dwight Worden:

Well, here's a and this advice is probably worth what you're paying for it, which is nothing, but if I were in the business, I would be thinking of the following. Okay. If I'm booking out a year or two, I'd better start alerting people that this whole issue is in play.

Bob Preston:

Of course.

Dwight Worden:

And from their perspective, some of it isn't heading in a good direction. The second thing.

Bob Preston:

There might be some risks. The reservation might have to be canceled.

Dwight Worden:

The second thing I'd look at would be to tell people who owned homes that are engaged in short term renting to start thinking about their options. Alright, right now, if they qualify into the moratorium, they don't have to do anything. They can keep short term renting, but it's time to start thinking, can I transition, can I make this 7:28 thing that work for me or not and if I can't make it work for me, can I switch to a 30 days or longer rental model and make my property work for me in that market and if not, then my options are okay, reverting this to some kind of single family home and do I want to live in it or do I want to sell it?

Bob Preston:

Sure.

Dwight Worden:

And think through those options and I don't think there's going to be a one answer fits everybody.

Bob Preston:

I guess the other option would be renting it long, truly longterm for a one year lease or something like that, which is typically unfurnished so investors could still get a return on their investment.

Dwight Worden:

From our city perspective, that's what we would hope some people at least would do because that helps our housing stock and our affordability goals so that visiting professor from MIT who's going to be at UCSD for a year can move here and rent. Bring the family live in Del Mar, be part of the community. That kind of thing is unaffected and.

Bob Preston:

Right, that's about 65 percent of our portfolio. So of all the properties we have under management, about 35 percent are what we consider vacation rentals. Some of those are short term, some are 30 days and then about 65 are longterm.

Dwight Worden:

And bless you, my son will not have any trouble from us for that.

Bob Preston:

So now the big question, enforcement. So how is this going to work? I mean I think right now we have a one person code enforcement team. I know Patty Malik personally, she and I are first name basis because she's been to my house many times for a few things I don't want to share but you know, so I mean there's mean I just don't know how you could deal with it.

Dwight Worden:

Here's how I think we're going to do it, but before I say that, let me just sort of defined some of the parameters and challenges. One of the reasons that was in favor of just having a clear bright line. No short term renting in the R zones, yes, and the RC and VC because then you could hire somebody once a week to come in and dial up the Internet. If you see an ad for a short term rental and in our zone, you know it's a violation because they're not allowed at all. By opening the door to this compromise of 7:28. We've muddied that water a little bit. Now I look up on the Internet and I see Bob Preston's renting over here, but I don't know. Maybe your within your 7:28 rights. Maybe not. That's why we would get a registration from you. A simple postcard. Somebody would look okay. That address. Yep. He's. He's registered.

Bob Preston:

Is part of that to notify the city when we actually are using up those so that?

Dwight Worden:

Yes, we would know when we see that somebody's there or a neighbor complains and says, Hey, my neighbor is short term renting and has. We could look up and see. Yep, you signed up for that. That's one of your dates and if you do that, let's say you go, well I don't know, a year in advance when I'm going to do this, you could put down a date and then if it changes you would just simply change it because our only motivation would be able to distinguish people who are within the rules themselves who aren't. So it's a bit of a complication. It does require some staffing. Most cities what they've done is imposed TOT, transient occupancy tax.

Bob Preston:

Right, and Del Mar was elected not to do that.

Dwight Worden:

And use the money to fund the enforced. We've elected not to do that, trying to not make this a money issue because it really isn't a money issue. It's a neighborhood integrity and uh, and uh, trying to find a compromise ground in the community. And it's not about revenue generation.

Bob Preston:

Interesting. I don't know if you remember this, but we have a second home in mammoth and the mountains and town of mammoth has struggled with this issue for years. You've got your condos and hotels. That and mammoth has extremely, especially during the winter is extremely high transient population. Yes. Like on a weekend, you know, 80 percent of the people in town are trans and so then you have your neighborhoods that are trying to be protective.

Speaker 2:

Well we had his second home and we have our family using it. We had an online calendar and the city founded online. Right. And so weekends, weekends, weekends, we weekends, weekends and they came after us and wanted to charge a lot for, for all the shorts. And I was trying to explain. No, this is our family founder. They want nothing to do about. We had to go to a hearing. The salt we work. We don't want to get in tangled up in all that chasing money. We don't want the guys in the big brown boots knocking on your door saying I have to count how many people are in the bedrooms to see here in compliance or not in a lot of the cities have taken that strategy. We're gonna allow short term rentals but no more than two people per bedroom. And you have to have parking and this and that takes the enforcement to whole nother level. And then the financial enforcement is also on their level, so we're trying. Ours is a bit novel and they were saying, look, you're going to get this seven, 28 privilege. This can be allowed in Celanese. Send us a postcard, just tell us when you're going to use it, and we're going to leave you alone. So take out your crystal ball. Now this is getting into Dwight's opinion of future short term rentals. I we kind of know where del Mar said it, but throughout other states. What's your. What's your feeling? I mean is everything gonna kind of go in this direction of perhaps being restricted somewhat. I have schizophrenia feelings which are probably reflective of the real world. On one hand, that whole sharing economy movement, whether it's Uber and lyft are going to rise. It's not only not going away, it's growing and people love it. And in a lot of circumstances that works really well. On the other hand, the short term rental movement is poaching on housing, driving up rental costs and running counter to statewide affordability goals for housing. And it is imposing conflict and a lot of traditionally residential neighborhoods, particularly in high tourist areas that are problematic. So yeah, it's tearing at the fabric and all the coastal cities are wrestling with. This is controversial in every city. There's no perfect answer here. We just kind of don't know yet, I think. But uh, the indications there that it's on, on, on the radar of a lot of communities I think in particularly long coastal communities in southern California and the bay area now and either way it's certainly a topic retracting and watching. So if you are an owner of a second home and you've been thinking about doing this and depending upon that income to afford your home, you should probably think twice. I mean, I think that's a fair. I think you should. And that's, I mean, let me phrase it this way, there's no doubt in my mind there's good people on both sides of this issue. Of course. Sure. Absolutely. And I've met with groups of people in the business of short term renting and people on the other side. There are lots of good people on both sides. And I, there are people who are going to be hurt, you know, if you just barely will it, we're able to afford your home in del Mar and you're counting on that, you know, nine months, a year of short term money to pay your mortgage, you're gonna, you're gonna have an issue. But to me that doesn't override our obligation as a city to enforce our zoning and planning, which says commercial stuff over here, residential over here. I think that's one good thing about this and del Mar is that it's a pretty tight population. What we've got around 500 4,200 4,200 residents versus San Diego who's got right? La Jolla, Pacific Beach Mission Beach. Oh my goodness. That must be just so complicated. Well, and to give you an idea, del Mar, there's 4,200 people, about 2,500 households and we get 2 million people that visit the beach every year and another 3 million who come to the fair grounds. So we're like mammoth. We have a small population base paying the property taxes and paying for the services and a huge tourist influx. So. And we have as a city and obligation to accommodate our fair share of those people who want to come and visit and we're trying to do that. Our short term rental program is part of that. There are other pieces of it that fit into that puzzle as well. Great. Well Dwight, this has been fantastic. Filled with lots of great information. Thank you so much for taking time. I know you're a busy guy and we really appreciate you having us or having having you on the podcast. So thanks for coming. Thank you for having me, Bob. It was good fun. Yeah. Good Fun. Well, that concludes today's episode. Thank you for all of our listeners for joining the property management brainstorm podcast. Until next time, who will be in the field working hard for our clients to maximize their property value and income and maintain top tenant relations. And I will see you next time. Thank you so much for joining.

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Bob Preston

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