Study: Airbnb Eating Up Scarce Rentals in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick

WILLIAMSBURG and GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN — A new study has found that Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick are hotbeds of Airbnb activity, further squeezing a rental market that's already under significant, and growing, pressure.

The analysis, produced jointly by housing advocates with MFY Legal Services and Housing Conservation Coordinators, took a look at the New York City units listed on Airbnb in 2015. City-wide, it found the following:

• Of 51,397 city-wide listings, 28,765 (or 55 percent) allowed renters to have an entire unit, a violation of the city's Multiple Dwelling Law in buildings with fewer than 3 units. (The law requires the owner renting such a property to be present in their home during rentals of fewer than 30 days.)
• 90 percent of all Airbnb listings were in Manhattan and Brooklyn
• 53 percent of the listings in that group, in turn, were located in five "macro-neighborhoods," including Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick
• 40 percent of Airbnb's Brooklyn listings allowed renters to have an entire unit

The study also sought to tease out which listings on the site were having the largest impact on rental prices by effectively removing units from the rental market, driving down supply and increasing demand.

To do that, the analysts came up with a special category of Airbnb rentals, known as "Impact Listings," which met the following criteria:

• The whole apartment was listed as available for rent on Airbnb
• The units were rented for less than 30 days at a time, but at least twice per month, and
• The units were listed on Airbnb for 3 months per year by owners who listed more than one property, or 6 months per year by owners who listed only one property

In Williamsburg/Greenpoint/Bushwick, the study found 988 "Impact Listings." Those properties were rented out for an average of 15 days per month, and generated an average of $2,814 per month in revenue, which is just a bit more than the macro-neighborhood's median rental asking price of $2,797.

If those units were part of the rental market, the vacancy rate in the area would have increased from 3.8 to 4.8 percent, the study found. (City-wide, the study found 8,058 "Impact Listings" taking up 10 percent of available rental units.)

Why does that change matter? The study's authors pointed to recent research from NYU's Furman Center which classified Williamburg and Greenpoint as the most rapidly gentrifying areas of the city, defined in part by rapidly increasing rents.

Between 1990 and 2014, for example, the neighborhoods saw a 78.7 percent increase in their average rent price.

As the study's authors concluded, "Any pressure on supply is likely to catalyze an increase in rental prices, an issue that is deeply concerning in New York City where affordable housing is already severely limited."

Reached on Tuesday, Airbnb spokesman Peter Schottenfels dismissed the study as "misleading," adding that it was funded by "the hotel lobby." Asked for clarification, Schottenfels said that both MFY Legal Services and Housing Conservation Coordinators receive money from the hotel industry, but did not provide further specifics.

HCC could not immediately be reached for comment, but Marti Weithman, a supervising attorney for MFY who helped put the study together, said she was unaware of any direct donations to her group from the hotel industry, adding that the assertion was an attempt to "deflect" from the point of the study.

Schottenfels stated that Airbnb helps "thousands of New Yorkers pay their bills and stay in their homes," stating that "72% of hosts in New York are low, middle or moderate income earners."

And he challenged one of the study's central claims — that commercialized Airbnb units are taking up 10 percent of the city's available rental units.

Schottenfels cited a 2014 U.S. Census finding that New York City contains 200,000 vacant housing units, meaning the 8,058 "Impact Listings" referenced by the study constitute just 4 percent of the city's available housing pool.

But Weithman noted that number includes all vacant units, whether or not they're for rent. In 2014, the Census found about 75,000 "vacant for rent" units in the city. She said that was the number the study used when concluding that Airbnb's "Impact Listings" took up about 10 percent of the available vacant rental supply.

Top image courtesy of Salem Eames/Flickr