It's definitely impacted Dublin, where I live, and the rest of Ireland. There's 10x more rooms on AirBnB than there are long-term rents in Dublin; in other parts of the country it's 100x.
I'm glad I left and wont look back but whenever I need to travel back for whatever reason I have to crash at a friends place because the cost of an airbnb or hotel is simply extortion.
I am also very frustrated at rental markets in many place, though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots.
I am very prepared to lay a lot of blame on Airbnb for high prices, just haven't seen anything conclusive (US-centric stuff I've seen, the fact that building has crawled to a halt feels way more relevant)
> though I'm still unsure how much of this is merely displacing hotels/hostels relative to actually sucking up long-term rental slots.
It very much is happening. Dublin saw this during the pandemic, when the long-term rent market doubled after tourism was shut down. These are houses that are zoned for residents, not people coming in, and landlords see they can easily make more money letting them out to the tourists.
See this article from The Irish Times about it: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/pandemic-reveals...
It's only gotten worse now, too, with many going back to AirBnB.
Dublin has a population of over 1.5 million. On average, a dwelling in Dublin has 2.5 people. 5000 AirBnB's account for less than 1% of the total housing stock.
I constantly hear about people complaining about how short term rentals are running the housing market but the numbers never add up.
I don't think that it is the primary effect, but we can walk and chew bubblegum!
[citation needed]
It's a cancer that has directly impacted and caused the skyrocketing of prices and constraint of supply. The answer isn't to (just) build more, but to end the exploitation from AirBnB.
And, as mentioned, it's worse in other cities.
Clearly there's demand for tourists to come and visit Dublin, maybe they should either tax the tourists into not coming (and hit the economy), or build enough room for everybody?
Where? And how do these extra people move about?
It's definitely doable, but it's far from simple, and is going to further change the character of the city. And involve a lot of public spending which people object to.
We have oodles of room. Every human - not families, but individual humans, including children - can get their own massive house, with a big back yard.
Here's my math: Back yard size: 15x40m = 600 sq m.
Public amenities per person = 300 sq m. (very generous)
Total space per human = 900 sq m. = 9e-4 sq km.
Number of humans = 8e9
Land required for this most ultimate of suburbs: 7.2e6 sq km
Surface area of Canada: 9.98e6 sq km. USA: 9.83e6 sq km.
In my absolutely absurdly overprovisioned scenario, we all fit in 72% of the admittedly very large Canada. ALL of us. Leaving plenty of room for every holiday-worthy place on earth to have all the AirBnBs and apartment-hotels needed.
> It's expensive
Investing public money to create amenities for tourism is going to be an economic no-brainer. Tourists, visitors, and locals will all benefit from it.
> Character will change
Everything changes all the time. The history of the world is a story of the character of things changing, whether happily or otherwise.
In a time of great change, desperately trying to slow it down isn't the way. Rolling with, and even initiating, the changes in an authentic way is much better.
> There's 10x more rooms on AirBnB than there are long-term rents in Dublin;
AirBnB places would have high turnover, probably an order of magnitude higher than long term rentals. It makes perfect sense that more of the former would be vacant at any given time.
When there’s 100 people applying for rentals. Or people moving from Blanch to South Wexford or Carlow because that’s the closest they can afford. Rents have doubled or tripled in the last 10 years.
We bought 5 years back when we couldn’t find a rental, rents were 1400 for a 3/4 be then, we got 1600 3 years ago when we were away for a year, and comps now are 2500+, in a place with a 1.5 hr commute to Dublin.