An Airbnb collapse won’t fix America’s housing shortage | Hacker News Reader

An Airbnb collapse won’t fix America’s housing shortage

vox.com

5 pointsjseliger10 comments

> In the first quarter of 2023, there were 144 million housing units in the US compared with 1.2 million available short-term rentals like Airbnbs, according to AirDNA analysis of Census data. That means they make up just 0.8 percent of the housing stock, what Jamie Lane, AirDNA’s chief economist and SVP of analytics, calls a “rounding error.”

Assume 1/3rd of residences are in the long term rental market (just a guesstimate for the purpose of illustrating my point) and that of those 3-4% are vacant (a typical vacancy rate). If around 1% of the total number of residences moved from the short term rental market into the long term rental market then the vacancy rate would increase significantly (it could double). To put it another way, the number of short term rentals available could currently be around the same number of long term rental vacancies. Lots of assumptions here, but to call this a 'rounding error' is naive in my opinion.

Calling it a "rounding error" is frankly disgusting. 1.2m people is 1.2m people.

it would help

Agreed. The housing crisis has been decades in the making and we are so far past any one solution being able to make any meaningful progress. We need 15 solutions applied consistently over the next few decades, including making sure housing units are not taken off the market to be used as short term rentals on Airbnb. I have no problem with people making some extra cash renting their place while they are away for a few weeks a year to offset their vacation costs, but housing shouldn’t be locked away from a long term resident.

not especially. build more housing.

the other option, have fewer people, is going to be wildly unpopular.

Why would more housong be effective if people will just buy them up and list om AirBnB anyway? Seems like for any discrete action to be effective, the rest also need to be acted upon.

To build more you need less systematic opposition to building more (zoning and reduction of public hearing and regulatory delays), then there needs be some constraint on buying all stock up as an investment commodity, and also a reasonable framework to allow profiting off of buolding decent rentals, but jot so relentlessly that it consumes communities and displaces potentially long-term residents

As much as you're afraid there is, there isn't infinite demand for Airbnbs. There are only so many hosts with so much money and only so many tourists and staycationers with only so much money. With enough housing supply, people who are trying to become long-term residents are able to get into and afford to live there. Adding infinity housing units to a market is not practical, but adding more will help, along with adding laws to limit the number of Airbnbs allowed.

> but adding more will help, along with adding laws to limit the number of Airbnbs allowed.

Right exactly. You build more and you limit the number of AirBnBs.

> As much as you're afraid there is, there isn't infinite demand for Airbnbs. There are only so many hosts with so much money and only so many tourists and staycationers with only so much money.

I largely disagree with this, but it depends on where you live. They are subject to some market forces sure, but also induced demand and simply supplanting residents that might be forced to move between AirBnBs, and even in off-seasons it can be a situation where the owner just leaves the property empty to capitalize on appreciation.

I'm struggling to see where you disagree with me, since you admit that market forces exist.

empty housing is abhorrent to me.

Getting rid of airBnB is a cheap way to increase housing by 1%. And that 1% is an average. Probably more than that in popular cities that need housing and significantly less in rural areas that have plenty of housing.

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