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I have seen AirBnB referenced many times in these comments as having something to do with the increase in home prices. From what I can find there are 660,000 A

I have seen AirBnB referenced many times in these comments as having something to do with the increase in home prices. From what I can find there are 660,000 AirBnB hosts in the US; this was found under the Airbnb Statistics by Region section from here https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/ https://www.stratosjets.com/blog/airbnb-statistics/ seems to also be found here https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/airbnb-statistics https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/airbnb-statistics. Most likely both of those take their data from some other source which may or not be up to date. A little bit of Googling around seems to indicate that there are ~95,000,000 single family homes in the US. So all of those AirBnB's represent less than 1% of all homes. If all of those AirBnB's were in a given year they may have an impact on purchase prices. Yet these purchases have been spread out over many years which leads me to believe their impact is negligible as a driving force in price appreciation. Are they a player, sure, are they a big player.....probably not nearly as much as people think.

JoeJonathan 4y ago
95 million homes total, or available homes? Seems like it would make a difference. That said, I suspect you're right that AirBnB is less responsible for driving up housing prices than, say, the fact that the pace of homebuilding hasn't recovered since 2008.
kelnos 4y ago
Just wanted to point out that the article you reference says 660k listings in the US, not hosts. I was initially concerned by your wording that the number of properties for rent on Airbnb was much higher (since often hosts have multiple properties, or the host is listed as a management company), but it does seem that 660k is the number of listings. And I agree with you that number is much lower than I would have expected, and doesn't seem like enough to meaningfully move housing prices overall. Also consider that some number of those listings are people renting out a spare room in their owner-occupied property, which I don't think is fair to count "against" Airbnb; not sure what that number is, though. It would be interesting to also see more local numbers. Like what percent of units in each of SF, NYC, downtown LA, Chicago, DC, etc. are listed on Airbnb? There are a lot of housing units in small towns and cities across the US that don't have much tourist appeal, so they likely don't see many Airbnb listings. But they also likely don't have housing-cost issues like some cities that are more attractive to tourists. I think people try to invent complicated reasons for skyrocketing home prices, when it's fairly simple: we aren't building enough in the places where people want to live. Sure, other things (Airbnb, foreign investment[0], cheap credit, etc.) don't help matters, but I think they're pretty minor factors. If there's demand, and you don't meet it, prices go up. Econ 101. It's interesting to note that Vancouver and Toronto instituted 20% and 15% (respectively) foreign buyer taxes for home purchases a bunch of years ago. These taxes did actually do their job of deterring foreign buyers, but, sadly, home prices still continued to go up, undeterred. And now Canada overall has barred foreign buyers for two years. I doubt it will help. I expect Airbnb bans would have a similar non-effect.
- wombatpm 4y ago
  Did that actually work or did foreign buyers create local LLC’s to purchase property instead and now you just sell the LLC and avoid the property changing ownership
  - kelnos 4y ago
    Not sure, but I would hope the local governments thought of this and protect against it. But they're governments, so who knows.
- malandrew 4y ago
  It's not just building enough homes. The cost of building has gone up a ton as well. The median age of a home in the US is 37 years, which means 50% of homes were built before 1985. Compare building codes from before 1985 and 2022 and it's a huge difference. Now housing codes are there for our safety, but we also need to recognize that it makes homes much more expensive and complex all while 50% of people are living in homes built under "less safe" code standards and are just fine. I myself live in a home built in 1967. It's a lovely home and just as livable as a home built today. Only a few select projects were needed to improve safety in places that mattered like replacing the electrical panel and some modifications to my deck. When going through insurance pricing in the case of catastrophe (fire/earthquake/landslide) with my insurer, they estimated that the cost to rebuild my home today to modern standards is equal to our purchase price for the home and the land, which is crazy and gets even crazier when you consider that the cost of the land is about 2/3 of the value of my property. Furthermore, the more labor and complexity that goes into building a home, the more homebuilders focus on upscale homes instead of mass market homes because of opportunity cost, especially when the permitting process is also so onerous. The only cheaply built housing options these days are apartments and condos. 40+ years ago we were building full single family homes for the cost of building an apartment today. That's insane.
bogomipz 4y ago
Looking at your link which by the way is from a company that rents jets, I see that the source of the 660K statistic is actually from a site called hostsorter.com The site hostsorter.com uses a citation from muchneeded.com[2]. When looking at the muchneeded.com link I see: "11. There are 660,000 listings in the United States." However he citation for the above statistic is a site called pulse.ng[3]. When I get to the pulse.ng site I finally see the root source of the 660K figure you quoted. I also see that not only is the article from 5 years ago(2017) but there is no citation given at all for the statistic that is regurgitated from the previously 3 links. [1] https://hostsorter.com/airbnb-statistics/ https://hostsorter.com/airbnb-statistics/ [2] https://muchneeded.com/Airbnb-statistics/ https://muchneeded.com/Airbnb-statistics/ [3] https://www.pulse.ng/bi/tech/tech-airbnb-now-has-more-listings-worldwide-than-the-top-five-hotel-brands-combined/g744ngp https://www.pulse.ng/bi/tech/tech-airbnb-now-has-more-listin...
saiya-jin 4y ago
Airbnb is Hacker News' McDonald - an easy target to attack and complain about, kind of symbol of lost 'right for one's house' which never really was but definitely will not be. I prefer having discussion about the underlying issues causing these emotions though, they keep being mentioned here all the time but I guess its easier to just bash the messenger rather than fight government and selfishness/greed in general population.
- bogomipz 4y ago
  >"I prefer having discussion about the underlying issues causing these emotions though, they keep being mentioned here all the time but I guess its easier to just bash the messenger rather than fight government and selfishness/greed in general population." And this "blame the government" for the the housing shortage is the same old tired trope that's invariably wheeled out when defending Airbnb. The "discussion" never seems have any more depth once that blame is assigned though. The fact is people have fought at the local government level, from Miami, to Berlin to NYC to London. It turns out that legislation itself isn't enough as it is regularly flouted or just plain ignored. Actually enforcing the legislation is difficult. And regular citizens and local governments are simply no match against the mega-Corp. Or is there another pithy and overly reductionist talking point to that complex problem as well?
whimsicalism 4y ago
The key metric is homes where people want to live, not extant homes, which might be in various parts of repair. Of course, the housing crisis is death by a thousand different cuts, but there are studies out there indicating in many cities AirBnB is responsible for around ~5% of the rental price. For my apartment, that translates to paying ~$180/mo because of the induced demand from AirBnB.

JoeJonathan 4y ago

95 million homes total, or available homes? Seems like it would make a difference. That said, I suspect you're right that AirBnB is less responsible for driving up housing prices than, say, the fact that the pace of homebuilding hasn't recovered since 2008.

kelnos 4y ago

Just wanted to point out that the article you reference says 660k listings in the US, not hosts. I was initially concerned by your wording that the number of properties for rent on Airbnb was much higher (since often hosts have multiple properties, or the host is listed as a management company), but it does seem that 660k is the number of listings. And I agree with you that number is much lower than I would have expected, and doesn't seem like enough to meaningfully move housing prices overall. Also consider that some number of those listings are people renting out a spare room in their owner-occupied property, which I don't think is fair to count "against" Airbnb; not sure what that number is, though. It would be interesting to also see more local numbers. Like what percent of units in each of SF, NYC, downtown LA, Chicago, DC, etc. are listed on Airbnb? There are a lot of housing units in small towns and cities across the US that don't have much tourist appeal, so they likely don't see many Airbnb listings. But they also likely don't have housing-cost issues like some cities that are more attractive to tourists. I think people try to invent complicated reasons for skyrocketing home prices, when it's fairly simple: we aren't building enough in the places where people want to live. Sure, other things (Airbnb, foreign investment[0], cheap credit, etc.) don't help matters, but I think they're pretty minor factors. If there's demand, and you don't meet it, prices go up. Econ 101. It's interesting to note that Vancouver and Toronto instituted 20% and 15% (respectively) foreign buyer taxes for home purchases a bunch of years ago. These taxes did actually do their job of deterring foreign buyers, but, sadly, home prices still continued to go up, undeterred. And now Canada overall has barred foreign buyers for two years. I doubt it will help. I expect Airbnb bans would have a similar non-effect.

wombatpm 4y ago
Did that actually work or did foreign buyers create local LLC’s to purchase property instead and now you just sell the LLC and avoid the property changing ownership
- kelnos 4y ago
  Not sure, but I would hope the local governments thought of this and protect against it. But they're governments, so who knows.
malandrew 4y ago
It's not just building enough homes. The cost of building has gone up a ton as well. The median age of a home in the US is 37 years, which means 50% of homes were built before 1985. Compare building codes from before 1985 and 2022 and it's a huge difference. Now housing codes are there for our safety, but we also need to recognize that it makes homes much more expensive and complex all while 50% of people are living in homes built under "less safe" code standards and are just fine. I myself live in a home built in 1967. It's a lovely home and just as livable as a home built today. Only a few select projects were needed to improve safety in places that mattered like replacing the electrical panel and some modifications to my deck. When going through insurance pricing in the case of catastrophe (fire/earthquake/landslide) with my insurer, they estimated that the cost to rebuild my home today to modern standards is equal to our purchase price for the home and the land, which is crazy and gets even crazier when you consider that the cost of the land is about 2/3 of the value of my property. Furthermore, the more labor and complexity that goes into building a home, the more homebuilders focus on upscale homes instead of mass market homes because of opportunity cost, especially when the permitting process is also so onerous. The only cheaply built housing options these days are apartments and condos. 40+ years ago we were building full single family homes for the cost of building an apartment today. That's insane.

bogomipz 4y ago

Looking at your link which by the way is from a company that rents jets, I see that the source of the 660K statistic is actually from a site called hostsorter.com The site hostsorter.com uses a citation from muchneeded.com[2]. When looking at the muchneeded.com link I see: "11. There are 660,000 listings in the United States." However he citation for the above statistic is a site called pulse.ng[3]. When I get to the pulse.ng site I finally see the root source of the 660K figure you quoted. I also see that not only is the article from 5 years ago(2017) but there is no citation given at all for the statistic that is regurgitated from the previously 3 links. [1] https://hostsorter.com/airbnb-statistics/ https://hostsorter.com/airbnb-statistics/ [2] https://muchneeded.com/Airbnb-statistics/ https://muchneeded.com/Airbnb-statistics/ [3] https://www.pulse.ng/bi/tech/tech-airbnb-now-has-more-listings-worldwide-than-the-top-five-hotel-brands-combined/g744ngp https://www.pulse.ng/bi/tech/tech-airbnb-now-has-more-listin...

saiya-jin 4y ago

Airbnb is Hacker News' McDonald - an easy target to attack and complain about, kind of symbol of lost 'right for one's house' which never really was but definitely will not be. I prefer having discussion about the underlying issues causing these emotions though, they keep being mentioned here all the time but I guess its easier to just bash the messenger rather than fight government and selfishness/greed in general population.

bogomipz 4y ago
>"I prefer having discussion about the underlying issues causing these emotions though, they keep being mentioned here all the time but I guess its easier to just bash the messenger rather than fight government and selfishness/greed in general population." And this "blame the government" for the the housing shortage is the same old tired trope that's invariably wheeled out when defending Airbnb. The "discussion" never seems have any more depth once that blame is assigned though. The fact is people have fought at the local government level, from Miami, to Berlin to NYC to London. It turns out that legislation itself isn't enough as it is regularly flouted or just plain ignored. Actually enforcing the legislation is difficult. And regular citizens and local governments are simply no match against the mega-Corp. Or is there another pithy and overly reductionist talking point to that complex problem as well?

whimsicalism 4y ago

The key metric is homes where people want to live, not extant homes, which might be in various parts of repair. Of course, the housing crisis is death by a thousand different cuts, but there are studies out there indicating in many cities AirBnB is responsible for around ~5% of the rental price. For my apartment, that translates to paying ~$180/mo because of the induced demand from AirBnB.