[l4yao]

I think it's reasonable to assume Airbnb reduces supply. I don't see how you can conclude the 30% rent increase you experienced was largely driven by Airbnb.

Lets say anyone renting out their unit for less than half a year wouldn't have put the unit on the rental market anyways. If you download and dive into the data, you'll see that there are ~9550 "Entire home/apt" listings, of which 5992 are available for less than half the year, leaving only 3558 units. In a city the size of Toronto, that seems negligible.

Data: http://data.insideairbnb.com/canada/on/toronto/2019-03-07/vi...

Even if we took Fairbnb's number at face value, it still seems small relative to Toronto's total number of rental units.

Here is a report published by McGill's School of Urban Planning, commissioned by the Hotel Trades Council, that found Airbnb responsible for a 1.3% rent increase over a 3 year period in New York: https://mcgill.ca/newsroom/files/newsroom/channels/attach/ai...

[parthdesai]

First of all, appreciate the level headed discussion and some very sound points that you bring.

I dug through insideairbnb more and it's actually 12,374 (65%) units that are listed as entire unit in Toronto. That absolutely is a very significant amount of units. Only about 7k of the listings are either shared room/private room.

Data: http://insideairbnb.com/toronto/?neighbourhood=&filterEntire...

> Lets say anyone renting out their unit for less than half a year wouldn't have put the unit on the rental market anyways

See, that's a valid point though in Canada it is difficult to get a mortgage and there are people now buying a second unit to treat as an airbnb property and generate income. Chances are that if the unit is sitting idle for > 90 days and < 180 days, people might be forced to sell it. Sure not everyone but there will be units that will come to the market.

You say it's negligible but you have to remember that we have one of the lowest vacancy rates.

source: https://dailyhive.com/toronto/vacancy-rate-toronto-ontario-c...

So forget about affordable rentals, there even is a shortage of just units in the market over here.

Also, just go on r/toronto and search for Airbnb and you'll see an overwhelming majority of people echoing the issues that i've been saying.

[l4yao]

>it's actually 12,374 (65%) units that are listed as entire unit

I had filtered out the 3300 "Entire home/apt" listings that were available for 0 days a year. Not sure why it's part of the dataset, but I assume it's for people with previously active listings.

I'm not really understanding the mortgage point, but you bring up an interesting point of treating "multi-listing" hosts as bad actors. If we approximate it by saying 45% of 9550 are bad actors, that's still only 4300 listing. That's still tiny relative to the Toronto rental market. To be fair, the realistic number could be a lot lower since a multi-listing host might be hosting multiple bedrooms in a single house and inflating the # of multi-listing hosts, or they might be hosting their primary residence and an investment property where only the investment property is a bad actor.

>You say it's negligible but you have to remember that we have one of the lowest vacancy rates.

I don't deny that Airbnb has an adverse affect on rent prices, but it appears to be quite small relative to other levers affecting the housing crisis. I wonder if a study may exist that shows the economic benefits of Airbnb in communities, keeping more of the income within local residents, patronage to a larger spread of local businesses, greater financial independence from self-employment etc...

>just go on r/toronto

I'm pretty active in the community, but less and less these days. It's become a major echo chamber where fact based level headed discussion is quickly down voted if the rhetoric doesn't fit the majority's views. Just look at the comments the next time Airbnb is brought up :). In all seriousness, having an overwhelming majority of people agreeing with you isn't always indicative of "being correct". For any viewpoint, there's probably an active internet community out there that feels strongly one way. Take r/the_donald or r/The_Mueller/ for example.

[parthdesai]

>I'm not really understanding the mortgage point, but you bring up an interesting point of treating "multi-listing" hosts as bad actors. If we approximate it by saying 45% of 9550 are bad actors, that's still only 4300 listing. That's still tiny relative to the Toronto rental market. To be fair, the realistic number could be a lot lower since a multi-listing host might be hosting multiple bedrooms in a single house and inflating the # of multi-listing hosts, or they might be hosting their primary residence and an investment property where only the investment property is a bad actor.

So, here's another article i found on BBC, and tbh i hadn't even considered this point. A lot of airbnb units usually are in more desirable neighbourhoods, thus decreasing supply of rental units in these areas and in turn increasing the price of available units to rent. Renting on Airbnb nets you 2-3x the median long term rent. In LA, almost half of Airbnb listings were clustered in seven neighbourhoods, where rents increased a third more quickly than the city average.

Now if this is isn't a direct enough proof, i'm pretty sure i won't be changing your point of view.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45083954

> wonder if a study may exist that shows the economic benefits of Airbnb in communities, keeping more of the income within local residents, patronage to a larger spread of local businesses, greater financial independence from self-employment etc...

I haven't really thought of that, but you also have to remember that this is Toronto (specifically near and around downtown) , and it is going to get tourists regardless of Airbnb. And what happens to local shops when a unit is vacant for 4-5 days a week?

>t's become a major echo chamber where fact based level headed discussion is quickly down voted if the rhetoric doesn't fit the majority's views

Yeah, to be really honest I can't deny that.

[Consultant32452]

Just to throw some additional context on these numbers, Toronto has over a million housing units. At the upper bound of 12k AirBnB units, that's about 1% of all units.

Source: https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2015/pg/bgrd/backgroundf...