Spatial Variability of the ‘Airbnb Effect’: A Spatially Explicit Analysis of Airbnb’s Impact on Housing Prices in Sydney

Over the last decade, the emergence and significant growth of home-sharing platforms, such as Airbnb, has coincided with rising housing unaffordability in many global cities. It is in this context that we look to empirically assess the impact of Airbnb on housing prices in Sydney—one of the least affordable cities in the world. Employing a hedonic property valuation model, our results indicate that Airbnb’s overall effect is positive. A 1% increase in Airbnb density is associated with approximately a 2% increase in property sales price. However, recognizing that Airbnb’s effect is geographically uneven and given the fragmented nature of Sydney’s housing market, we also employ a GWR to account for the spatial variation in Airbnb activity. The findings confirm that Airbnb’s influence on housing prices is varied across the city. Sydney’s northern beaches and parts of western Sydney experience a statistically significant value uplift attributable to Airbnb activity. However, traditional tourist locations focused around Sydney’s CBD and the eastern suburbs experience insignificant or negative property price impacts. The results highlight the need for policymakers to consider local Airbnb and housing market contexts when deciding the appropriate level and design of Airbnb regulation.

Trajectories of Spatial Assimilation or Place Stratification? A Typology of Residence and Workplace Histories of Newly Arrived Migrants in Sweden

In most societies, resources and opportunities are concentrated in neighborhoods and workplaces occupied by the host population. The spatial assimilation and place stratification theories propose trajectories (the sequences of events) leading to minority and migrant access to or exclusion from these advantageous places. However, most previous research on these theories did not ask whether such theorized trajectories occur. We apply sequence analysis to decade-long residence and workplace histories of newly arrived migrants in Sweden to identify a typology of combined residence-work trajectories. The seven types of trajectories in our typology are characterized by varying degrees of proximity to the host population in residential neighborhoods and workplaces and by different patterns of change in such proximity over time. The pivotal role of socioeconomic gains in spatial assimilation, posited by the namesake theory, is not supported, as we do not find that migrant employment precedes residence alongside the host population. The importance of housing-market discrimination for migrants’ exclusion from host-dominated spaces, posited by place stratification theory, is only weakly supported, as we find that migrants from less affluent countries accumulate disadvantage over time, likely due to discrimination in both the labor and housing markets. Our findings also underscore the need for new theories explaining migrant residential outcomes which apply to contexts where migrant-dense neighborhoods are still forming.

Long-Lasting Legacy of Rent Controls: Perspectives on the Private Rental Market in Malta within the Context of a Dual Market

Up to a few years ago, the private rental market in Malta was a classic example of the dysfunction created by two diametrically opposed regimes – a rigidly-controlled one and a completely liberal one – co-existing side by side. Two recent reforms have sought to address this situation. The objective of this paper is to describe the state-of-play in the private rental market in Malta by providing a historical background to these recent developments. In addition to the distortions in the housing market that rent controls introduce, controls also contributed to the deterioration of the statistical infrastructure to collect data on this sector. From this perspective, the introduction of the 2020 rent reform for the post-1995 sector, in addition to providing a set of minimum standards to professionalize the market, also facilitated data collection efforts through the introduction of a rent register. This information provided an alternative source of information to complement the other data sources, which tend to be outdated, inadequate, or focus solely on specific segments of the market, thus allowing for a more detailed and complete view of the private rental market in Malta.