Airbnb in San Francisco

Airbnb has started to attract investigations into the impact of the company's popularity on social housing. A couple of week's ago we reported on Airbnb vs Berlin, a data driven investigation into the popularity of Airbnb in Berlin. The San Francisco Courier has now published an investigation into Airbnb's Impact in San Francisco.

The Chronicle's report includes a map measuring Airbnb activity in the city by neighborhood. The map includes three choropleth layers showing the number of Airbnb listings by neighborhood, the average price in each neighborhood and the number of reviews per neighborhood.

One of the criticisms of Airbnb in the Berlin investigation was that there were a number of  'power users' - users who list a number of properties on Airbnb. The Chronicle's investigation reveals that 4.8 percent of hosts in San Francisco have three or more properties. These power users may well be commercial landlords exploiting the service to make higher profits from short term rentals rather than from renting out their properties to long term tenants. The effect of this could be to remove much needed housing stock from the market.