A firm that analyzes Airbnb rentals slammed city Comptroller Scott Stringer on Friday for issuing a “deeply flawed” study using its data to falsely accuse the popular home-sharing service for double-digit rent increases in parts of the Big Apple.
“The report, which incorrectly interpreted AirDNA data to make assumptions on the impact of Airbnb on New York City rental prices, comes to flawed conclusions at great costs to thousands of Airbnb hosts that rely on the platform to make ends meet,” the firm said in a scorching statement.
Stringer’s report, released on Thursday, claimed Airbnb was responsible for rent increases averaging 9.2 percent citywide from 2009 to 2016 and twice as much as in some coveted neighborhoods.
But AirDNA, which is not affiliated with Airbnb, said the comptroller got it all wrong.
“The comptroller mistakes every unique listing ever uploaded onto the site as the number listings that were active in that year. A large portion of Airbnb listings are not active. They sit idly on the site, made unavailable for rent by hosts and/or unbooked by guests, and therefor have little or no effect on rent prices,” the data company said.
It noted the comptroller’s count lists all Airbnb listing types — whether they are entire homes or just private rooms or share rooms.
“To conflate these listing types is totally misguided and misrepresents New Yorkers that rent out a spare bedroom to supplement their income or help pay their mortgage,” AirDNA said.
The rebuttal also said Stringer “mistakenly assumes” that an Airbnb rental listed on the site — even if it is only available for one night in a year — has the same impact as a “full-time, professional managed listing.”
“Almost half of all active listings are private rooms. There are over five times more single-listing hosts than multi-listing hosts, and 65 percent of properties are managed by hosts with just one listing,” the firm said.
Airbnb spokesman Chris Lehane demanded Stringer “retract” his study, calling it a “hit job” that he suggested was engineered by the hotel industry.
Stringer Friday night stood by his audit. “Based on the information made available by AirDNA, our conclusion would be the same whether apartments were listed part-time or full-time on Airbnb,” a spokesperson for the comptroller said.
“Our report explicitly stated that Airbnb was responsible for 9.2% of the increase in housing costs — not 100%.”