Granicus, the company tasked with tracking the number of short-term rentals in Warren County, is having trouble keeping count. Warren County Treasurer Mike Swan says that an initial contract was written to find about 1,500 short-term rental properties, but only 600 have been found so far.
“I’ve had information that says we have anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 listings in the area,” Swan said.
Under town and county laws, landowner renting homes in the short-term must register and pay taxes as a hotel or motel would. The county has been working with Granicus since last year, and they still have not gotten a full dataset of those homes and properties that are used as STRs. The contract the county has with Granicus will not exceed $35,000.
“We want to get this done as soon as possible,” Swan said. “We want to send out notifications to everybody we don’t have registered in the data set.”
The lack of data concerned board members at a recent Queensbury Town Board meeting. Bolton Landing is rolling out their STR regulations this year and have been waiting on the data from Granicus for months, officials there said in February.
Granicus support said in an interview today, they don't have any insight into the reasons why they might not be able to get accurate statistics in specific municipalities.
STRs, as Short-term rentals are called, are made possible by websites like Airbnb, Vrbo, and HomeAway. They have exploded in popularity in the past few years. Airbnb’s annual revenue has increased from $3.4 billion in 2020 to $5.9 billion in 2021 alone, according to Bloomberg news.
Companies like Granicus help municipalities like Warren County keep track.
“They crawl through websites like Airbnb and Vrbo, and find the listings,” said Queensbury Ward 2 board member Harrison Freer. “They have a sophisticated algorithm that identifies short-term rentals, one which can track pretty well the number of stays and how long people are staying.”
Officials in Warren County are working closely with Granicus to find more listings, but it’s unclear why they’ve been unable to get an accurate count. Mike Swan speculates that some summer rentals may not be listed on these websites yet, but that more will appear as the season draws closer.
He also stressed that websites like Airbnb have begun to show listings from hotels like Marriot and Hilton, making it even more difficult to track true short-term rentals.
Keeping track of this growing business has become increasingly important.
Though many homeowners may utilize their houses as short-term rentals for the summer, Freer said investors are beginning to take up a larger and larger portion of the market.
“Because Airbnb and Vrbo are making a lot of money, investors are coming up here, buying houses, and turning them into short-term rentals,” Freer said, adding that he believes that many cities have struggled to keep up with this burgeoning trend.
He estimates that several hundred locals may be using their homes for short-term rentals.
“The big elephant in the room is that Warren County has a 4% occupancy tax that we charge hotels,” he said.
In 2020, Queensbury passed a STR law which extended its 4% occupancy tax to include STRs as well. This summer, Bolton Landing’s new STR law take effect, but it can only take effect on the homes that are identified as STRs.