Airbnb affecting long-term rental housing in Vancouver, data suggests

About two-thirds of the Airbnb listings for Vancouver are for entire properties and many of those are being rented out for more than 90 days in a year, according to a data analyst. 

Murray Cox has crunched data from the short-term rental site Airbnb for 30 cities across North America as part of his Inside Airbnb project.

According to his latest analysis, 3,179 of the total 4,728 listings are for entire homes or apartments. Cox said about 1,200 of those properties are being rented out are for more than 90 days out of a year.

"This isn't people just going away for a couple of weeks and renting out their homes," Cox said. "These are people that are probably renting out apartments permanently."

City of Vancouver bylaws prohibit rentals for a period of less than one month unless the unit is part of a hotel or bed and breakfast.

Many hosts with multiple properties

Cox said in a city with a vacancy rate of less than one per cent, this data suggests a significant number of homes and apartments are being taken out of the rental stock for local residents.

"It seems to suggest that those apartments would be having an impact on your ability to find a long-term rental if you're a resident of Vancouver."

Cox said another telling figure is about one-third of the total Vancouver Airbnb listings are being rented out by people who have more than one listing on the site.

"That type of use would suggest that they might be commercial operators or commercial investors with multiple listings," he said.

Cox said he wrote computer code that scans the Airbnb website to look at the number of listings, where they are, whether they're entire properties or private rooms, as well as other data such as how often they're rented out.

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