San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Airbnb set for market scrutiny
Growth slows after strict S.F. rules — services added before public offering
Airbnb, long a flash point for controversy in its hometown, has achieved detente with San Francisco at the cost of slower growth — while pursuing other expansions that could stir new issues.
San Francisco is not alone in reining in Airbnb. Cities from South Lake Tahoe to New York to Paris are cracking down on short-term rentals, concerned about housing availability and neighborhood impact.
As one of the world’s most valuable venture-backed companies prepares for an initial public offering valuing it in the tens of billions of dollars — more than any hotel chain — how fast Airbnb can grow as regulations tighten is a key question. Though San Francisco is a small part of Airbnb’s business, it is the company’s oldest market and a key laboratory for change.
A year after strict new rules forced Airbnb to jettison thousands of listings, the company’s core business of homes
rooms for short-term rentals is fairly static in San Francisco. However, it’s seen a big growth in places rented for 30 days or more, which are exempt from city requirements that the properties be inhabited by permanent residents. Airbnb now has 2,058 whole homes, 1,608 rooms and 23 shared rooms for temporary rent in San Francisco, according to data from the Office of Short-Term Rentals. That totals 3,689 listings, just 44 more than a year ago, shortly after Airbnb ditched thousands of unregistered listings. (It includes hosts who have applied for city registration, but not yet been confirmed as eligible.)
Airbnb’s data show that it has about 4,100 listings, an increase of 400 since last year. Why the discrepancy? Numbers fluctuate from day to day as hosts add and remove listings or hide their calendars.
Meanwhile Airbnb says that the number of exempt listings — homes rented for 30 days or more, boutique hotels, and bed and breakfasts — went from 2,600 a year ago to 3,700 now. HomeAway/VRBO, which has always had a smaller presence here because it focuses on second homes, has 210 entirehome listings, down from 229 a year ago, according to city records.
The number of registered hosts grew even though listings did not, rising from 2,206 a year ago to 2,769 now. The city attributes this to hosts whose listings were on conditional status winning approval.
Both San Francisco and Airbnb say they are happy to have reached a rapprochement after years of conflict as the city tried to rein in the conversion of homes to hotels to preserve scarce housing, while Airbnb defended the rentals as helping people make ends meet in an expensive city.
“The year one numbers are encouraging and show that the system is largely working as it was designed,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who’s been among Airbnb’s fiercest critics. “Obviously the reduction of short-term rentals after implementation last year was positive. Airbnb has stuck to its word, and seems to be implementing its obligation in good faith.”
A judge compelled Airbnb and rival HomeAway/VRBO to let the city vet all listings through its registration process. In mid-January last year, those companies had to ditch unregistered listings — except those that were exempt because they are rented for longer periods, or qualify as a boutique hotel or a bed and breakfast. Airbnb scrubbed