IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v61y2024i16p3086-3109.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Supplementary rental supply? The digital market for low-cost and informal housing in Sydney, Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Zahra Nasreen

    (The University of Sydney, Australia)

  • Nicole Gurran

    (The University of Sydney, Australia)

  • Pranita Shrestha

    (The University of Sydney, Australia)

Abstract

This article examines real estate platforms and the data they generate to provide new insights into housing markets and practices, focusing on lower-cost and informal sectors, where building or rental regulations are often bypassed or contravened. We examine online listings advertised in Sydney, one of the most expensive cities in Australia and the world, compiling data from four dominant platforms – Realestate.com.au, Flatmates.com.au, Gumtree.com.au and Airbnb.com – each of which offers a particular type of rental accommodation. Using these datasets, we identify a typology of lower-cost and informal tenures and dwelling units, ranging from secondary dwellings and illegally subdivided apartments to shared accommodation and precarious rental agreements. Our study highlights a supplementary supply of rental housing, operating within the conventional private rental market, accessed and made visible via the platforms we examine. Applying a statistical regression approach, we examine relationships between concentrations of informal housing supply and socio-economic variables. The findings reveal intersections between digital platforms and evolving informal market practices and have implications for urban planning and housing policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Zahra Nasreen & Nicole Gurran & Pranita Shrestha, 2024. "Supplementary rental supply? The digital market for low-cost and informal housing in Sydney, Australia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(16), pages 3086-3109, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:16:p:3086-3109
    DOI: 10.1177/00420980241262227
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00420980241262227
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00420980241262227?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mara Ferreri & Romola Sanyal, 2022. "Digital informalisation: rental housing, platforms, and the management of risk," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 1035-1053, July.
    2. Mariana Schiller & Mike Raco, 2021. "Postcolonial narratives and the governance of informal housing in London," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 268-290, May.
    3. Zahra Nasreen & Kristian. J. Ruming, 2021. "Informality, the marginalised and regulatory inadequacies: a case study of tenants’ experiences of shared room housing in Sydney, Australia," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 220-246, May.
    4. Ashraful Alam & Claudio Minca & Khandakar Farid Uddin, 2022. "Risks and informality in owner-occupied shared housing: to let, or not to let?," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 59-82, January.
    5. Nicole Gurran & Peter Phibbs, 2017. "When Tourists Move In: How Should Urban Planners Respond to Airbnb?," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 83(1), pages 80-92, January.
    6. Erik Elldér & Katarina Haugen & Bertil Vilhelmson, 2022. "When local access matters: A detailed analysis of place, neighbourhood amenities and travel choice," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(1), pages 120-139, January.
    7. Pranita Shrestha & Nicole Gurran & Sophia Maalsen, 2021. "Informal housing practices," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 157-168, May.
    8. Redento B. Recio & Tanzil Shafique, 2022. "Reimagining (informal) housing futures in uncertain times," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 106-118, January.
    9. Horn, Keren & Merante, Mark, 2017. "Is home sharing driving up rents? Evidence from Airbnb in Boston," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 14-24.
    10. Melanie Lombard, 2019. "Informality as Structure or Agency? Exploring Shed Housing in the UK as Informal Practice," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(3), pages 569-575, May.
    11. Nicole Gurran & Madeleine Pill & Sophia Maalsen, 2021. "Hidden homes? Uncovering Sydney’s informal housing market," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(8), pages 1712-1731, June.
    12. Nicola Banks & Melanie Lombard & Diana Mitlin, 2020. "Urban Informality as a Site of Critical Analysis," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(2), pages 223-238, February.
    13. Julia Gabriele Harten & Annette M Kim & J Cressica Brazier, 2021. "Real and fake data in Shanghai’s informal rental housing market: Groundtruthing data scraped from the internet," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(9), pages 1831-1845, July.
    14. Noah J. Durst & Jake Wegmann, 2017. "Informal Housing in the United States," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 282-297, March.
    15. Boeing, Geoff, 2017. "New Insights into Rental Housing Markets across the United States: Web Scraping and Analyzing Craigslist Rental Listings," SocArXiv v54w4, Center for Open Science.
    16. Sophia Maalsen & Pranita Shrestha & Nicole Gurran, 2022. "Informal housing practices in the global north: digital technologies, methods, and ethics," International Journal of Housing Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 1-9, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jakub Galuszka, 2024. "BOATS AS HOUSING IN OXFORD, UK: Trajectories of Informality in a High‐Income Context," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 126-144, January.
    2. Julia Gabriele Harten & Geoff Boeing, 2024. "Access to the exclusive city: Home sharing as an affordable housing strategy," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(16), pages 3069-3085, December.
    3. Ferreri, Mara & Sanyal, Romola, 2022. "Digital informalisation: rental housing, platforms, and the management of risk," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112794, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Hui Li & Yijin Kim & Kannan Srinivasan, 2022. "Market Shifts in the Sharing Economy: The Impact of Airbnb on Housing Rentals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 8015-8044, November.
    5. Tedds, Lindsay M. & Cameron, Anna & Khanal, Mukesh & Crisan, Daria, 2021. "Why Existing Regulatory Frameworks Fail in the Short-term Rental Market: Exploring the Role of Regulatory Fractures," MPRA Paper 106712, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Bricongne, Jean-Charles & Meunier, Baptiste & Pouget, Sylvain, 2023. "Web-scraping housing prices in real-time: The Covid-19 crisis in the UK," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(PB).
    7. Donghwan Ki & Sugie Lee, 2019. "Spatial Distribution and Location Characteristics of Airbnb in Seoul, Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-16, July.
    8. Thackway, William & Ng, Matthew Kok Ming & Lee, Chyi Lin & Shi, Vivien & Pettit, Christopher, 2021. "Spatial Variability of the ‘Airbnb Effect’: A Spatially Explicit Analysis of Airbnb's impact on Housing Prices in Sydney," SocArXiv cw2a9, Center for Open Science.
    9. Shijie Sun & Shengyue Zhang & Xingjian Wang, 2021. "Characteristics and influencing factors of Airbnb spatial distribution in China’s rapid urbanization process: A case study of Nanjing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-19, March.
    10. Reichle, Philipp & Fidrmuc, Jarko & Reck, Fabian, 2023. "The sharing economy and housing markets in selected European cities," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    11. Franco, Sofia F. & Santos, Carlos Daniel, 2021. "The impact of Airbnb on residential property values and rents: Evidence from Portugal," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    12. Gurran, Nicole & Zhang, Yuting & Shrestha, Pranita, 2020. "‘Pop-up’ tourism or ‘invasion’? Airbnb in coastal Australia," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    13. Helen X. H. Bao & Saul Shah, 2020. "The Impact of Home Sharing on Residential Real Estate Markets," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-18, July.
    14. Hongchang Wang & Benjamin Williams & Karen Xie & Wei Chen, 2024. "Quality Differentiation and Matching Performance in Peer-to-Peer Markets: Evidence from Airbnb Plus," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(7), pages 4260-4282, July.
    15. Dolnicar, Sara, 2019. "A review of research into paid online peer-to-peer accommodation," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 248-264.
    16. Mavropoulos, Antonios, 2021. "To rent or not to rent: A household finance perspective on Berlin's short-term rental regulation," IWH Discussion Papers 1/2021, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    17. Yi Jin & Yimin Zhao, 2022. "THE INFORMAL CONSTITUTION OF STATE CENTRALITY: Governing Street Businesses in (Post‐)Pandemic Chengdu, China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 631-650, July.
    18. Agustín Álvarez-Herranz & Edith Macedo-Ruíz, 2021. "An Evaluation of the Three Pillars of Sustainability in Cities with High Airbnb Presence: A Case Study of the City of Madrid," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-35, March.
    19. Haochen Ding & Jinghong Sun, 2024. "A Systematic Review of Technology Innovations in Housing Management in Scotland," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(2), pages 21582440241, April.
    20. Briar Goldwyn & Amy Javernick-Will & Abbie B. Liel, 2022. "Multi-Hazard Housing Safety Perceptions of Those Involved with Housing Construction in Puerto Rico," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-22, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:61:y:2024:i:16:p:3086-3109. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.