Host Compliance to solve short term rentals dilemmas in unincorporated Chelan County

MANSON – Chelan County Director of Community Planning and Development Dave Kuhl stopped by the packed Manson Community Council meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 19 to talk about short term rentals in the area and all over the county.

"We will talk about Host Compliance technology solution, the Manson Ordinance that we will take countywide and give you an idea of the upcoming process that we will be going through," said Kuhl as he began his presentation.

The idea is to have input from all parties, the ones who run vacation rentals and the ones who are impacted, he said. In Manson alone, there are 60 registered vacation rentals with a typical nightly rate of $250. Ninety-four percent of the rentals are for whole homes which are mostly single family (53%). Countywide there are an estimated 1,500 listings for vacation rentals.

Host Compliance is a technology company that the county is thinking of hiring to manage vacation rentals. "They are based in San Francisco, they do a lot short term rental programs around the country and they represent a lot of communities," explained Kuhl. The company represents 150 jurisdictions to be exact.

At the moment the county is working on a contract with Host Compliance which still needs to be finished. "After getting the contract we are thinking that it will be six to eight weeks before we get our Ordinance, the actual law that is created that will regulate the vacation rentals," claimed Kuhl.

Why regulate short term rentals?

Vacation rentals bring on a whole bunch of problems and we must address them stated Kuhl. Some of the goals the regulations will tackle include reducing noise, parking traffic, trash problems, eliminating house parties, impacts on the neighborhood character, improve affordable housing availability, among others.

Host Compliance has offered to do mobile permitting and registration for short term rentals by phone. They will identify countywide addresses that have vacation rentals, will monitor compliance to see that people are registering and they will do rental activity monitoring thru a 24/7 hotline.

One of the neat things about Host Compliance is the ability it gives people to upload pictures of any issues going on in the rental property. "The picture will be captured in a system and that picture will go to the property manager to see what the problem is," said Kuhl.

The program will help the county with vacational rentals, "we will also have to use our code enforcement people to go and follow up with the problem," he added.

Those who do not register their rental through Host Compliance will likely get three notices before the county fines them. They could be seeing fines of $750 per day.

Host Compliance will charge the county on a yearly bases per rental. Based on the calculations for 2,600 rentals the county will pay around $100,000.  
The revenue will come from the sales of vacation rental permits, which are now $500. "We would have a way to pay for that, we would have a way to pay for a code enforcement officer and we would have a way for a fire official to go out and actually do the inspections that would need to make sure it is safe," said Kuhl.

He mentioned that it will be two months before the County Commissioners can look into the county wide ordinance, which will hopefully be implemented by summer time. The commissioners want to this right the first time Kuhl said.