91–100 of 161 posts
"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." Correlation does not imply causation[1]. Looks to me this is one of the studies that I would label as "shallow" or "problematic". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does NYC impose heavy restrictions on the height of buildings? I've never been there, but they seem tall to me.
Yes, much of the city is limited to four or five stories or otherwise restricted [1]. Keep in mind also that much of NYC is not just the financial district of Manhattan. In addition to actual height restrictions, neighborhood associations also fight tooth and nail to prevent new development and to limit the height of new development when they can't. [1] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/zoning/districts-tools/re...
For anyone interested, here is the full text of the study: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u4s1fcync2gseyl/AirBnB_Report%20FI... A brief description of how they attempted to control for other factors: > We also control for demographic and economic changes in neighborhood level by including average household income (in log form), population (in log form), and the shares of college-educated and employed residents in the neig…
Too many articles come out with a "shocking number" that doesn't mean anything except to those who don't know the scale.
This is mostly a click-bait article and study.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is still that your $109 is per renting person. A family of five in one dwelling is five renters: but they are not paying 5 x $109 more on their rent because of AirBNB! The denominator has to be the number of rental dwellings; then we have a better idea what the impact is on rental prices, on average. Still, it must be dependent on area, and the size of the place and rent amount. Not everyone pays some sor…
The more specific we try and make the $616M figure, the less accurate a predictor it becomes :-). I didn't want to go too far in that direction.
Maybe, 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 desirab…
So the argument is more subtle, that the "change" in AirBnB share is correlated with changes in rents. So level effects such as being a nice neighborhood are accounted for.
Having said that, a large change in AirBnB share is probably still related to unobservables related to factors that would increase rent. E.g changes in hipness of a neighborhood unaccounted for by changes in demographics. Therefore the $616M figure is biased upwards, though I bet in reality still a large number.
Unfortunately, Airbnb is probably the only way a middle-class family can earn money on investment properties. No one in their right mind would rent a $1,000,000 condo for (1% rule) $10,000.
What is the 1% rule? As a landlord I usually assume 0.5% per year. So a million dollar condo would be 50K a year, or about $4200/mo, which is exactly in line with current nyc rents.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-trav…
This article is totally worthless without some way to gauge what $616M actually is... I have a VERY hard time believing in NYC that's anything but "piss in the wind" compared to total amount spent on rent. Too many articles come out with a "shocking number" that doesn't mean anything except to those who don't know the scale. This is mostly a click-bait article and study.
[1] - https://www.nakedapartments.com/guides/nyc/renting-in-new-yo...