Airbnb listings in San Francisco plunge by half

Sarah Grzybowski pulls up AirBnb listings in her neighborhood in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, June 18, 2016. The Grzybowski's rented a home for five years until their landlord evicted them last year. Sarah Grzybowski pulls up AirBnb listings in her neighborhood in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, June 18, 2016. The Grzybowski's rented a home for five years until their landlord evicted them last year. Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Airbnb listings in San Francisco plunge by half 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

Airbnb said it has axed 4,760 San Francisco listings from its website since September, with 2,080 of them removed late Tuesday. The company said it is still crunching numbers, but it thinks it now has roughly 5,500 local listings, a dramatic decline from August, when it had more than 10,000.

Midnight on Tuesday was the deadline for Airbnb and rival site HomeAway to ditch any San Francisco hosts who had failed to register with the city. The companies are compelled to do so under a legal agreement with San Francisco struck last year. The city wants hosts to register to help it enforce vacation-rental laws seeking to ensure that homes are not turned into year-round tourist hotels.

“We just wanted to have commonsense regulations whereby San Francisco’s acute housing crisis isn’t exacerbated,” said District Three Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who chairs a committee overseeing vacation rentals. “The Board (of Supervisors) is unanimous in its desire to have real home-sharing that does not take units off the market that would otherwise go to people who live and work here.”

The city’s Office of Short-Term Rentals said it saw a last-minute rush from hosts to comply with the registration requirement, with a couple hundred new applications in the final week before the deadline. It received 88 applications on Monday and 86 on Tuesday. It has approved 2,170 registrations and has almost 1,000 pending verification, which involves hosts proving through documents such as utility bills that they are permanent San Francisco residents.

HomeAway data was not yet available, and the company, owned by travel giant Expedia, did not return requests for comment. HomeAway, which also owns VRBO, had about 1,300 listings in May 2016, according to a Chronicle investigation. Many of those are second homes, which means San Francisco would not accept them as vacation rentals. Some may have been converted into rentals of 30 days or more, making them exempt from the registration requirement.

Airbnb said its remaining listings include some 2,650 properties that are exempt from registration because they rent for 30 days or more, are hotels or are legal bed-and-breakfasts.

In August, San Francisco tracked Airbnb as having 8,453 listings plus a couple thousand exempt ones.

As Airbnb and HomeAway jettison listings, they also must cancel any reservations at those properties that are six days or more away. Hosts can still register with the city after Tuesday, and can post listings online and accept reservations while their applications are pending, but those who missed the Tuesday deadline will see their pending guest stays canceled.

In early fall, Airbnb removed hundreds of dormant listings, but the 2,080 removed this week were more active, and thus a yet-untallied number of reservations had to be canceled, the company said.

“All guests impacted by the cancellations will be notified, offered a refund and our agents will be available to assist as necessary,” Airbnb spokeswoman Mattie Zazueta said in a statement.

The current situation came about because Airbnb, later joined by HomeAway, sued San Francisco when it passed laws to hold vacation-rental sites liable for steep fees and criminal penalties if they arranged stays in unregistered homes. A U.S. district judge rejected the companies’ claims that their rights were being violated and instead ordered them to work with the city on registering hosts.

“We are proud to have worked with lawmakers in our hometown to create clear, fair home-sharing rules that ensure every listing on the Airbnb platform is in full compliance with local regulations,” Zazueta said. “We look forward to building our business in San Francisco with a strong foundation of dedicated hosts, clear rules and a streamlined registration process that supports compliance.”

The Bay Area Council, a business-sponsored policy advocacy group, planned to release a report on Thursday on San Francisco’s vacation-rental laws. Airbnb is a member of the group.

“In looking at what’s been implemented — the requirement for permanent residency, 90-day rental cap (for whole homes), registration requirements — we think all those things address the negatives that vacation rentals might bring,” said report author Jeff Bellisario, vice president at the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the group’s independent research arm.

His report said that lowering the cap on whole-home rentals would hurt hosts who rely on this income. The supervisors passed a law in 2016 to reduce the cap to 60 days, but it was vetoed by the late Mayor Ed Lee.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @csaid

Carolyn Said discussed the new registration requirements on KQED on Tuesday. Listen to the full segment.