As the Lowcountry's long-simmering debate over how to regulate short-term rentals starts to boil this fall, two of the industry's biggest players made their case Tuesday for opening access across the region.
The short-term rental site Airbnb and Expedia - owner of competitors HomeAway and VRBO - argued that concerns about visitors' noise and trash can be addressed easily enough. And they contend that making it legal for residents to rent their homes to tourists will enable cities to collect hospitality taxes more easily.
And anyway, they say, homeowners are making millions of dollars from short-term rentals in Charleston and around the state - whether or not they're doing so legally.
Take the home-sharing startup Airbnb: Some 67,000 visitors used its service to book a place to stay in Charleston last year, said Jillian Irvin, regional director of public policy. They rented from 700 hosts in the city, who pulled in an average of $9,400 a year, according to company figures.
And while Expedia policy spokesman Philip Minardi said the company didn't have comparable figures immediately available, a study it funded found that Charleston's short-term rental visitors spent $168.5 million in the area in 2014. That study also found that most hosts used the extra money to cover mortgage payments and renovations.
"It makes a critical difference to people's lives," Minardi said.
The companies spoke Tuesday at a forum put on by the S.C. Vacation Rental Managers Association, a group that supports short-term rentals. The daylong speaker series was aimed at making policy recommendations as governments across the region wrestle with how regulate them.
Locally, the issue has been raised from Folly Beach to Mount Pleasant, and as listings have mushroomed in tourist destinations, it's become a contentious question across the country. In recent months, the debate in cities like New York and San Francisco has reached a fever pitch, spilling into courtrooms and state legislatures.
The debate in the Lowcountry has been simmering well over a year, escalating last fall when the owner of several rental properties in Elliotborough-Cannonborough filed a series of lawsuits against more than 100 property owners on the peninsula. Those cases were dismissed last month, but the real estate entity that filed them, Global Real Property Trust, moved last week to keep the legal challenge alive.
Meantime, Charleston City Council and the county appear poised to take up the debate soon, as officials begin to study the issue in earnest.
Earlier this year, Charleston named a task force to recommend policies that balance demand for short-term rentals with concerns about rising rents and the city's changing character. In the next few months, the city's planning department will undertake its own study, mirroring its review of the peninsula's hotel building boom.
And Charleston County is planning to hire a consultant later this year to as it considers its own regulations, issuing a solicitation in September. The county received one proposal that it's currently evaluating, spokesman Shawn Smetana said.
The rush of activity echoes the regulatory battles fought by the ride-hailing service Uber when it arrived in the Lowcountry two years ago. That debate, which was eventually resolved by the state legislature, likewise saw local governments wrestle with new questions raised by the so-called "sharing economy."
Minardi said Expedia planned to follow the discussion here closely and that he'd be personally participating in the local proceedings. Airbnb, meantime, plans to take more of a hands-off approach, letting its users here make their case instead, Irvin said.
But the rental issue might end up being a thornier debate. It raises sweeping questions about how visitors affect housing prices and whether tourists in residential neighborhoods change their personality, and it could have effects beyond the homeowners who list rooms or the tourists who rent them. And the challenges it causes in a beach town are different than the issues it poses in a more residential suburb.
As a result, Irvin said, the sweeping approach that answered the Uber debate probably won't work here, leaving those questions to be hashed out city-by-city.
"We are working throughout the country, throughout the world on this. It's a case-by-case basis," Irvin said. "There's not a one-size-fits-all approach to this, so it is taking, I think, a little bit (longer) to find regulations that work for each city."