Changes in the Housing Market Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic Are the Result of Forces Much Larger Than Airbnb’s Community of Hosts According to Airbnb

COVID-19 has placed enormous pressure on just about every aspect of the economy. With thousands of planes grounded, scores of restaurants shuttered, and few people seeking overnight accommodations, the travel and tourism industry is at a standstill.

Third-party real estate economists have rebutted these claims, but we have received several questions about this matter, so we wanted to address it directly. 

Our analysis indicates that these claims are inaccurate: 

• Today, there are more listings on the Airbnb platform than there were a year ago. 

• In large cities popular with tourists, such as Las Vegas, Montreal, Rome and Paris, the number of active Airbnb listings have increased over the last 30 days. 

• Among the top-20 U.S. and Canada cities, 80 percent saw a net change of fewer than 200 listings over the last 30 days. 

• There has not been any meaningful change to Airbnb’s supply in our top-20 U.S. and Canada cities or in our top-10 European cities.

  We are at an unprecedented moment globally. Unemployment and lost income are rising quickly, leading to a decrease in demand for traditional, 12-month home and apartment leases. In recent weeks, web traffic to web portals has dropped as much as 40 percent, meanwhile U.S. searches for “rental” and “lease” are down 42 and 33 percentage points, respectively, in the last month, according to Google Trends.