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NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

bloomberg.com

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Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

#11

Post by dragonwriter »

loceng wrote: post #4

'Airbnb Inc. disputed the study’s findings, calling them “wrong on the facts” and containing “substantive issues with the methodology.”' Did Airbnb publish what these wrong facts and substantive issues are?

The odd thing is that AirBnB’s entire value proposition to hosts is that it increases realizable income from the property they control and make available through AirBnB; if true, especially in the presence of supply constraints, this has to increase market clearing prices.

They are in a position where what they need hosts to believe is directly at odds with what they want policymakers (including people voting directly on policy or for politicians) to believe.

Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

#13

Post by deckar01 »

loceng wrote: post #4

'Airbnb Inc. disputed the study’s findings, calling them “wrong on the facts” and containing “substantive issues with the methodology.”' Did Airbnb publish what these wrong facts and substantive issues are?

The link is at the end of the article.

https://www.airbnbcitizen.com/airbnb-new-york-and-housing/

Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

#14

Post by ribosometronome »

bdcravens wrote: post #6
piinbinary wrote: post #3

I'm sure that number is dwarfed by how much extra renters paid due to actions of the city (e.g. height restrictions).

Which would be true regardless of AirBnB's presence, right? So the "AirBnB inflation" is still a thing.

As is "hotel inflation" and "car inflation" and "park inflation".

Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

#16

Post by lend000 »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #2

> For each 1 percent of all residential units in a neighborhood listed on Airbnb, rents in that neighborhood went up 1.58 percent, Stringer said. The estimated $616 million impact is for 2016 alone.

I doubt these factors are statistically independent -- the most popular neighborhoods for tourists and yuppies have always seen prices grow faster relative to the overall metro, and more popular/high-growth/expensive neighborhoods will naturally attract more Airbnb hosts to take advantage of their location.

In any case, assuming people travel the same amount, it is zero-sum (Airbnb saved NYC visitors 616 million dollars and also transferred some percentage of tourism income from hotels to a broader collection of residents). However, I think Airbnb enables people to travel more (I certainly travel more with the incentives of cheap, reliable Airbnb lodging), so we need more data to determine whether the lower prices actually incentivize a sufficiently high increase in tourism to be a net positive for tourist-mecca economies.

Even if it comes out to a net negative to tourism-based economies and it increases costs for local residents, I'm curious what the Airbnb witch-hunt crowd is proposing. Limit tourism / make it harder and more expensive to travel? Reinstate the hotel cartels?

Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

#17

Post by api_or_ipa »

Anyone have access to the report? I don't have readily available access to a terminal but I'd love to read the study. Any kind of analysis such as this one relies heavily on _ceteris_ _paribus_ --assume everything else is the same. Of course that's a poor assumption to make, so most studies fiddle with the assumption and try to tease out the effects of one market (short-term rentals, a la AirBnB) on another (resident friendly long-term rentals).

Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

#18

Post by PurpleBoxDragon »

bdcravens wrote: post #6
piinbinary wrote: post #3

I'm sure that number is dwarfed by how much extra renters paid due to actions of the city (e.g. height restrictions).

Which would be true regardless of AirBnB's presence, right? So the "AirBnB inflation" is still a thing.

But what about the things that aren't true because of AirBnB's presence? Maybe prices for short term stays went down, tourism went up, and there is more tax revenue that can be used to improve the city for the renters.

If we only look at one part of the picture we may miss that an overall trend is different. Is it really beneficial to talk about how many died because they were wearing a seat belt without also considering how many who lived for the same reason?

Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says

#19

Post by throwawayjava »

api_or_ipa wrote: post #17

Anyone have access to the report? I don't have readily available access to a terminal but I'd love to read the study. Any kind of analysis such as this one relies heavily on _ceteris_ _paribus_ --assume everything else is the same. Of course that's a poor assumption to make, so most studies fiddle with the assumption and try to tease out the effects of one market (short-term rentals, a la AirBnB) on another (resident…

https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/the-impact-of-airbnb-on-...

> Any kind of analysis such as this one relies heavily on _ceteris_ _paribus_ --assume everything else is the same

That's not the assumption made by this report.

Of course, predicting alternate futures when humans are in play is always a non-trivial task, but they did put some effort toward controlling for the obvious stuff:

"A summary of the regression results is presented in Table 1. We find that as the share of units listed on Airbnb goes up by one percentage point, rental rates in the neighborhood go up by 1.58 percent, after controlling for neighborhood level demographic and economic changes. The result is statistically significant at the 1-percent level. Coefficients of other control variables including household income, population and share of college graduates are positive and statistically significant at 1-percent level. Employment rate is not statistically different from zero."

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