Holy wow. A new site called InsideAirbnb has scraped and released data on 27,000+ Airbnb rentals as of the start of the year. The site, put together by photographer (and apparently programmer) Murray Cox, compels readers: “If we can’t answer your questions and you are craving more data, you can download it here for your own analysis”. And you know I can’t turn down a good offer like that.

It’s important to note that this is all released during a battle between Airbnb and New York State Attorney General Schneiderman. I’m not here to take sides on that, but I do want to help get some more data and facts out. So here I go:

Price: Manhattan is More Expensive

First, I was curious which neighborhoods have more and less affordable listings. So I made two maps of median prices, one for “Entire Home/Apt” rentals and one for “Private Room” rentals. The result is a handy guide to room pricing in New York City:

Note that these only include neighborhoods with at least ten listings of that room type. Here are the top ten most expensive neighborhoods on Airbnb for Entire Home/Apts and Private Rooms:

The lists are both fully dominated by Manhattan, not surprising to anyone who is familiar with New York City real estate.



Reviews: People Prefer a Handful of Queens/Brooklyn Neighborhoods

Next, I set out to see where Airbnb renters enjoyed their accommodations the most. I mapped out the median review score for each neighborhood:

The map shows that Airbnb renters are happier in some neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens than they are anywhere in Manhattan. The table below, showing the top seven neighborhoods for reviews, has only one entry from Manhattan.

Of course, renters seeking housing in the outer boroughs may have different expectations than those seeking to be in Manhattan.

Density: Lower East Side/Clinton Have Most Listings / Resident

Where are Airbnbs the most prevalent? I mapped out the number of listings per 1000 residents in each neighborhood.

I started with Entire Home/Apt listings:

They seem densest in Manhattan below 59th Street and some parts of Brooklyn. But the density of Private Room listings paints a different picture, with Williamsburg and Bushwick appearing near the top:

The tables below lists the top neighborhoods in each category.

Interestingly, East Village and Clinton (e.g. Hells Kitchen) appear high on both lists. They are also both known as destinations for current students and recent college graduates.

Listing Type: Wealthier Neighborhoods Have More “Entire Apt” Listings

There have been claims that many Airbnbers are using the service to turn apartments into hotel rooms in gentrified or rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. If that is the case, we may expect to see a higher proportion of listings for “Entire Home/Apt” in higher income neighborhoods. So I mapped to see what percent of listings in each neighborhood fall into that category:

It seems like neighborhoods with higher income have a higher proportion of "Entire Apartment" listings, while those with lower income are more likely to rent out private rooms. To test that hypothesis, I plotted the income of each neighborhood against the percentage of all listings that are for entire apartments. Mouse over a dot to see the neighborhood. (Apologies for the gap afterwards, but I am having silk.io/tumblr play nice trouble):

The correlation here is 0.65, which is relatively strong. Full apartment rentals, which tend to be illegal in New York under state law, are indeed over-represented in wealthier neighborhoods. I would guess that in high income neighborhoods like the West Village, the high proportion of full apartment rentals is due to the fact that higher income residents are less likely to inconvenience themselves by sharing rooms for income.

Lister: Multi Unit Listers More Prevalent in Lower Income Neighborhoods

It has also been said that many users are running illegal hotels out of apartment buildings, and thus have many listings. If this is more of an issue in the “gentrifying and gentrified neighborhoods” that the Attorney General mentions, we would expect to see a higher proportion of units in those neighborhoods being rented by airbnb users with multiple listings. I tested that theory and mapped the results below:

The map shows that some of our lower income neighborhoods have an outsized portion of rentals from people with multiple listings.

Here I plot the median income of each neighborhood with the percentage of units that have owners with just one listing.

This shows what we suspected from the map; higher income neighborhoods are more likely to have listings by single unit owners. In fact the correlation here is 0.44, giving it a moderate correlation.

The Attorney General points out that neighborhoods like “The Lower EastSide/Chinatown, Chelsea/Hell’s Kitchen, and Greenwich Village/SoHo” account for about 40% of Airbnb revenue. But many of these very neighborhoods have some of the lowest proportion of housing from users with multiple listings. The high revenue mentioned may be more of a factor of the higher prices above. This does not mean that the impact on housing is not worth evaluating, but rather that the problem seems to be more spread among listers with single apartments.



As for the multi-unit listers, who are they? I pulled out the top listers to see:

The top two are Dana in Greenpoint, with 28 rooms who seems to be actually running the Box House Hotel and Russ who seems to just have a LOT of rooms to rent out in Bushwick. John in Nolita, Angela (i.e. Wen Xin Hostel) in Sunset Park and Alexey in Flatbush round out the top five owners in NYC.

I imagine that legitimate hotels like the Box House are inflating the numbers a bit, so one has to be careful when casting a wide net for “illegal activity”.

It’s also important to note while only 29.4% of listings are by owners with more than one property, those listings are being made by only 13.4% of New York Airbnb listers. Meaning that 86.6% of Airbnb listers in New York list only one property. And 95.7% of listers have two or less. Many of those may be legitimately listing multiple rooms in their house.

Conclusion

This data release takes the sound bites out of the Airbnb debate and make them into bytes. It allows us, the citizens of New York, to explore the data ourselves.

The findings are clear: the income of a neighborhood is correlated with the type of Airbnb activity that happens in that neighborhood. But the overall effects of those listings on rental pricing is sadly much harder to quantify. And any one data point can have a lot of nuance, so be careful when reading reports. And of course, among the subway ads, the debate continues. And I’ll be here analyzing along the way.

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Neighborhood Tabulation Area Income and Population here.

Neighborhood Tabulation Area shape file here.

Airbnb data here.