IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wil/wileco/2016-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Airbnb Properties Affect House Prices?

Author

Listed:

Abstract

The growth of peer-to-peer markets has provided a mechanism through which private individuals can enter a market as small scale, often temporary, suppliers of a good or service. Companies that facilitate this type of supply have attracted controversy in cities around the world, with concerns regarding Uber and Airbnb in particular. Both companies have been subject to criticism for failing to pay taxes to local authorities and for avoiding regulatory oversight that constrains more traditional suppliers of these services. It is not surprising that these companies have been criticized by more traditional suppliers of short term accommodation or transportation as presenting unfair competition, and attempts have been made to ban provision of these services in several cities around the world. A central complaint concerning Airbnb focuses on the impact of short-term rental properties on the value of residential property. A report prepared by the Office of the Attorney General of the State of New York lists these impacts among a number of concerns: do Airbnb rentals provide a black market in unsafe hotels? Do short-term rentals make New York City less affordable? Is the influx of out-of-town visitors upsetting the quiet of longstanding residential neighborhoods? These concerns pose difficulties because they imply different impacts on the values of residential properties. If short-term rentals provided via Airbnb create a concentration of what are effectively unsafe hotels, upsetting quiet residential neighborhoods, they would generate a local concentration of externalities that might be expected to depress property values rather than make housing less affordable. Alternatively, if these externality effects are modest relative to the impacts of space diverted from providing housing for residents to providing short-term accommodation for visitors, then local concentration of Airbnb properties may increase house prices. Perhaps because of this confusion, it is possible to find divergent viewpoints expressed about the impacts of Airbnb in the popular press and in consultant reports, but (to our knowledge) no careful study that estimates the direct impact of Airbnb rental availability on house prices. This paper presents such a study in the context of New York City.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Sheppard & Andrew Udell, 2016. "Do Airbnb Properties Affect House Prices?," Department of Economics Working Papers 2016-03, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    • Handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2016-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/SheppardUdellAirbnbAffectHousePrices.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Liran Einav & Chiara Farronato & Jonathan Levin, 2016. "Peer-to-Peer Markets," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 615-635, October.
    2. Apostolos Filippas & John J. Horton & Richard J. Zeckhauser, 2020. "Owning, Using, and Renting: Some Simple Economics of the “Sharing Economy”," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(9), pages 4152-4172, September.
    3. Jonathan Levin, 2011. "The Economics of Internet Markets," Discussion Papers 10-018, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    4. John J. Horton, 2015. "The Tragedy of Your Upstairs Neighbors: Is the Airbnb Negative Externality Internalized?," Papers 1611.05688, arXiv.org.
    5. Kenneth Kuttner & Ilhyock Shim, 2012. "Taming the Real Estate Beast: The Effects of Monetary and Macroprudential Policies on Housing Prices and Credit," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Alexandra Heath & Frank Packer & Callan Windsor (ed.),Property Markets and Financial Stability, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    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. Peitz, Martin & Schwalbe, Ulrich, 2016. "Zwischen Sozialromantik und Neoliberalismus: Zur Ökonomie der Sharing-Economy," ZEW Discussion Papers 16-033, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. Schwalbe Ulrich & Peitz Martin, 2016. "Kollaboratives Wirtschaften oder Turbokapitalismus?: Zur Ökonomie der Sharing economy," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 17(3), pages 232-252, September.
    3. Apostolos Filippas & John J. Horton & Joseph M. Golden, 2022. "Reputation Inflation," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(4), pages 733-745, July.
    4. Koharu Nakao, 2024. "Peer-to-Peer Sharing in the E-Commerce Market," Discussion Paper Series 277, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Jan 2025.
    5. Chiara Farronato & Andrey Fradkin, 2018. "The Welfare Effects of Peer Entry in the Accommodation Market: The Case of Airbnb," NBER Working Papers 24361, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Ho, Shirley J. & Chang, Hung-Wei, 2022. "Impacts of sharing business on production, sales, and rental markets," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 248(C).
    7. Kyle Barron & Edward Kung & Davide Proserpio, 2021. "The Effect of Home-Sharing on House Prices and Rents: Evidence from Airbnb," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(1), pages 23-47, January.
    8. Mark Merante & Keren Mertens Horn, 2016. "Is Home Sharing Driving up Rents? Evidence from Airbnb in Boston," Working Papers 2016_03, University of Massachusetts Boston, Economics Department.
    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. Feng Deng, 2019. "The sharing economy and urban property rights," Asia-Pacific Journal of Regional Science, Springer, vol. 3(1), pages 121-136, February.
    11. Farajallah, Mehdi & Hammond, Robert G. & Pénard, Thierry, 2019. "What drives pricing behavior in Peer-to-Peer markets? Evidence from the carsharing platform BlaBlaCar," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 15-31.
    12. Schmidt, Peter, 2020. "The effect of car sharing on car sales," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    13. Cristiano Codagnone & Federico Biagi & Fabienne Abadie, 2016. "The Passions and the Interests: Unpacking the ‘Sharing Economy’," JRC Research Reports JRC101279, Joint Research Centre.
    14. Ismael Gálvez-Iniesta & José L. Groizard & Ferran Portella-Carbó, 2023. "Sharing my place: the local labor market impact of the P2P technology shock," DEA Working Papers 97, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Departament d'Economía Aplicada.
    15. Alexander Theisen & Lynne Kiesling & Michael Munger, 2022. "From Airbnb to solar: electricity market platforms as local sharing economies," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 193(3), pages 141-162, December.
    16. Vladimir Pavlov & Ron Berman, 2019. "Price Manipulation in Peer-to-Peer Markets and the Sharing Economy," Working Papers 19-10, NET Institute.
    17. Rong, Ke & Luo, Yining, 2023. "Toward born sharing: The sharing economy evolution enabled by the digital ecosystems," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    18. Lam, W., 2015. "Switching Costs in Two-sided Markets," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2015024, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    19. Buechel, Berno & Krähenmann, Philemon, 2022. "Fixed price equilibria on peer‐to‐peer platforms: Lessons from time‐based currencies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 335-358.
    20. Jacopo Arpetti & Antonio Iovanella, 2019. "Towards more effective consumer steering via network analysis," Papers 1903.11469, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2019.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:wil:wileco:2016-03. 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: Stephen Sheppard (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edwilus.html .

    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.