OKLAHOMA CITY (Free press) – Amid an ongoing and potentially worsening housing availability crisis in Oklahoma City, there has been an undeniable increase in the number of homes used exclusively for short-term rentals, or “shared rentals,” centered primarily on the industry leader Airbnb.
In a previous article, we looked at the complications city officials face in their efforts to better license and regulate this booming industry, and the difficulty of cracking down on the unprecedented number of “ghost rentals” in The Village, without no license. -term rental homes listed openly on Airbnb and Vrbo.
The numbers for OKC as a whole are even more startling.
According to the Oklahoma City Department of Developmental Services, the agency that administers roommate licenses, there are currently 432 active roommate licenses in the city.
The Airbnb website lists over 1,000 rentals available in OKC.
When reducing the metrics to include only “whole house” rentals, in which the owner is not present on-site, this number is still around 800 rentals.
Compare that to a city of similar demographics like Fort Worth, TX, which has a higher population of nearly 250,000 and only shows around 600 roommate rentals available.
The 2022 point-in-time homeless count determined that the Metro is currently conservatively short of about 4,500 homes to meet the demands of the homeless population, a demographic group greatly increased by the end of eviction moratoria. during a pandemic.
So why is more than 15% of this needed housing entirely off the market for sale or rental and sitting empty, silently waiting for weekend travelers and overseas visitors?
Commercial Hosts
Removing these homes from the market in favor of shared accommodation has the obvious effect of reducing the supply of available homes, but may also contribute to soaring housing prices in the city.
Over the past year, housing prices in OKC are estimated to have risen by more than 18%, with the shortage of available homes driving up the value of remaining supply.
While Oklahoma has had relatively low homeownership rates and housing costs in recent years, the state has become fertile ground for foreign investors and fledgling tycoons, many of whom have moved to buy properties specifically for the roommates.
“We had a lady at our town council meeting last night who obviously owns seventeen Airbnbs,” village councilor Sean Cummings told me, “and she was looking to buy three more in the village.”
This is called a “commercial host”, a sole proprietor who owns multiple colocation properties, while ensuring that none of them is the host’s primary residence, as intended by Airbnb’s “one host, one home” policy. .
“As far as these people eating up the housing stock,” Cummings continued, “we’ve had homes in The Village put on the market and sold within a day, many of them without inspection or anything, just really weird closures. But that’s how it happens, and there’s nothing we can do about it. What we’d like to prevent is someone owning ten at a time, but the challenge is that ‘He can just put one “strawman” owner and make it look like ten different owners.
Ohio-based investment firm ReAphla announced last year that it planned to spend $1.5 billion buying low-cost homes across the country in cities like OKC in the US alone. goal of creating up to 5,000 new colocation properties, specifically capitalizing on newly vacated homes caused by federal foreclosure breaks ending.
According to Realtor.com, out-of-state investors are estimated to currently make up to 11% of Oklahoma City home buyers.
New units, no tenants
As builders struggle to keep up with demand, a repeated barrier to housing the city’s population is the decision to turn new and newly remodeled homes and units into shared apartments rather than putting them on the market for the sale or long-term rental.
Already homes in the still-fresh Wheeler neighborhood are listed on Airbnb, and there are even homes being built across the city specifically to be roommates.
“There has been great controversy in Linwood,” said Georgie Rasco, executive director of the Neighborhood Alliance of Central Oklahoma. “They tore down one of the nice old houses there and a builder came and built two houses on that land. One of them has been sold but the other is being transformed into an Airbnb. On the one hand, they never, ever should have been built this way, but it almost feels like they were building it to be an Airbnb.
It’s not just brand new construction either. With the amount of visible effort being put into the renovation and rejuvenation of the town, many residents are disappointed to see newly renovated units being marketed to short-term visitors rather than townspeople.
“They’ve remodeled all these old apartments just off 39th Street,” Rasco said, “and the hope or desire is to turn all of these apartments into Airbnbs. They’ve already gotten permission to do at least three as Airbnbs, but in their presentation they said they could do the whole apartment complex as Airbnbs for people coming to visit the gay area, which is wonderful for the area, but I Was really happy when I saw that they were being renovated and could be really nice and affordable places to stay But, they go there like Airbnbs.
Special exception
Airbnb says its platform is designed for — and primarily used by — landlords who want to rent out unused space in their own homes. While they admit there are a number of hosts on the platform who keep houses and apartments dedicated solely to short-term rentals, they say they don’t think that’s the use. main page of their site.
It is easy to see that the facts show the contrary.
Of the over 1,000 roommate rentals listed in Oklahoma City, only about 200 are listed as “private room” and none are listed as “shared room”. The overwhelming majority are entire homes intended for short-term rental.
Although a license for a room to rent inside your primary residence can be applied for easily, holding an entire house for a roommate requires a “special exception” from the Board of Adjustment of the OKC, a process that involves appearing before council in the city council chambers. .
With more than 700 “whole house” rentals available to OKC through Airbnb alone, the Board of Adjustment has only granted about 200 special exceptions since 2019, with only 31 more pending approval according to the Board of Adjustment’s clerk. fit Cynthia Lakin and Meagan Armstrong in Service Development.
‘The problem we have‘
Everyone interviewed for this article also recognized the potential benefits of Airbnbs and colocation, from the ability to provide short-term housing for students and much-needed traveling nurses, to the aesthetic benefits of rejuvenating old or neglected properties.
But given the current dire situation in OKC’s housing market, coupled with the outright boom in unlicensed and unregulated flatshares, the industry as it stands in our city may cause significant social harm at the neighborhood level, especially given how appealing the process can seem to investors and owners.
“Yeah, it’s easy for a flipper to build an HGTV-like house that doesn’t have to go through a lot of wear and tear because it’s just going to be busy maybe on the weekends or maybe ten days a month and make more more money than they make if they rent it out to someone and then have to completely renovate it every two years because a family lived there,” Rasco said. “So the cost of what someone makes with an Airbnb is what makes them want to do it, but that doesn’t help solve the problem we have of finding affordable housing for families and individuals in Oklahoma City.”
Last updated on September 19, 2022, 4:51 PM by Brett Dickerson – Editor
Comments are closed.