The rental market in New York is hot and according to a report by the real estate agency Douglas Aliman, a price war is developing over one in five apartments offered for rent in Manhattan and one in three luxury apartments.
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According to the report, inventory in all of Manhattan, Brooklyn and northwest Queens is less than 10,000, or more precisely in April it stood at 7,669 housing units.
This means that inventory is lower by several thousand of all New York properties offered for rent on Airbnb and stands at 10,572, according to an AirDNA website that tracks short-term rentals. This figure is even higher and stands at 20,397 on the Inside Airbnb website, which also monitors Airbnb posts.
Since the company began operations in 2008, there have been concerns that it will hurt the stock of available assets and lead to price increases in cities like New York and San Francisco, where there is already a shortage of housing.
Airbnb does not post information about the properties offered or bookings and did not comment on the data collected. However, company representatives have confirmed that New York’s property inventory has declined since the plague began. They also mentioned other factors, unrelated to the site itself, that are responsible for the housing shortage. “In the last two years, there has been a decline in the supply of properties in the city, and it now represents a fraction of the units for rent in the city, while rental prices are rising and building permits for new apartments have fallen by double digits,” a company spokesman said.
Airbnb’s figures are not entirely accurate because they compare their supply to all rental units in New York, and not just to apartments available for rent. As of 2017, there were 2.18 properties for rent in New York, but only a tiny percentage of them are available in any given year or month.
The company constantly denies that they have a role in scarcity, and insist that they provide an income that helps people to prosper and live in expensive cities. The company also argued that the data that other companies extract from their site is not necessarily accurate, in part because there are a number of ads for each property and properties that appear available even when occupied. For example, a house in the city that is rented out only when the owner on vacation themselves will appear in the search throughout the year, but is actually only available for a few weeks each year.
Even if Airbnb’s arguments are true, there is still no doubt that many apartments have been taken off the market in favor of short-term rentals throughout the year. In any case, the housing market in New York is on the verge of a crisis, and there is a much higher chance of finding a one-room apartment for a few weeks than a full-year apartment, a trend that is not expected to change any time soon.