The number of Airbnb listings you might find in the District may eventually plummet if two proposals described as the strictest Airbnb regulations in the country by The Washington Post are approved by the D.C. Council. According to Washingtonian, these proposals, which are backed by the city's hotel industry, would limit hosts to renting rooms in occupied units rather than whole houses or apartments. The proposals would also cap the number of properties an individual Airbnb host could list to five with none located in the same buildings. While analyzing all 3,723 Airbnb listings in Washington, D.C., Inside Airbnb reported that 65 percent of Airbnb listings in the District are located in entire homes/apartments, 32.3 percent are in private rooms, and 2.7 percent are in shared rooms. Additionally, while Airbnb hosts are allowed to have multiple listings, they rarely do such a thing in the nation's capital. In Washington, D.C., 62.2 percent of hosts only have one listing. With Washington, D.C. ranking as having the third highest number of Airbnb listings per capita (behind New Orleans and San Francisco), the effect these proposals would have on the market is inconceivable. Meanwhile, hosts are less likely to be affected on the cap on the number of properties allowed to be listed.
Inside Airbnb further broke down the data on the type of rooms you're most likely to find, the kind of activity you might expect most from guests, year-round availability, and the average number of listings per host. The average D.C. listing is estimated to be available for 91 nights per year with a 24.8 percent estimated rate of occupancy. The average monthly estimated income gained from Airbnb listings is $924. Additionally, the average price for a listing is $149 per night. When analyzing listings that were reviewed in the past six months and listings that are booked more than 60 nights per year, the estimated nights listings are available per year skyrockets to 161 along with the estimated monthly income up to $1,610. The estimated occupancy rate also rises from 24.8 percent to 44 percent, while the average price decreases to $126 per night.
On the kind of availability you can expect from Airbnb listings in Washington, D.C., 83.1 percent were deemed to have high availability, meaning that they are listed more than 60 days per year. 60 days is a pretty low number for the District, honestly, as 64.6 percent of listings are available 235.7 days out of the year.
Vox further broke down the numbers, learning that while you might think that an Airbnb listing in Washington, D.C. would differ greatly from a listing in somewhere like Portland or San Francisco, it looks like that's not true, at least not according to how hosts describe their units and themselves. While analyzing data from Inside Airbnb, Vox reported that the three words you're most likely to find describing an Airbnb room in Washington, D.C. are "the heart of," while the three words hosts in the District most often describe themselves as are "loves to travel." Both phrases are common throughout the nation with "the heart of" and "loves to travel" found in cities like Montreal, Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and so on and so forth. According to Vox, "Much like other social places on the internet, it appears the culture on Airbnb coalesced into one without too many geographic boundaries, at least within North America." On ways that Airbnb listings in Washington, D.C. differ from other parts of the nation, listings in the District are more likely to use the word "cozy" than listings in Toronto, Boston, Montreal, San Francisco, and New Orleans. When describing a listing as "spacious," you're less likely to see that word in Los Angeles, Portland, New Orleans, Montreal, and Nashville than in the District.
You can find more data on Airbnb listings, hosts, and guests in Washington, D.C. on Inside Airbnb here.
· Get the Data [Inside Airbnb]
· The 3 words you're most likely to see in any Airbnb listing [Vox]
· DC Has More Airbnb Listings Per Capita Than New York or Los Angeles [Washingtonian]
· The 15 Funkiest Vacation Rentals In Washington, D.C. [Curbed DC]
· What's Up With Airbnb's Super Creepy Twitter Account? [Curbed Flipped]
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