Thousands in town for F1, ACL, football staying in unlicensed short term rentals

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- When tens of thousands of people flood to Austin for events like Formula 1, Austin City Limits Music Festival, South by Southwest or this weekend's Georgia vs. University of Texas football game, many of them stay in short term rentals (STRs).

But we found in 2022, thousands of those STRs don't have their required city permit.

“Every single day the city is losing out on thousands of dollars that could go to support cultural arts, our music community and historic preservation projects and so I think it’s incumbent that our council revisits our STR conversation to have a conversation on how we can work the operators and work with our community to ensure that we have a system in place that everyone mutually benefits from,” Council Member Vanessa Fuentes said then.

We did the same report again this time last year, in 2023, and found that the number of people with active STR licenses had only gone up nominally -- from just under 2,000 to 2,201.

And here we are again, 2024, and while there have been pushes by some city leaders to better regulate short term rentals in Austin, not much has changed. As of Friday, the city's Development Services Department (DSD) says there are 2,278 properties with an active license.

But AirDNA data, which city staff have used previously when discussing this topic, shows there are more than 15,000 short term rentals in Austin -- and DSD staff have said that number goes up during big event weekends.

“Getting short term rental operators to register their properties is a challenge for so many different communities. You have to make it easy for operators to do that and so far the city hasn’t fully developed their program,” said Matt Curtis, founder of Smart City Policy Group, has told KXAN.

Short term rentals were brought up during a tourism commission meeting last week, though briefly.

"Quick update, we've been trying to get some meetings on the calendar to discuss the implementation of STRs as a new working group vision. Heard back from the mayor's office, they are thinking for next year," a commissioner said.