While assessments are Wilmington’s hot-topic of the year, short-term vacation rentals are the region’s hot-topic of the decade. These topics are closely linked.

Assessments are based on recent home sales. Homeowners’ properties are directly compared to property sales in the area.

How does the Airbnb boom impact assessments? The answer is implied in a 2022 Albany Times-Union article. The article profiled an out-of-town family, the Gajdas, who enjoyed visiting Lake Placid and wanted to purchase property in the community (“Adirondack short-term rentals: Nuisance or welcome income stream?” Albany Times-Union, Sept. 26, 2022). For the Gajdas, “The key to making the purchase affordable was the prospect of income from renting the house out when they’re not using it.”

The Gajdas are not alone.

Many people who couldn’t afford second homes a decade ago are now able to, solely due to revenue derived from Airbnb. The technology that allowed Airbnb.com to become a $70 billion company has spurred a rush of investors to purchase second (sometimes fourth or sixth) “homes” in the Adirondacks.

The website AirDNA.co provides investors with a wealth of information. According to data generated by AirDNA in July, the average STR in Wilmington rents for more than $330 a night and the median STR in Wilmington generates more than $53,000 in annual revenue.

AirDNA highlights listings of houses for sale in Wilmington, connects investors with property managers, and provides annual revenue estimates for homes in Wilmington that are currently for sale.

According to data compiled by Rarilee Conway, a member of Wilmington’s STR Committee and a former town board member, around 80% of the vacation rentals in Wilmington are owned by people who live elsewhere (“Wilmington STR committee suggests new regulations,” Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Aug. 11, 2023). The precise numbers can be nitpicked, but the trends cannot be disputed.

In the early 1960s, Wilmington’s chamber of commerce produced a brochure highlighting the town’s tourist accommodations. That brochure advertised fewer than a dozen vacation rental homes. The same brochure would now showcase more than 140 vacation rentals.

Local and regional officials are aware that area residents were alarmed by their assessments.

Essex County Manager Micheal Macarenas made the following statement at a Board of Supervisors committee meeting in May: “We can’t question the fact that sales are what they are. … The problem is who is buying them, and what are those properties turning into? Who is buying them are people that aren’t from here. It’s not our school teachers. It’s not our county workers. It’s not the people that we depend on. … It’s not those folks. It’s people from outside the area that are causing these price hikes that are leading to higher assessed values. … They are second homes and / or they are rentals, which means they are earning income. And they are earning large amounts of income on these properties. The rest of us are not. The rest of us are living here.”

In towns such as Wilmington, the housing supply grows gradually, but the ability to operate homes as hotels caused a surge of demand. When demand is greater than supply, price increases. When demand spikes and supply is static, prices spike. And when real estate prices spike, assessments follow.

More than one factor contributed to increased assessments in the region. Airbnb is not the only factor. But if we want to discuss these issues honestly, we must face the fact that the Airbnb gold rush in recent years is a primary cause of the assessments Wilmington residents received this spring.

If there is blame, that blame certainly does not rest with the two dozen or so Wilmington families who Airbnb spare bedrooms and “accessory dwellings” such as garage apartments and small cabins. Nor does blame rest with any individual’s desire to profit from a family camp or a new getaway. And, really, blame does not even rest with the investors who took advantage of a loophole in municipal zoning codes.

(What was once a loophole has grown wider by the month. That loophole has now swallowed one-fifth of the “housing units” in Wilmington.) If there is blame, that blame rests with the elected officials who spent years exempting whole-home Airbnbs from the rules that apply to similar businesses.

On July 7, 2022, a letter to the editor signed by 29 Wilmington residents appeared in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. That letter, titled “A unique small town, eroded by Airbnb,” implored Wilmington’s elected officials to “act immediately to protect our town.”

Instead, Wilmington’s town board kicked the can down the road until June of 2024, when the next town board enacted a flexible cap of 150 STR permits in town.

Too little, too late.

Policy decisions have consequences. And sometimes those decisions result in one group of people reaping profits, and another group of people bearing burdens.

Dramatically increased assessments are merely one of the consequences of the decisions made by Wilmington’s leaders in recent years.

(Tim Follos is a member of the Wilmington Town Council.)