By John Ruch
Atlanta has new short-term rental regulations born out of concerns about community impacts like party homes. Its application is suspended for similar reasons – only on the industry side, whose owners of several properties could be excluded from the market.
These anecdotes and community interests often drive the development of short-term rental policies due to the limited data available from the market leader. Airbnb and a still-new field of academic study that is trying to catch up. A SaportaReport/Atlanta Civic Circle A snapshot of Atlanta’s Airbnb listings for a day last month doesn’t have all the answers, but raises important questions about overlooked factors like the role of apartments and condos and the impacts on housing affordability in the stadium neighborhoods are already experiencing gentrification.
The June 12 snapshot found approximately 4,300 properties listed on Airbnb, which we mapped with their approximate locations. Airbnb does not provide exact address data, which it claims is for privacy and some academics say “obfuscates” the analysis of the company’s community impacts. This number can vary greatly depending on the seasons or special events.
By comparison, Nashville recently had around 6,800 registrations and New Orleans around 6,700, according to similar counts by Inside Airbnb, a website run by activists critical of the company. Chicago and San Francisco, which saw enrollment plummet after the introduction of licensing and regulatory systems, had between 6,400 and 6,500. Austin, Texas had nearly 12,000. Murray Cox, the running activist Inside Airbnbsays he hopes the Atlanta data will be available within six months and that he might prioritize that if it would facilitate a public discussion here.
Atlanta’s listings roughly track population density and tourist attractions, with the thickest clusters in Midtown, Old Fourth Ward and the Atlantic Station area. There were smaller groups around the Lenox Square and Lindbergh areas of Buckhead.
Much of Atlanta’s push to regulate short-term rentals is driven by bad behavior at homes or mansions hosting wild parties, but the map clusters make it clear that many Airbnb locations are in apartment and condo towers, not in single-family neighborhoods.
That matches national data, according to Keith Teltser, an economics professor at Georgia State University who studies Airbnb’s effects on housing. It pulled enrollment data for 27 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States from 2014 to 2017 via AirDNA, a company that scrapes Airbnb’s website and sells the information. He said 51.4% of the listings were classified as apartments – and 56.4% of them were listed by owners offering only one property, meaning those owners were more likely to use short-term rentals to supplement their income rather than as a business.
In Atlanta, that means Airbnb is in apartment towers with less-discussed effects on tenants’ quality of life, rents, and ability to pay. These are also the types of Airbnb listings most likely to disappear after licensing requirements, as they are often black market activities already prohibited by landlords and condo associations. The Atlanta Metro Short Term Rental Alliance (AMSTRA), the industry group that successfully delayed enforcement of Atlanta’s regulations, noted that such listings have declined in other cities with licensing systems.
The big international controversy about Airbnb is about housing affordability. Airbnb – which did not respond to questions – and its supporters say its service stabilizes households by giving them a new source of income by renting out a room or house while they’re away. Critics say Airbnb likely inflates rents and house prices due to the virtually effortless ability to charge hundreds a night for a property. This concern is reinforced by the growing influence of commercial hosts who own and rent many properties at once. Inside AirbnbAnalysis of several major US cities revealed that timeshare hosts account for 50-80% of listings.
Our Atlanta data did not include multi-property operators, but the numbers are suggestive. The majority of the ads – around 3,700 – were for whole homes, not spare parts. About a third were listed by “Superhosts” – a corporate status for those who rent frequently and get lots of great reviews.
Atlanta regulations limit people to renting two properties, one of which must be their primary residence. One of AMSTRA’s main objections is the lack of grandfathering for existing multi-property owners. The group expressed skepticism about Airbnb’s connection to affordability issues.
Academics find a more complex picture and a growing body of research linking Airbnb to higher housing costs and lower supply.
Teltser, the GSU professor, is the co-author of a new paper on Airbnb and affordability that has found indications of a double-edged sword. Especially in areas where Airbnbs are clustered, house prices and rents are rising due to potential new income, but signs of financial distress for landlords — like lockdown warnings — were less likely to cause loss of business. a house in these areas. This may be because landlords can supplement their income with Airbnb rentals, or it may be because they sold at a higher price and left. Either way, dense Airbnb clusters have fewer foreclosures than you might expect, according to the research.
“It’s pretty clearly financially advantageous for existing homeowners, in terms of home value, but it’s ambiguous for new buyers,” Teltser said.
Teltser and his colleagues also examined the effect of regulatory systems in Chicago and San Francisco. In these cities, listings were down about 40% after the regulations, and housing prices in these dense Airbnb clusters were down about 10%. However, foreclosure notices and completed foreclosures have increased.
A team of researchers from McGill University in Canada found evidence that Airbnb is reducing housing supply and raising costs, and indicators that it may be a new driver of neighborhood gentrification. In an article 2020, they reported that nearly half of Airbnb’s revenue the previous year came from commercial multi-property operators. They estimated, based on high-frequency rentals, that Airbnb listings removed 17,000 to 34,000 homes from the long-term rental market in Canada. Most of them — from 7,800 to 18,900 — are concentrated in the major metropolitan areas of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. It’s a small percentage of the total number of housing units, they acknowledge, but it’s not evenly distributed and has a much greater impact at the hyper-local neighborhood level, especially when vacancy rates are weak. Cities are expected to build thousands of new homes to keep pace – many of which will surely become short-term rentals as well.
Researchers are also investigating Airbnb’s gentrification potential, as it creates a potential income stream for a property “out of thin air” and a way to get there almost instantly – much faster than traditional developers and investors. . As they note in an article from 2018“…the only step needed to convert a long-term rental to a short-term rental is to remove the existing tenant… In other words, Airbnb allows gentrification without development.”
This effect may overlap with other traditional factors to create “supergentrification,” they suggest, with concentrations in tourist areas and gentrified neighborhoods.
Atlanta listings suggest the effect may be underway here, with many homes listed in once shunned Westside neighborhoods now the subject of gentrification controversies in the wake of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, a new Microsoft complex and other forces.
A recent ad offered a home in Bankhead for $196 a night that “sleeps 10” and touts its proximity to the stadium. A home in Vine City priced at $159 a night, with one bedroom for eight, was featured with a photo of the stadium overlooking the backyard. This one has many reviews from tourists calling the area “sketchy” or “clean.” Last year, a visitor said: “The neighborhood is scary! Their [sic] are projects on the next block and condemned houses across the street and next door.
Atlanta has a long history of direct destruction and indirect gentrification of neighborhoods for stadiums and related mega-tourist events like the 1996 Olympics, where informal home rentals were popular, albeit more complicated, long before Airbnb does not exist. Now Airbnb is also an important factor in this type of event tourist accommodation – and recently became an official sponsor of the Olympics. With Atlanta poised to host such events as part of the 2026 World Cup soccer tournament, short-term rent pressure on adjacent neighborhoods will likely increase. Today, the Westside Future Fund has an anti-displacement program for landlords and tenants – with a waitlist for the latter closed due to demand – but the fund did not respond to questions about Airbnb’s effects on this work.
The McGill researchers note that the study of Airbnb and other short-term rental effects is still new, and they suggest other questions to explore. Among them: Is Airbnb more or less likely to displace residents than other gentrification factors? What kinds of regulations are effective? And what are the labor market effects of factors such as non-union labor for cleaning and managing short-term rentals?
Maggie Lee assisted with data analysis, mapping and report creation.
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