Dive Brief:
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Short-term rentals don't have a significant impact on housing affordability, according to housing experts polled as a part of Zillow’s latest Home Price Expectations Survey.
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Half of respondents said short-term rentals’ impact was small, while slightly more than 40% said it was meaningful. A further 5% said it has a large impact on housing affordability, while 3.8% responded as unsure.
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Just 7% of homeowners currently are or intend to rent out all or some of their primary residence, Zillow reported. Experts surveyed forecast home-price appreciation to be near 5% by year-end, easing back to 3.6% by the end of 2017.
Dive Insight:
Home-sharing websites like Airbnb and HomeAway have faced criticism in recent months as some cities contend their services contribute to the deepening shortage of affordable homes by allowing owners to rent out properties in short stints to visitors and tourists rather than to longer-term residents.
Critics’ biggest concern over home-sharing services’ impact on the local economy has to do with the number of full homes being rented out on the site for months-long periods. A report by FiveThirtyEight in August noted that a growing subset of Airbnb’s revenue was generated from entire homes rented for much of the year.
A recent spate of decisions by cities in which home-sharing services are active — and with more likely to come — seek to bring the transactions on such platforms under the scrutiny of local laws and regulations.
Under pressure from officials in London and Amsterdam, Airbnb this week announced plans to limit the amount of time homeowners can list their properties for rent on the website to that required for non-licensed, full-home rentals there.
This fall, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that would subject individuals who use home-sharing services to list certain apartment residences for fewer than 30 days to fines, amid pushback from affordable housing advocates and, notably, the hotel industry. The renting of the apartment is already prohibited under a separate 2010 law.
And in San Francisco, property owners who want to use home-sharing services for short-term rentals must register with the city and pay a fee — a rule previously in the books for such rentals but with low compliance rates.
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