[novok]

People like to hand wave airbnb as a boogeyman for real estate demand increases, but when you dive into actual numbers you find out it's less than %1 of units in the vast majority of cases. And buying houses to rent them out as 'revenue properties' has been around for a very long time, similar with airbnb style services in the 1800s.

If a %1 demand increase causes big price distortions in a RE market, you have much bigger problems in your city than airbnb, which is usually linked to supply control via restrictive and often corrupt planning boards putting up large barriers that you have to 'pay to win' to get past under the table, as has been shown recently in SF.

[vvarren]

Fair point. This housing boom is largely caused by wealthy investors bidding up the price of single family homes, with AirBnb completely unrelated. There are also some urban-suburban migration dynamics at play. I mentioned AirBnb to point out that this isn't just a new issue. And while vacation rentals have always been a thing, they were formerly centered around vacation destinations. Now, they can be anywhere, and the internet makes it possible to browse and compare prices anywhere in the world. It is now economically feasible to own several vacation rental properties in small cities, which creates a pressure on supply for housing locals. And if you can earn a month's worth of rent in two weeks of AirBnb renting, the price of rent for long-term tenants is either going to go up or you are going to switch to AirBnb.

[novok]

Airbnb has a much higher labor component involved, while renting a unit out long term is far less. It's definitely a tradeoff.