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Comment by paul | Hacker News Reader

How large is the market for short term housing, and how close is airbnb to saturating it?

I didn't say you were astroturfing, but I am curious what motivates you to create an account for the purpose of commenting on this story.

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A huge chunk of the short term housing market is corporate. You're talking about stays of 30+ days and you need to book multiple rooms regularly with a single phone call. That's not Airbnb's sweet spot. The pricing in this market is also pretty competitive. I know because the investment bank I used to work at used corporate housing and the rates we negotiated for rooms in Manhattan were much better than what you can get on Airbnb for Manhattan.

If you want a publicly traded comp for short term housing, look at Extended Stay. $1.2bn in revenue. About $500m in EBITDA. $4bn market cap. And it offers a 3% dividend yield.

As for my motivation, you want the truth? It's Friday night and my wife is out of town. I had a long week and instead of sleeping with one of her boring girlfriends like I usually do I'm trolling you on HN.

"the rates we negotiated for rooms in Manhattan were much better than what you can get on Airbnb"

Which is why AirBnB's business is much better.

> what motivates you to create an account for the purpose of commenting on this story.

airbnb is a YC company, HN is a YC site, so it's easy to imagine that comments critical of airbnb wouldn't be taken kindly.

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