San Francisco’s new regime of enforced registration of vacation or short-term rentals has resulted in a significant drop in the number of listings on major short-term rental sites such as Airbnb, HomeAway, and FlipKey. Vacation rental monitoring company Host Compliance worked with the San Francisco Chronicle to analyze the change in the services after a January deadline to drop rental hosts who were not registered with the city.
According to the Chronicle’s Carolyn Said, there was a 55 percent decline overall in the city in the number of rentals on the services. For example, Airbnb’s listings fell by more than half from 8,740 in August to 4,191 in January. HomeAway and FlipKey declined by even greater percentages. Said also reported that apartment rental site HotPads “saw an unprecedented surge in new ads for apartments to rent . . . just as the registration deadline kicked in,” and that HotPads noted that the new listings “were existing buildings heavily concentrated in . . . popular Airbnb spots.”
