BUSINESS
AIR INVASION
NEWS
NEWLY AVAILABLE DATA ON AIRBNB SHOWS
THE COMPANY’S IMPACT ON PORTLAND.
BY AN N A WA LT E R S
awalters@wweek.com
Airbnb is all for sharing—except, of course, when it comes
to its own data.
The vacation-rental site has been under scrutiny in
Portland and other U.S. cities for its effect on neighbor-
hoods, its impact on local housing markets and the fair-
ness of offering de facto hotels that don’t follow the same
rules as the traditional lodging industry.
Airbnb is under pressure from the city of Portland to
make sure its hosts are following city rules, which include
getting a license to operate and submitting to fire and
safety inspections. About 94 percent are not (Murmurs,
WW, Feb. 25, 2015). As WW has also reported, many
Airbnb rentals appear to violate city rules requiring hosts
to live in the units that they rent out (“Hotel California,”
WW, Feb. 18, 2015).
With more than 1 million listings worldwide, Airbnb’s
vast database provides a window into its markets, its cus-
tomers and the people renting out their homes. Yet the
company has been loath to cough up information on hosts
who aren’t following the rules.
In Brooklyn, technologist Murray Cox decided to meet
Airbnb’s reticence in his own city with a wily hack. He had
wondered about the impact of Airbnb on his neighbor-
hood, Bedford-Stuyvesant, but couldn’t get the answers
he wanted from the company’s website.
Cox wrote a script to “scrape” thousands of Airbnb’s
New York City listings from the company’s website. With
designer John Morris, Cox built an interactive site show-
ing every Airbnb rental in the city. The result was a sea of
dots representing Airbnb rentals—and according to Cox,
more than half might be in violation of New York’s rules.
“Airbnb is not truly acknowledging how people are
using their service or the negative impact on housing and
the community,” Cox says.
WW asked Cox to adapt his project for Portland. Cox
scraped Portland’s 1,959 listings as of March 1 and has
published the results at insideairbnb.com/portland.
The site produces maps to show where rentals are in
each neighborhood, what type they are (complete homes,
single rooms, etc.), general availability and average rates.
Users can click on the dots to learn about individual hosts
and their properties.
Cox’s research confi rms what WW has already report-
ed: Airbnb appears to be rife with rule breakers. Using the
site’s data, Cox found that 46 percent of hosts make their
entire homes or apartments available for at least half the
year. That appears to violate the city rule requiring hosts
live in the homes they offer for rent at least nine months
out of the year.
Airbnb wouldn’t answer questions about Cox’s fi ndings.
“We don’t comment on public scrapes of our information,
because, like here, they use inaccurate information to
make misleading assumptions about our community,”
says company spokesman Christopher Nulty.
Portland officials still won’t commit to a full-on
enforcement of its rental rules. Dana Haynes, spokes-
man for Mayor Charlie Hales, says the city has issued
warning letters but has yet to levy fines. “We don’t
really micromanage the bureaus to the degree people
think,” Haynes says.
Cox says he had been approached by housing advocates
around the world and is considering expanding Inside
Airbnb to other cities.
“I hope I can contribute to the debate,” he says, “by
providing some facts and invite Airbnb to be open and
provide more.”
Northwest Portland is the neighborhood with the most Airbnb listings—114, according
to an analysis by Murray Cox of Inside Airbnb.
LISTINGS BY TYPE
6 %
28 %
Houses
Apartments
Other
66 %
MOST EXPENSIVE LISTING:
LEAST EXPENSIVE LISTING:
A six-bedroom Victorian “cot-
tage” in Irvington that’ll set
you back $600 a night.
An ‘88 Winnebago, a “Mini
Winni”, for $10 a night.
$170
OUT-OF-TOWN LANDLORDS
46%
MOST EXPENSIVE NEIGH-
BORHOOD, ON AVERAGE:
Old Town/Chinatown
of entire homes or
apartments listed on Airbnb
are available roughly six or
PERMITS
more months of the year.
9 MI
FRANCE 5,13
BANGLADE
SH
7,229 MI
$58
From that 46%,
51 rentals list their
locations as “out
of the state of
Oregon.”
CHEAPEST
NEIGHBORHOOD:
Lents
IN PROGRESS
13
PERMIT
97
94 percent of
Airbnb hosts
still don’t have
required city
of Portland
permits.
NO PERMIT
VIETNAM
6,931 MI
1,849
17
3
3
1
1
19
RARE LISTINGS
2
2
Cabin 17
Camper/RV 10
Boat 3
Tent 3
Hut 1
Source: Inside Airbnb
Willamette Week MARCH 11, 2015 wweek.com
11