Airbnb in Austin

The Law

The City of Austin requires that Owners of Short-Term Rentals (STRs) obtain an operating license (Ordinance No. 20130926-144). This law applies to all properties (including rooms and guest houses) rented for less than 30 consecutive days.

Type 1 STRs are Owner-Occupied defined to be where the owner occupies the property at least 51% of the time

defined to be where the owner occupies the property at least 51% of the time Type 2 (single-family or duplex) and Type 3 (multifamily) STRs are Not Owner Occupied dwellings, and licenses are limited to no more than 3% of the units in that census tract

There are three types of Short Term Rentals:

Data provided by the city on Licenses issued is inconsistent and incomplete.

An online table of Licenses Issued by Census Tract lists only 278 licenses in total; while a document dated April 20, 2015 lists 474 Type 2 STRs.

Both of these numbers are far exceeded by the number of Airbnb listings of around 5,800 listings.

Note also that there are other STRs marketplaces in Austin, including HomeAway, which was founded in Austin, and appears to offer over 1,000 listings.

Airbnb data for Austin, Texas

Inside Airbnb

A conservative occupancy model has been built in order to estimate Occupancy Rates, Income per Month and Nights per Year. More information on the methodolgy of the occupancy model can be found in the disclaimers.

Inside Airbnb: Austin uses the following parameters:

A high availability metric and filter of 60 days per year to estimate the point at which a residential property is unavailable for long-term rental or use as a primary residence

metric and filter of to estimate the point at which a residential property is unavailable for long-term rental or use as a primary residence A frequently rented filter of 60 days per year as per the high availability metric

filter of as per the high availability metric A review rate of 50% for the number of guests making a booking who leave a review

of for the number of guests making a booking who leave a review An average booking of 3 nights unless a higher minimum nights is configured for a listing

unless a higher minimum nights is configured for a listing A maximum occupancy rate of 70% to ensure the occupancy model does not produce artifically high results based on the available data

If you are a statistician or civic hacker, get the data, analyze and publish your results.

If you would like your visualizations hosted, or linked to from this site, please contact murray@murraycox.com.

Airbnb

Airbnb provides NO PUBLIC DATA to help understand the use of their platform and the impact on cities around the world.

Airbnb also provide NO DATA to cities or states to assist them in ensuring that Airbnb hosts and Airbnb are following the local laws.

Other data

The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Estimating the Impact of Airbnb on the Hotel Industry by Georgios Zervas, Davide Proserpio and John W. Byers from Boston University, combines data from Airbnb and the Texas hotel industry, to estimate the impact of Airbnb’s on hotel room revenue, and the market response of hotels.

Acknowledgements