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This AI tool is helping cities get a handle on short-term rentals

The platform is designed to provide fairness in tax equity and support cities and counties with tax dollars from under-reported occupancy taxes.
Rentalscape

Over the last decade, the short-term rental (STR) market has overwhelmed and outpaced local resources responsible for properly regulating its growth.

Unregistered properties, unwelcome changes in the neighborhood’s character, declining home values, and continued squeezing of affordable housing are just few of the important side effects cities face with the rise of short-term rentals.

Deckard Technologies has developed a unique piece of AI-enabled software to solve this conundrum. Called Rentalscape, the solution is designed to provide analytics and insights for communities to create tax equity and fairness. On the other hand, it also makes it easier for property hosts to comply with regulations.

The Rentalscape platform is used to identify the number of STRs active in the city or county on sites such as VRBO or Airbnb, identify aggregate revenue due and average daily rates charged, identify booking trends and the average number of nights booked per reservation, and list the platforms used by STR hosts. In addition, it can identify, by address, violations of STR ordinances, such as properties that do not have permits, those that do not include a permit number in advertisements, or that offer occupancy that differs from their permitted time periods.

On the opposite side, STR property owners and property management companies are provided with a mobile application and collection portal to bring their accounts up-to-date in real-time.

“Deckard helps local communities provide essential services by ensuring more equity and fairness in regulatory compliance. Unpaid occupancy taxes create shortfalls in local revenue, which often impact, not just tourism programs or public civic centers, but also general fund-supported services such as schools, police and fire departments,” explained Deckard CEO Nick Del Pego. “Our mission is to help communities gain lost revenue, lift the quality of life for all their citizens, and sustain healthy tax bases to support smart growth.”

In addition to its short-term rental platform Rentalscape, Deckard also offers governments a proprietary PropertyInsight forensic data platform, which identifies unpaid property taxes from external and internal real estate improvements done without plans and permits on properties being used commercially.

Among Deckard’s clients are U.S. counties such as Placer, Del Norte, Mono County, Rockdale, San Bernardino, Rockdale, San Bernardino, and Swain County; and cities like La Quinta, Eastvale, Trinidad, Modesto, Cathedral City, and Big Bear Lake.

Takeaway

Deckard Technologies has developed an AI-enabled solution called Rentalscape that mines real estate transactions and other data from sites such as VRBO or Airbnb to zero in on the homes that are operating as unpermitted vacation rentals. As a result, Rentalscape aims to provide fairness in tax equity and support cities and counties with tax dollars from under-reported occupancy taxes.

The solution shows cities the locations of rentals, with a host of data attached to each property. This can include calendar information, booking activity, ownership information and more. The dashboard also displays how the rental activity is changing month to month, showing seasonality.
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Action point

FOR PUBLIC OFFICIALS:
If you work for a city or county government, it makes perfect sense to procure Rentalscape. It will not only help you "see" what's going on in your community in terms of STRs but will also potentially help you get more taxes to further invest in your municipality. Paying taxes is not optional and with solutions like Rentalscape, you make tax collection easier and fairer. And that's the right thing to do.

FOR BUSINESSES:
Most cities around the globe have yet to hear a thing about Deckard Technologies and its Rentalscape. That is your chance - to partner with them and bring their Rentalscape solution to more markets. As far as we can tell, it should be an easy sell considering the extra tax dollars such software will bring to the communities your business serves. So go ahead, contact Deckard and ask about reselling their stuff. We're sure they'll speak to anyone that will help them reach more clients. ;)