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Comment by atomic77 | Hacker News Reader

While I don't want to seem like I'm wishing unemployment or hardship on anyone, the implosion of Airbnb is already causing a rent price correction that was sorely needed in many cities that have become severely unaffordable.

Wired published an article about this effect in London [1] and I've seen price drops as much as $500 for condos in the downtown core of Toronto on Zillow already.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/airbnb-coronavirus-london

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It's pretty bold to claim any and all price drops are directly attributable to Airbnb when in the middle of a recession causing pandemic that is heavily impacting normal housing/rental market activity.

I admit that both my observations, and the ones in the Wired article I cited, are anecdotal. And it's certainly not the only factor driving those rent decreases. But it's oddly coincidental that the biggest and most immediate price drops seem to be concentrated in the areas that had the most Airbnb listings, at least based on what i've looked at in Toronto.

Desirable areas have lots of demand for both regular apartments and places for tourists to stay.

In LA, there are a lot of airbnb properties being listed for mid to long term housing on FB housing groups.

I also saw a lot of student rooms available.

I wonder if 30% unemployment might also have an effect on rental prices

It's possible that while AirBnB increased demand for housing, the market could have responded by building and allocating more real estate to housing, resulting in an equilibrium. So it is at least plausible to me that an implosion of AirBnB might be good for renters in the short term as there is an over-allocation of housing, but that without AirBnB, market rates will increase to about where they were before as supply drops over time in response. The whole thing is complicated enough that there's no way I'm going to trust any single, non-academic article on the subject.

what about https://hbr.org/2019/04/research-when-airbnb-listings-in-a-c...

Bold claim.

If the short-term rental market suddenly evaporates, and you have a chunk of the housing stock full-time serving that much more lucrative market (and not catering to locals), this is the first thing that is going to put downward pressure on rents. Support mechanisms are in place for most "normal" classes of renters and owners.

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