Airbnb impact on Dublin housing market must be addressed

When I decided to permanently move out of out my small house in Dublin’s city centre, I spent months debating what to do with it.

Rent it out into a city rental market desperately short of properties, and take on the role of landlord with long-term tenants and long-term legal obligations? Or list the house with the self-termed "online marketing and hospitality service" Airbnb, and go for short-term lets and higher turnover?

The economic temptation was to go Airbnb. I’d never be stuck long term with a problematical tenant. I would almost certainly make more money, too.

Irish people like renting through the service. More than 20,000 Irish rentals are listed currently on Airbnb, some 7,000 in Dublin alone. In 2017, Irish people earned €115 million letting rooms or properties through the service.

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Nonetheless, my heart and head ultimately said to go for long-term tenants. So many people cannot find housing in Dublin. My house is a comfortable walk into the city centre and in a friendly neighbourhood. My neighbours, third-generation area residents, who bought their place in the 1970s, deserve good, stable neighbours, not a shifting smorgasbord of visitors.

Gradual influx

That gradual influx of Airbnb rentals, taking over the many houses in the area that were once long-term lets, is eating away at what makes the area a neighbourhood in the first place – people you know, of all ages, in houses all along your street. And others you get to know over the months and years, because you meet them in local businesses, or out walking dogs, or at a community meeting.

Too many properties without full-time tenants change the nature of a community, and not in a good way. That’s turned short-term letting services into the target of much ire in many cities across the globe, Dublin included. Cities accuse the companies of contributing to painful housing shortages as long-term property lets convert to holiday lets.

In Ireland, officials also have raised questions about tax dodging – either by Airbnb "hosts" not stating rental income, or (wrongly) assuming Airbnb lets qualify for the room rental relief scheme.

Such concerns led the Oireachtas housing committee to summon Airbnb to a hearing last summer, where – no surprise – the company said the worries were needless, claiming most rentals are short-term room or property lets that don't significantly affect the housing market.

Airbnb also objected to a Government proposal late last year that hosts be required to apply for planning permission to let properties short term, effectively viewing them as hoteliers. Airbnb's take was that this would be "a step in the wrong direction towards one of the most restrictive regimes in Europe on how regular people can use their homes".

Yet analyst AirDNA has estimated that one in four Dublin “hosts” lists not their own home but multiple properties, suggesting, first, that large-scale landlords increasingly find short-term Airbnb lets more attractive than traditional long-term lets, and, second, that many individuals don’t “host” their own properties but leave that work to management companies.

In short, these are not properties with amiable “hosts” introducing visitors to their neighbourhoods.

San Francisco

Actions taken by another city faced with similar housing problems to Dublin, and troubled by Airbnb and Co’s suspected role in exacerbating those problems, might offer a way forward. Last August, San Francisco changed its laws to require to hosts on Airbnb and other similar services such as FlipKey to register their properties with the city (enabling the city to track their use), and obliged the services to delist properties that remain unregistered.

In addition, San Francisco caps the time entire homes or apartments can be let via such services at 90 days.

A new study prepared by analyst Host Compliance for the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper and published last month, revealed that about half of listings in the city disappeared five months after the legislation went into effect.

More significantly, it also indicated many properties were returned to the long-term rental market.

"The regulations had a massive impact on the number of [short-term] rentals in the city, with an overall 55 per cent reduction," Ulrik Binzer, Host Compliance chief executive told the Chronicle.

In some popular areas of the city in which syndicates rented out numerous properties as short-term lets, the study found those properties had been delisted, indicating they had gone back to long-term rentals.

While the San Francisco approach needs longer study over time, Irish councillors and TDs now have a good objective analysis of one particular way of tackling the housing issues introduced by short-term letting services.

Don’t get me wrong. I do believe Airbnb and other letting services have their place for short- to medium-term lets. I know from personal experience that Airbnbing, where visitors actually have a real host to interact with, can be unique and insightful.

But the San Francisco study results show such services clearly have a significant impact on local housing markets, and this must be addressed.