The finding is somewhat interesting on its own but I don't really see why it matters all that much. No one likes paying higher rent and I can see rent increases as being particularly hard on the poor, so that's bad. But I'm not sure interfering with these micro-leases is the best solution. It makes more sense to me to focus on how we can expedite construction of safe, quality, affordable housing. That would help address the AirBnB inflation problem as well as the basic housing crisis. What's more, we'd retain the benefits of micro-leasing.
NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
21–30 of 161 posts
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#22'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 directl…
The spin is preposterous. They should just say that that's a natural outcome of better real estate utilization and that the city needs to figure out how to build more affordable housing.
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#23'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?
Two problems mentioned in the rebuttal: the study counts every Airbnb unit as a rental taken permanently off the market, and the dataset counts every blocked-off calendar date as a night the unit was booked. Both of those are obvious over-counting. A study that doesn't even try to account for those is pretty obviously political.
Airbnb should have posted estimates of how much this over-counting could distort the data, because it sounds like a lot. $616M is one of those numbers that sounds high but in context probably isn't, so it wouldn't surprise me if those two distortions wiped out the number, or at least cut it to below headline worthy.
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 conside…
> Maybe prices for short term stays went down
Sure, allowing residential property to be used for short-term rental drives regular residential rents up and short-term rents down (forcing, over time, more residential proerties to be used for short-term rental to the extent possible), narrowing the gap between short-term and long-term rentals. It makes things less expensive for travellers and more expensive for non-travellers.
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 directl…
The spin is preposterous. They should just say that that's a natural outcome of better real estate utilization and that the city needs to figure out how to build more affordable housing.
Easy there with terms like “better real estate utilization”, which could be conflated with “more efficient rent seeking at the expense of housing consumers”.
The end goal is not always maximum profit extraction. NYC is served best by balancing the needs of both long term and short term renters, while ensuring investors reasonable compensation/rates of return on capital invested for services provided.
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#26'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?
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Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#27Is there really much evidence that the majority of Airbnb properties would otherwise be traditional "12 month lease" rental apartments if it were not for Airbnb.
I mean, I'm sure there are a few, but if I'm a landlord, why would I give up having a stable tenant paying market rate rent for 12 months at a time for essentially managing a hotel room?
Sure, the 'rent per day' is going to be a lot better with the hotel room model, but it seems like an entirely different business to manage say 30-100 property rentals per year rather than 1.
People have always subletted their apartments when they are out of town -- I'm guessing a lot of the Airbnb rentals are just those traditional sublets showing up in an easy to quantify form.
I'm open minded to the possibility I'm wrong -- I don't have the data on the history of the properties showing up on Airbnb -- but it seems like the profile for the landlord/apartment that ends up on Airbnb is a bit different from the ones that show up on StreetEasy with 12 month leases.
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#28So, I'm paying an extra $68/month because of Airbnb. Alright.
$68 a month is easily 5% of income afters taxes for many people. In a country where we already spend an absurdly high percentage of our income on rent, this doesn't seem trivial.
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#29Maybe, but the regression they use to argue this is pretty bonkers...they need to assume that once they control for income, population, education, and employment, the coefficient on the Airbnb share captures the causal effect of Airbnb on prices. But obviously AirBnB share will be correlated with many other things that make a neighborhood nice, which will also be correlated with prices. So this just says that desirable neighborhoods are desirable.
Re: NYC Renters Paid Extra $616M Thanks to Airbnb, Study Says
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The spin is preposterous. They should just say that that's a natural outcome of better real estate utilization and that the city needs to figure out how to build more affordable housing.
Easy there with terms like “better real estate utilization”, which could be conflated with “more efficient rent seeking at the expense of housing consumers”. The end goal is not always maximum profit extraction. NYC is served best by balancing the needs of both long term and short term renters, while ensuring investors reasonable compensation/rates of return on capital invested for services provided.
That's fair.