A recent study of the Airbnb rental units in Seattle shows a growing supply of short-term rental units, which is also cutting into the city's available rental housing stock.
Gene Balk shares the details of a new study of the impacts of Airbnb on the housing market of Seattle. Howard Greenwich, a senior policy adviser at the housing-advocacy group Puget Sound Sage, and web developer Tom Slee scraped data from the Airbnb site to find the following results during the month of April:
…there were 2,817 listings for whole units, or entire houses or apartments (there were also 1,353 private or shared rooms in Seattle). Most of these are placed by folks renting out their own home to make some extra cash while they’re away. But 1,003 of these units — 36 percent — were listed by hosts who did not reside there.
The study also compared Airbnb rental units between September 2015 and April 2016, finding quick growth in short-term rentals around Downtown, Capitol Hill, and Fremont, among other neighborhoods. For the whole city, Airbnb grew by 665 units in that time, for a 31 percent increase.
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