MDI's smaller towns have biggest share of vacation rental units
SOUTHWEST HARBOR, July10, 2021 - The landlord said, “vacation rental is the only way to go.”
We were in her ground floor store on Main Street 30 seconds from Sips Restaurant on Clark Point Road and near the hardware store, Carroll’s Drug, Eat-A-Pita Take 2 restaurant and several galleries.
There was little sentimentality in her voice. The apartments on the second floor of her building are now “vacation rentals.” Unlike Bar Harbor, she can dictate length of stay and not be subject to a minimum four-night requirement. She can earn in four weeks what it took her to earn in four months.
As Bar Harbor seeks to crack down on landlords displacing year-round tenants with short-term rentals, there are plenty of other places for tourists to hide on MDI.
Here are the sobering facts:
MDI has more than 1,200 vacation rental homes, or about 16 percent of the residential housing stock on the island.
The three towns outside of Bar Harbor, in the aggregate, have amassed more vacation rentals than BH, which is at the epicenter of the debate on affordable housing because it is thought to have the highest impact on the loss of year-round housing stock on MDI. Until this report there has not been an analysis of MDI as a whole.
The result is not pretty.
The QSJ analysis using data from AIRDNA.co, which aggregates rental data primarily from Airbnb.com and VRBO.com, shows that there are more than 600 vacation rentals in Tremont, Mount Desert and Southwest Harbor. Bar Harbor, which registers vacation rentals, has about 550 units. The number is dominated by landlords who do not live in those units. Owner-occupied vacation rentals make up only about 10 percent.
Bar Harbor is the only town which is actively trying to bring down the number of vacation homes as a percentage of the town’s housing units (2,795, according to Town Planner Michele Gagnon) which stands at 19 percent.
It is a stunning percentage as QSJ could find no other town in Maine with such a high density of seasonal vacation rentals.
Portland has 33,836 housing units, according to the 2010 census, but with only 616 “active rentals” on AirBnB and VRBO. Camden’s active rentals (160) is 5 percent of its total 3,165 housing units. Surprisingly, York, a popular beach town, has only 335 active rentals against its total housing units of 8,649.
Ogonquit was the only other Maine town QSJ could find double-digit percentage of vacation homes to housing units, 256 to 2,009.
To understand the QSJ analysis, consider that AIRDNA only aggregates Airbnb and VRBO data and not newspaper ads or other sources. That explains the disrepancy between the town’s actual registrations and AIRDNA’s “active rentals.” QSJ used the BH difference to extrapolate a similar model for all towns. Airbnb and VRBO also list hotel rooms but they makeup a negligible number.
Also, the average number of occupants per night per house is six, which is a great source of annoyance to Bar Harbor neighborhoods who feel their town has been overrun by marauding tourists.
Bar Harbor’s AIRDNA report
Mount Desert’s AIRDNA report
Southwest Harbor’s AIRDNA Report
QSJ did not have room for Tremont charts because Airdna broke up the town into Seal Cove, Bass Harbor and Bernard. You may go to the site and enter the search for each village. Tremont has 1,260 dwellings, according to census data. Airdna reported 161 active listings for Tremont. Add 10 percent for those not detected by Airdna and you’d come up with 14 percent of the housing stock as vacation rentals.
Mount Desert has the fewest “active listings” at 146 on Airdna.
Given the business friendly makeup of the select boards in both SWH and Tremont, it is unlikely you will see an effort to cap vacation rentals any time soon.
The only voice heard for some kind of regulation of vacation rentals on the Quietside has come from Martha Dudman, Mount Desert select member, who said at a recent meeting she feared investor-owned seasonal vacation rentals are hollowing out the town’s year-round housing for locals.
“My objective is to try and preserve this island as an year-round community,” said Dudman, who remembered Northeast Harbor once as a thriving village with more than 1,000 year-round residents.
The data strongly supports her view. More than 90 percent of the rentals in MD are investor owned. Data does not exist on how many of the investor-owned vacation rentals were once year-round rentals. Dudman and others say there is strong anecdotal evidence that available year-round housing is in great decline,
In MD Only about a dozen vacation rentals are owner-occupied. Dudman said she opposes regulating owner-occupied units.
Meanwhile, the Bar Harbor public hearing to air the proposed cap of vacation homes occurred on Wednesday as scheduled. Those expecting an orgy of self interest were not disappointed. Chairman Tom St. German lost his cool at the very beginning when he scolded some participants for saying from their seats that they could not “hear” his comments at the public “hearing.”
Banging his gavel hard, St. German said, “I will not tolerate people speaking out of order from the audience, okay?”
St. Germain also reprimanded those who reacted to a not-so-subtle racist trope by one identifying himself as Tim Culbertson, who lashed out at the board and said it has no business telling a homeowner what to do inside his house.
Culbertson wasn’t done. He went on to castigate the town for creating a “Tijuana” by allowing in-street dining during the pandemic and referred to parts of town as “Bar Harlem,” a phrase, QSJ was told, which was more common place decades ago.
Last summer, a Timothy P. Culbertson of Plantation, Fl, with a local address of 31 Holland Avenue, was recorded by a security camera cutting the tailgate netting of a truck parked in the lot of a downtown business, according to the Islander. Culbertson was arrested on a charge of criminal mischief.
Speaker after speaker, many of whom do not vote here, expressed the opinion that transferring ownership of a vacation rental was an entitlement and that their investments should be protected by the town ad infinitum.
Town Hill resident Diane Vreeland reminded attendees that the proposal is not forbidding transferability of a home but that of a vacation home registration. Owners are free to transfer their homes to their family and they may operate rental units of a month or longer, under current ordinances.
The most controversial section of the proposed cap on vacation homes in BH is the denial of the transferability of a registered vacation home to a buyer until the percentage of vacation homes falls below 10 percent of the housing stock.
“If people think that it’s so great to have it (vacation rental) transferred, then your house should be valued more and your taxes should be higher,” she said. “It’s not going to be an equitable market anymore.”
The question will now go to the town council, which will conduct its own hearing. The planning board will then vote on whether to support the cap. If rejected, the proposal will require a “super majority” of two-thirds vote at the November town referendum.
The current planning board opposes the cap. But BH is likely to have a difference board when it votes in August. Two of the planning board members have reached the end of their terms. The council has six new applicants to consider.
Realtor Erica Brooks, of the Swan Agency, and who is seeking re-appointment, said she has not seen enough evidence there is a relationship between the decline of year-round rental housing and vacation rentals.
Somesvilles’s 24/7 EMT/fire coverage hits bump
SOMESVILLE - Someone forgot to bring the rubber stamp to the select board meeting this week.
The unveiling of a preliminary plan for a small dormitory at the Somesville firehouse to enable full emergency coverage of the Quietside of the town of Mount Desert got a surprising amount of discussion when two select board members were taken aback that the plan required the elimination of the community room where town elections and other events are held.
Member Geoff Wood, who lives in Somesville, said he could not recall ever discussing elimination of the community room. Chair John Macauley said the same.
After 20 minutes of deliberation, it was voted unanimously to seek a new architectural design to contemplate a community room which will be challenging because if the design calls for extending the footprint, it will likely take away some of the limited parking. The emergency vehicles facing south must not be obstructed.
The town approved at the town meeting in June to transfer some of the 24/7 EMT/fire staff to Somesville to provide faster responses to Hall Quarry, Pretty Marsh, Beech Hill and Somesville.
Fire Chief Mike Bender also disclosed that he is in discussions with Bar Harbor to move some of its Town Hill staff to Somesville which will save three budgeted staffers in MD. Bar Harbor and Mount Desert share public safety resources.
Paving next year for Rt. 102 (Tremont/Pretty Marsh roads)
SOMESVILLE - The state Department of Transportation will pave the forlorn western 12-mile section of Rt. 102, which runs from Somesville through West Tremont, in 2022, spokesman Paul Merrill confirmed in a reply to a QSJ question.
“We are grading and ditching out there this year. It is a Highway Corridor Priority (HCP) 4 road, so it gets Light Capital Paving (LCP) every seven years. We last paved it in 2015. I would anticipate paving next year given the ditching activity and the time interval,” Merrill wrote in an email.
Last year, the state paved the eastern side of Rt. 102 from the Trenton bridge to Somesville.
But if Acadia Wilderness Lodge is allowed to have 72 RVs rumbling down Tremont Road, the road enhancement will be short-lived indeed. The proposed campground owners will hold its second neighborhood meeting July 21 from 6 to 8.
Much of the 12-mile stretch requires major work beyond light paving. But that extensive work would cost $1 million per mile and DOT won’t do it unless the town pays for half. The state calls it a “partnership.” Sounds more like a highwayman scam, and the towns are the mark. Isn’t this why we pay state taxes?
Read more here: https://www.maine.gov/mdot/pga/docs/2020/MPI2020.pdf.
LINCOLN’S LOG
State Rep. Lynne Williams of Bar Harbor and Lamoine issued the following statement after QSJ reported that the federal government has weighed in on the American Aquafarms’ application for an industrial salmon farm in Frenchman Bay.
“I am so pleased that Acadia National Park has come out strongly against the industrial salmon farm proposal, and brings up issues that DMR doesn’t appear to address, including scenic resources, night sky and cumulative impacts. When I heard that Secretary (Deb) Haaland was coming to Acadia, I was hoping that she would listen and understand the impacts that the proposed project would have on the Park and the Bay. Clearly she did, since sources say that the letter has her approval. Thank you Superintendent Schneider and Secretary Haaland, for protecting our Bay and our communities."
QSJ sought comments from State Rep. Genevieve McDonald (Tremont, Southwest Harbor) and Louis Luchini (Hancock County). Neither replied. McDonald has not replied to QSJ emails since I reported she takes money from the aquafarms industry and the wind turbine industry.
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