Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Even in very popular cities AirBnBs are less than 0.1% of the residential dwellings. AirBnBs have negligible effect on a rent.



Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.

As a simple example, in Austin TX, Inside AirBnB tracks over 15000 short term rentals, which would be closer to 5% of housing stock.

And the "only a small percentage of housing is AirBNBs" is a poor argument anyway, because home prices are set at the margins, and a relatively small reduction in housing supply in a constrained market can have a significant effect on price. Plus, for people that rent out a room, in can essentially have the effect of increasing the amount they are willing to pay ("I could normally not afford this apartment, but I could if I rent out a room on AirBnB"), which also increases prices.

More importantly, though, people have actually done studies on the effect of AirBnBs on prices, and found they have a positive (i.e. housing gets more expensive) effect on rents and home prices. One example: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/...


> Your entire comment is just made up with no evidence.

Quite the opposite. See for Montreal a recent article https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7445844 Officials estimate 4k airbnbs which gives 0.2% of all residential dwellings.


> residential dwellings.

Who cares about residential dwelling as a whole. Most of it is occupied by owners, we are talking about rentals and 4000+ taken by short term rentals is insanely high and sets the prices for what's left too.


In Sedona AZ 16% of houses are AirBnBs, and thats just the ones who complied & legally registered as short term rentals

https://www.redrocknews.com/2025/02/28/interactive-map-of-se...


Is Sedona a resort town? Resort towns were like that in the 80s already.


I don't think this is true. The proportion of short term rental places in some districts in European cities are as high as 8-10% and it's growing.

IMO it's meaningless to cite this 0.1% non-sense, because nobody will rent an AirBnB on the outskirts of huge cities far from tourist hotspots, so whoever comes up with these numbers, they probably try smearing the data by selecting an unreasonably wide area for comparison


What percentage are they of available residential rentals? That seems like the more relevant statistic.


2/3 of housing is owner occupied, so 0.3%


The world is more than just cities.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: