Conditions for the Introduction of Regulation for Short-Term Rentals

Most cities in major agglomerations in Europe started to address the rise of short-term accommodation rentals by introducing regulation designed to protect the local housing stock. The momentum behind the widespread introduction of such regulations can be attributed to qualitative and quantitative factors. This article examines selected fields related to short-term rentals in order to uncover the (structural) triggers or conditions that are necessary and sufficient for municipalities to initiate the regulation of their housing market. The study is based on the systematic examination of the effects of those triggers and their combinations using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). With this method, we explore the implementation or non-implementation of regulation on a sample of major German cities. The results suggest a universal set of conditions covering three central fields: housing market situation, accommodation market conditions and tourism accommodation demand.

Short-Term Rentals and the Residential Housing System: Lessons from Berlin

The increasing professionalisation of Airbnb-style short-term rentals has emerged within a grey space between residential housing and hotel accommodation. Subsequently, an array of contestations have arisen, due in no small part to the intangibility of online short-term rental platforms as well as the absence of clear regulation at the municipal level. In urban settings already confronted with housing issues such as supply shortages and reduced affordability, recent studies show how the proliferation of short-term rentals can amplify housing market pressure while feeding into the broader urban processes of gentrification, touristification, and displacement. Using Berlin, Germany, as a site of analysis, this paper explores the expansion of short-term rentals in relation to various policy interventions designed to regulate the conversion of residential housing into tourist accommodation.

The Welfare State and the Gender Dissimilarity Index in Homelessness: A Comparison of Norway, Belgium and Poland

This article investigates the structural underpinnings of gender dissimilarities in homelessness from a comparative perspective. The Gender Dissimilarity Index is introduced as a simple measure for quantifying the unevenness of the distribution of men and women across the ETHOS-light categories. Three gendered aspects of the welfare state are considered and compared for Norway, Belgium, and Poland: employment and childcare, housing, and homelessness policies. Based on available data, it appears that the most uneven distribution of genders may indicate a combination of the promotion of the male breadwinner model and relatively broad support for people who are homeless, but also the shortage of affordable housing. A more gender-balanced homeless population may be the result of a combination of housing-led approaches and degenderising policies. However, a similar distribution may be attributed to states with implicitly genderising policies coupled with ‘traditional’ attitudes towards gender roles and a lack of adequate responses to women’s needs.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Private Rental Housing Market in Poland: What Do Experts Say and What Do Actual Data Show?

The aim of the article is to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the level of housing rents using the example of the City of Krakow. This study is based on objective data on rental prices and subjective information obtained from real estate agents using a questionnaire survey. The research revealed that the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic actually led to a 6-7% decrease in prices in the rental market in Krakow, while at the same time the surveyed real estate agents had estimated that rents would drop by about 13%. With the second wave of the pandemic, it is possible to see that its immediate impact, i.e. between the third and fourth quarter of 2020, has led to a further 6.25% drop in rents. It should be noted that the latter decrease was very accurately predicted, both by the survey respondents and by the econometric models used. Finally, the results of the analysis also indicated that the worsening of the pandemic in the last quarter of 2020 will have a significant impact on rent levels in Krakow for all of next year. Regardless of how the economy develops, rental prices are forecast to fall further in 2021q1. However, in the subsequent quarters of 2021, rents are projected to increase, but ultimately their level will not return to pre-pandemic values even in 2021q4. The latter is likely to happen only in the second half of 2022.

Normalisation of the Speculative Frame Method and Its Application to the Housing Market in Poland

This article proposes the normalisation of the speculative frame method for identifying real estate bubbles, price shocks, and other disturbances in the real estate market. This index-based method relies on time series data and real estate prices. In this article, the speculative frame method was elaborated and normalised with the use of equations for normalising data sets and research methodologies. The method is discussed on the example of the Polish housing market.

Airbnb and Amenity: Is Short-Term Letting Reshaping How We Live in the City?

The popularity of short-term letting (STL) platforms like Airbnb has created housing and planning challenges for cities worldwide, including the potential impact of STL on the quality of life of nearby residents and communities. Underpinning this concern is an inherent tension in urban living between the rights and interests of individual residents and the collective rights and interests of neighbours. Through interviews with Australian Airbnb hosts, this paper examines how STL hosts navigate this tension, including how they frame their rights, how they seek to minimise impacts on neighbours, and how they perceive the role of regulation in balancing individual and community rights. In doing so, the paper contributes to both theory and policy debates about urban property rights and how ‘compact city’ planning orthodoxies are reshaping the lived experience of urban residents worldwide.

Airbnb, Platform Capitalism and the Globalised Home

Airbnb, the most ubiquitous of the many online short-term rental platforms offering residential homes to tourists, has infiltrated local neighbourhoods and housing markets throughout the world. It has also divided policy-makers and communities over whether tourism in residential homes is a benign example of the so-called ‘sharing’ economy or a malignant practice which destroys neighbourhoods. These differing positions reflect alternative and changing notions of ‘home’ within wider processes of financialisation and platform capitalism. This paper examines these themes with reference to stakeholder statements solicited in response to government inquiries on how to regulate short-term rental housing in Australia.

The Impact of Airbnb on Long-Term Rental Housing: The Case of Ljubljana

Airbnb has become a fixture in the development of global cities. It especially impacts cities’ residential characteristics. The company works with the concept of the sharing economy, the essence of which is the exchange of services or goods between individuals who set the rules of operation without generating profits, but together generate more revenue. It insists that it does not represent a form of direct competition with other urban accommodation services and that it merely seeks to expand the tourism market. Nonetheless, this article proceeds from the assumption that Airbnb is influencing and transforming the housing market of the cities it operates in. It focuses on Ljubljana, which until 2019 had a record number of international arrivals and overnight stays. The findings confirm that short-term Airbnb rentals have affected the long-term rental market in Ljubljana. They also show that a very large share of rentals through Airbnb take place in the grey economy. However, the analysis of cases from selected European cities showed that, in addition to the drawbacks described, Airbnb also has positive effects on the development of cities. It is therefore necessary to accept and adapt appropriately to this global phenomenon through specific measures, such as those proposed in the conclusion for Ljubljana.

Challenging the Discourse around the Impacts of Airbnb through Suburbs Not Cities: Lessons from Australia and COVID-19

Supporters of short-term rental (STR) platforms state that STRs represent a small fraction of the housing market of major cities and therefore have little impact on rents. However, there is emerging evidence that suggests that STRs have highly localised impacts. In this article, we use the natural experiment of the pause in tourism caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to highlight the impact of a decrease in STR listings on rental markets in the case study city of Hobart, Australia. We find that rental affordability has improved in Hobart’s STR-dense suburbs with the increased vacancies from the underutilised STR properties. These results provide evidence of the impact of STRs on local housing markets when analysed on a finer scale than the whole-of-city approach. The focus on local housing markets helps local communities and city governments build an argument for the impact of STRs on tight housing markets.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Short-term Rentals and the Housing Market

Editorial.