Airbnb deactivated thousands of San Francisco hosts to be in accordance with new legislation.
Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNETIf you were hoping to rent out a room on Airbnb in San Francisco, the pickings just got a lot slimmer.
New legislation went into effect on Wednesday requiring all Airbnb hosts to register with the city. As a consequence, more than half of Airbnb’s listings in the city disappeared practically overnight.
In August, Airbnb listed about 8,900 short-term rentals in San Francisco and on Wednesday that number dropped to a little over 4,000, San Francisco’s Office of Short-term Rentals told CBS local affiliate KPIX.
“We’ve seen upwards of 6,000 listings removed from the short-term rental platform,” Kevin Guy, director of the city’s Office of Short-Term Rentals, told KPIX. “That’s a substantial number that represents a real dramatic shift.”
Airbnb and San Francisco have a long history. The home rental site first launched its service in San Francisco in 2008 and the company still maintains its headquarters there. San Francisco was also one of the first cities in the world to work with Airbnb to make short-term rentals legal.
It passed a law in 2014 that’s gone through several iterations. Ultimately, the law dictates that people can rent rooms or their entire home for up to 90 days a year when they aren’t around. Hosts present during homestays are allowed to lease rooms year-round.
But, according to a settlement deal reached between Airbnb and San Francisco last May, all hosts must be registered with the city. The deadline to register was Tuesday at midnight. After that, Airbnb was required to purge all unregistered listings.
“We are proud to have worked with lawmakers in our hometown to create clear, fair home sharing rules that ensure every listing on the Airbnb platform is in full compliance with local regulations and protect our business over the long term,” said Airbnb spokeswoman Mattie Zazueta.
San Francisco lawmakers said the registration component is important because it creates a way for the city to enforce its law. The city’s ultimate goal is to prevent people from turning rentable homes into makeshift hotels, especially when San Francisco is going through a housing shortage.
Airbnb says it’s removed 4,680 listings from its website. It says the majority of these listings were basically inactive. For example, 35 percent of Airbnb’s San Francisco listings had no activity for the last six months.
As for those hosts who were active but didn’t register, Airbnb believes there are a couple of possible explanations. It’s possible tenants didn’t want to ask their landlords for permission to sublet on Airbnb or people didn’t want to pay the required registration fees of $340 to the city.
Other short-term rental companies, like HomeAway and FlipKey, also saw a drop in listings this week, according to KPIX. For instance, FlipKey went from 555 listings to about 57 on Wednesday.
San Francisco’s Office of Short-term Rentals didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
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