DENVER — For years, homeowners have been able to make some extra cash by renting out their homes on short-term rental sites like AirBnB and VRBO, but when the pandemic started, most of that business came crashing down.
Now, for the first time since the pandemic started, officials with Denver's Department of Excise and Licenses say short-term rental licenses are higher than they were in March 2020.
At that time, there were 2,570 active short-term rental licenses. That dropped by hundreds shortly after. Now, the number of licenses is higher than 2,580.
Shalom Kaiser, who has short-term rental properties, knows the impact all too well.
"During COVID everything came to a halt in March of 2020," he said. "Within a week, maybe even a few days, all of the bookings that we had across our units, we had about 25 total that we were managing, everything was canceled, everything was canceled, and we lost all of the revenue," he said. "At that point, I didn't really know what to do."
Eric Escudero, the Communications Director for the Department of Excise and Licenses said the city is thrilled more and more of its residents are able to turn to short-term rentals to make extra income.
"We're seeing signs that the travel industry may have fully recovered from the pandemic," he said.
Though, if you ask Kaiser, he's not so sure that's the case.
"I'm reading that things are slowing down, mostly because of saturation in the market," he said.
Kaiser said he is hopeful that if it is, he'll start seeing his business pick up more and more.
