Airbnb and house-sharing firms reduced New York housing stock by 10% – study | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb and house-sharing firms reduced New York housing stock by 10% – study

theguardian.com

30 pointspyrophane18 comments

Trying to find the original study. It was paid for by housing advocacy groups who generally oppose Airbnb, so I want to understand their methodology since they certainly have a bias.

Edit:

This looks like it: http://www.hcc-nyc.org/documents/ShortchangingNYC2016FINALpr...

Here's their underlying logic:

"If the 8,058 units defined as Impact Listings were made available on the rental market, the number of vacant rental units citywide would increase by 10 percent and the vacancy rate would rise to 4.0 percent"

So, in other words, if all of the full-time "entire apartment" listings were to hit the market as vacant units immediately, the vacancy rate would increase by 10%. This is not the same thing as Airbnb reducing housing stock by 10%.

This is actually probably more interesting:

"53 percent of all Airbnb listings are located in one of the following five “macro-neighborhoods” - East Village/Lower East Side (LES), Chelsea/Hell’s Kitchen, West Village/Greenwich Village/SoHo, Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick, and Bedford Stuyvesant/Crown Heights."

Something I think a lot of people don't appreciate about Airbnb's potential impact on the housing market is that a lot of the listings are concentrated in a few areas, so while Airbnb might not impact the housing market that much overall for a particular city, it can have a pretty significant impact on individual neighborhoods.

So basically, their conclusions and methodology are deliberately narrow.

Thanks for tracking that down. I had the same questions. I would be very interested to see followup interviews with a representative sample to investigate the percentage of units that would actually be on the market if not for airbnb.

It appears that they have done a decent job of identifying full-time Airbnb operations, so it wouldn't be a big leap to think that the 8,058 units they identified as "impact listings" are not on the market because of Airbnb and that they would be if Airbnb were suddenly no longer an option.

I'm genuinely conflicted about this. On the one hand, I'm all for more housing. It can drive prices down (although not a lot I've seen has ever driven prices down in Manhattan) but at the same time, were I a property owner, I'd want to be able to do with that property as I wish. They're obviously income properties, so why are we mad about them making income in this way?

I guess I'm asking whether or not income properties either a) are already regulated as such (and laws are being flaunted) or b) the desire here is to create laws that tightly scope what a property owner can do with their non-primary residentially-zoned property?

I can't seem to form an opinion yet, so I'm mostly asking for yours, I guess. I suppose I need a bit more education on the debate.

Edit: this isn't where I meant to put this reply. But it's here now, so, if it's slightly out-of-thread, apologies.

Edit 2: if it's easier, can someone point me to a cogent and not-lopsided explanation of the debate?

I'm a property owner in one of the identified areas, for what it's worth, and I can give a summarized piece of the debate and some additional information not everyone knows.

One pro-AirBnB argument has to do with property rights, and doesn't have to be rehashed as you implied it ('doing as you wish'). Another has to do with the idea that housing is so expensive, that a renter can help pay his/her high rent by supplementing the income. <- this latter argument is obviously not part of the 'landlords are renting out entire apartment' complaint.

One anti-AirBnB argument has to do with some of the target areas being gentrifying neighborhoods (Bushwick, Bed Stuy, others; we're not talking about Tribeca here). In these, further increasing the scarcity of housing by taking the apartments out of the long-term rental market increases rent and displaces long-time, mostly poorer residents. This argument is given more by progressives. Another anti-AirBnB argument, this time by the hotel lobby, is that hotels have to pay different taxes, and abide by different standards of code and safety [ similar to the anti-Uber arguments, I guess ] and that it's not fair.

In 2010 a law was passed which made it illegal to rent the entire apartment for less than 30 days. So if you're a renter, for example, you can rent out a room. One item of note is that in the State of New York, occupying a unit for 30 days or more grants one to certain rights as a tenant, meaning the landlord has significant hurdles in pursuing an eviction. I believe this set of laws [ edit: <30 days, not the tenants rights], which I believe went into effect in 2011, is referred to as the illegal hotel law.

One often overlooked fact is that the law here excludes 2 and 3 family homes from the illegal hotel law.

The punchline I'll add is that, in the gentrifying areas I mentioned above, a large piece of the housing stock is 2 and 3 family (especially 3 family) homes.

I would question the assertion that Bushwick's (and BK's in general) gentrification is Airbnb driven. Manhattan's rental picture started getting unreasonable around turn of the century. Williamsburg, for example, was pretty much an urban wasteland around 1997 but was already a 'beach-head' of adventerous/artist tribe of Manhattan exiles. Regardless, the displacement of poor people from these areas is self evident.

What I find objectionable in terms of Airbnb is the corrosive effect that the transitional flux has on cities and neighborhoods. Manhattan is now basically worlds largest open air shopping center -- yes a bit shinier than before but not the Gotham of yore (which is sorely missed).

Thanks, guys!

Clarifications of data and interpretations of studies like this which have political ramifications, this takes time. It takes time to track down and read original studies to compare the conclusions (and sometimes worse, the headline) of the journalist.

This is why I read HN's political content.

Thank you!

The situation is even worse in Vancouver. [1][2]

This is a city with Manhattan rents, paid for by Cincinnati salaries... Amid a desparate shortage of housing.

[1] http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouve...

[2] https://affordablevancouver.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/airb...

I have ratted out two places in my South Granville apartment building that were permanent AirBNB's. My place is good value, and well run, and I believe someone should have the chance to live in it.

Did anything happen to the owners? Strata fines? Citations by the city?

My whole apartment is owned by a single company. I think they kicked them out. We are allowed to sublease for 6 months of the year, but you have to have the person sign a liability contract with the owning company, and they have to stay minimum 30 days. TBH I am going on vacation for 3 weeks and I want to AirBNB my place out, but I think that is the proper way to use the service.

The market here doesn't support the cash flow to buy and rent condos unless you have a lot of cash, because the wages don't match what one could afford. That Rich Dad Poor Dad shit doesn't work. So someone buying a condo can get like $1600/month, but their mortgage, maintenance, and property taxes are going to be like $3000/month. However I think a case could be made for buying and AirBNB'ing if you are good at it. My gf is a strata lawyer, and I have heard horror stories of people owning 10+ condos in a single building and AirBNB'ing them all out.

Housing prices are out of control in Vancouver, but that doesn't justify wild exaggerations. The rental market there isn't nearly as bad and it's nowhere near as expensive as Manhattan.

We should compare Manhattan strictly to downtown Vancouver, not to Greater Vancouver. If finding a cheaper rental means going to Coquitlam, well, gee, you can do that in "Manhattan" too, by going to Brooklyn.

Not really.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/realestate/priced-out-o...

Downtown Vancouver is far less expensive than Manhattan. This is easily verifiable. I mean, you could also just browse padmapper, if you're feeling lazy :)

I was searching for Airbnbs in Vancouver. A lot of them were owned by professional airbnb-ers. I.E. The people renting them had like 5 properties each.

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