The news that 10% of landlords are considering switching to an Airbnb model should come as a warning to the powers that be.
The growing popularity of short-term lets hasn’t been all doom and gloom – now people can travel and live in quality accommodation, rather than pay steep costs to stay in mediocre hotels.
However, if there are too many Airbnbs proportionally the cost of long-term lets could go up, as there would be less supply to meet demand – there would be 50,000 fewer properties if that 10% did switch to a short-term let model.
That’s not to mention the social consequences of such an occurrence – communities could lose their character if people are coming and going all the time and hardly anyone lives in the area permanently.
There are many options when it comes to making sure short-term lets don’t take over.
ARLA Propertymark, a professional body for letting agents, recommended for a level playing field when it comes to regulation and tax between short-term and long-term lets.
Meanwhile capping the proportion of short-term lets permitted in some areas seems a sensible idea.
Some other countries also have a ‘tourism tax’ in areas where Airbnb is rampant. In Porto and Libson in Portugal for example you have to pay a small nightly fee to stay.
One fact about Airbnb which surprised me is that a small number of property owners dominate the market in some cities.
In April 2019 BBC analysis found that in London 1% of hosts control 17% of the Airbnb market, while there are 11 hosts with more than 100 listings each.
Clearly people operating on this scale need to be subject to similar scrutiny as landlords in the long-term letting sector.
Honestly I’m not sure what the right course of action to take is, but doing nothing seems it could store up problems for the future.
Long-term renters need to be properly housed in the decades to come and not pay through the nose for the privilege.
Ryan Bembridge, Editor, PropertyWire
