Originally Posted by
nerd
Do we have any numbers here? The turnover in rental apartments is extremely low. It would take a long time for a significant number of them to be taken off the rental market and converted to full-time nightly rentals. The AirBnB market is dominated by tenants renting out their place, not landlords.
AirBnB is (not surprisingly) very unwilling to provide really useful data on this. Their reluctance to provide data is good evidence in and of itself that they're hiding something. If AirBnB rentals really were dominated by people renting out their own homes when they're out of town, AirBnB could easily show this. Take the total number of rental nights (i.e. how many nights were actually purchased) in the last six months, and look at the share rented by people who meet the "renting out my own home on occasion" criteria:
1. Host has only one apartment listed with AirBnB.
2. Host has only
offered the apartment for rent <50% of the time.
I would bet that the share of rental nights hosted by people who fit this description is a long way from "dominat[ion]."