Regulators and affordable housing advocates around the world worry that Airbnb is making it easier to illegally rent out apartment units for short stints to travelers, taking units off the market for full-time residents and driving housing costs higher. Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for New York. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo told the New York Times that illegal rentals “compromise efforts to maintain and promote affordable housing by allowing those units to be used as unregulated hotels.”

Since 2010, it has been illegal in New York to rent out a whole apartment for fewer than 30 days. But some tenants and landlords have ignored those rules and have been using Airbnb to rent out their apartments for much shorter periods.

In October 2016, after years of haggling between Aribnb and New York officials, Governor Cuomo Signs a bill which allows authorities to fine hosts up to $7,500 if they are caught listing a property on a rental platform such as Airbnb (Senate Bill S6340A 1 ). Just hours after that, Airbnb filed lawsuit in Manhattan federal court.

The affordable housing advocates concern that Airbnb is making it easier to illegally rent out apartment units for short stints to travelers, taking units off the market for full-time residents and driving housing costs higher is understandable. I have much sympathy with those concerns, but as a longtime Airbnb host and guest, I think that complete shut down of Airbnb activity in New York City, where hotels and rental agencies have special intersts, needs more objective delibration.

What does the data say?

When did a place was reviewed since 2010



I have downloaded Airbnb data from here. As you can see in the below map, Airbnb has grown really fast in New York City in past few years. New York City is indeed the AirBnB largest market in the United States. The city’s hosts generated about $1 billion in revenue in 2015

In the below map, you can see a time line of rented properties since 2010 in all 5 boroughs. The birght dots on the map shows the location of a property when it received a review from a guest. If you are a member of Airbnb, you'd know that reviews are the glue of the community. It lets you as a host or guest to leave detailed review of your experience. Receiving a positive review from a guest is absolutely vital for a host to have future guests and they usually encourage guests to leave a review. Therefore, in the lack of having access to detailed calendar of hosts, I took it as a good proximation of the last time a property was rented.



Not every host is the same!

To regualte the effect of Airbnb on the housing market in other major cities, authorities in collaboration with Airbnb have introduced different measures. For example, a maximum of 90 days per year in London, and 60 days per year in Amsterdam 2 . Or in Berlin as Europe's top destination, Airbnb hosts can offer a room but not an entire house 3. however, in Sydney, the high court in New South Wales state recently ruled that "they can't make rules to ban short-term rentals" including Airbnb 4.

What does this mean?

Lets put a square for every 100 hosts from the data set

All of the hosts

These square represent all 40000 hosts. Now lets see how many of them have more than one apartment on Airbnb website.

How many apartments?
As you can see, the majority of hosts only have one property. Less than 30% of hosts have listed multiple properties.
Whole apartment or shared?
From the ones who have multiple listings, about 30% of them are renting their whole apartment as oppose to sharing it with their guests.


For how long?

And finally, the ones that have rented their apartments for longer than 60 days, are colored grey.









Who are these people?

What is next?