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Comment by pastor_bob | Hacker News Reader

>Nearly 20% of people in the greater Paris region that do not already rent their home or part of it on AirBnB plan to do so during next year's Olympic Games in the French capital, according to a survey the platform commissioned from pollsters Ifop.

Crazy stat. Greater than 1/5th of Parisians plans to rent out their places to tourists?

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Parisian homeowners. I wonder what fraction of them have a second home already. I'd say 10% is highly believable, Edinburgh achieves about that much during the Festival.

Even if you don't, you could take a vacation for a quarter of what you'd make from AirBnBing out your place.

Kind of classic economics — some people care a LOT about the olympics, and will pay a lot to be there, so they should trade with the people who would rather be in Mallorca.

During any big sports event, it is surprisingly common for locals to find ways to make money. For one where you have a lot of fairly well off people traveling into the place, renting out a room makes a ton of sense.

Indeed, folks in Blacksburg rent out their yards for football traffic parking :P

I don't think that's crazy. I live in a small city that gets about 500k people for the first week of July.

A lot of locals try to be out of town that week.

A good portion of them must have been doing it for a long time, last time we were in Paris (2005) there was no shortage of owned apartments for rent because the usual occupants were somewhere else for the summer.

I don't think people were as likely to be buying properties for the explicit purpose of short-term renting (i.e. never intending to actually live there) back then, but I have no actual facts to back that up :P

The Olympics falls right in the time period were Parisians flee Paris for summer vacations elsewhere, so it's perfectly timed for a lot of people to rent out their place.

I live in Paris, and I plan to be as far away from the city during the Olympics. That'll just be a mess of a place given the state of disorganization Paris is in (and in true French fashion, it'll not be ready in time). Things like commute and just getting around will be a pain. Not to mention the crowds. So yeah, if I can rent my place to somebody during that time it'll be great. Making money is a bonus, but not a requirement.

I can count on my fingers how many people I know that want to stay there during the event.

Paris infamously "empties" of locals in August anyway, because it's hot and miserable and full of tourists, so given the Olympics will drive prices through the roof it seems believable that more people will leave and more of them will rent out their place.

Makes sense. Get away from the chaos of the city and make a good amount of money to boot. At a smaller scale a lot of people I know do this in SF during large conferences (e.g. Dreamforce) and make upwards of $500/night, more than enough to cover a luxury vacation.

Every year, Paris and large parts of France empty out ~July 15-Aug 15, which overlaps nicely with the Olympics. A ton of French people, who would be going on vacation anyway, will have their vacation paid for by people coming in for the Olympics.

I’d expect the figure to be higher. I didn’t want Boston to get the games, but if they did, I was 100% chance to rent our place out and get the hell out until it was over.

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