Planning to move to New York City ? You might be better off just vacationing there, as the city can now officially boast that it has more Airbnb listings than it does apartments available for rent.
This phenomenon has been an ever-growing concern with Airbnb and is finally proving those worries right as the hotel alternative is eating up potential rental units left and right.
There are approximately 7,669 apartments available in New York City.
At least, according to the most recent Douglas Elliman report, which also stated there’s a bidding war for one in every five of those apartments.
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Trying to get an apartment these days can feel like marching through a battlefield, let alone trying to find one that’s affordable.
There may be someone to blame for these issues.
Airbnb.
While there are under 10,000 apartments for rent in a big city, do you know what there are? Over 10,000 Airbnb units. AirDNA reports the number to be 10,572, while Inside Airbnb lists 20,397.
This has always been an underlying concern when it came to Airbnb.
This idea that they could eat up a lot of units that otherwise would have been rented out, thus driving up prices by increasing demand.
It’s now reached a critical point where so many units have been converted to Airbnbs, that they now outweigh the amount of available apartments.
Of course, they don’t think they’re the problem here.
They didn’t comment on the numbers of units reported by third-party sources, nor do they release booking information of their own, but they did share that the number of Airbnbs in New York had fallen since the beginning of the pandemic.
They also point fingers at other possible contributors to the rising rent prices, fully removing themself as a potential problem source.
As tensions continue to rise surrounding the housing crisis, there’s no knowing where it’ll go next.
As mentioned, trying to find anything anywhere is a tough ask, one only made higher by ever-increasing rent prices. We can’t seem to catch a break.
Some people are rather optimistic, though. Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel,who wrote the Douglas Elliman report, said, “The market isn’t turning, it’s actually accelerating. Greater affordability is not right around the corner. More and more people are hunkering down.”
h/t: Curbed
