Airbnb Delisting Successful Property Owners

Airbnb has been quietly delisting some property owners in New York and London. How could this affect your vacation rental property?

An Airbnb delisting was the last thing Airbnb host William expected. For three years he has successfully rented out two small flats in a historic 1730 house he owns in the heart of London’s Soho district. In January he received an email from Airbnb delisting both rentals. ‘We really try to arrange the flat to give people a good experience’, a baffled William told BBC Business News. ‘We provide fresh flowers and breakfast for guests. We take a lot of trouble and we’ve had uniformly positive reviews over three years.’

Airbnb delisting successful owners

William is one of an unknown number of successful Airbnb hosts in New York and London who have been summarily delisted by Airbnb in recent months. Critics believe that the Airbnb delisting behaviour is an attempt to placate local authorities over allegations and evidence that Airbnb was more than a community of people occasionally renting out their home, apartment or property to help make ends meet. Specifically, the critics believe that many owners run very successful businesses by renting out multiple properties through the site. While purporting to be a part of the ‘sharing community’ they  avoid the regulations (and costs) associated with the traditional hospitality industry.

Locals claim they are priced out of homes

In New York especially, locals complain that prices for local apartments have risen to the point where they cannot afford homes there owing to demand for Airbnb rentals. Owners of multiple units are blamed for this. Airbnb defended its delisting activities by claiming that they ‘routinely carried out initiatives for quality purposes’ and that this goes on all over the world. The surprise Airbnb delistings are causing a lot of concern in industry internet forums. Typical is this from Peter, posting from London, UK, on a user forum: ‘I wonder if Airbnb is now moving to meet the authorities’ concerns and to delist what it believes are illegal listings? It would not surprise me if they have categorised those who are being delisted as breaking the regulations and are taking them down.’

Airbnb delisting in New York

The spark for the whole Airbnb delisting controversy seems to have been a seemingly innocuous report on the Fortune website on 1 December last year. It announced that ‘Airbnb would share data with New York City’ and referred to a statement published earlier by Airbnb on their website. In that statement, Airbnb typify their hosts as follows: ‘Our community in New York is made up of hard working families in all five boroughs who, during a time of economic inequality, depend on home sharing as an economic lifeline.’ They go on to quote recently gathered statistics which they claim show:

• 78% of Airbnb hosts in New York earn low, moderate, or middle incomes.
• 72% of Airbnb hosts in New York use the money they earn sharing their space to stay in their homes.

Airbnb said it would share ‘anonymized data’ about almost 60,000 listings in all five boroughs of the city with government officials. The data covers all active listings as of November 17 and includes information about listings from the past year.

The ‘greedy landlord scenario’

The company’s intention, according to Fortune was to ‘convince regulators that most activity through its service is by regular folks who are renting out spare space now and then, often to make ends meet, rather than the greedy landlord scenario that’s been often painted’. Following the data revelation on 1 December blogger Tom Slee, with an interest in the sharing economy who writes about technology and society, posted a report he co-authored with Murray Cox. This tells a different story. According to Cox and Slee, before collecting the New York data on 17 November, Airbnb delisted 1,000 listings in the first week of November. They removed these inconvenient listings which might otherwise have detracted from their image as part of the sharing economy, helping people to make ends meet. In doing so, they misled the media and the public, claim Cox and Slee. That was New York. It seems that a similar cull of inconvenient owners has spread to the UK. Some commentators are suggesting that this is prior to Airbnb cooperation with local authorities there so that their operation will be more acceptable.

Dangers of relying on a single channel

The Airbnb delisting scenario underlines the dangers to rental owners who rely too heavily on a single listings site or marketing channel as their main source of bookings. Guneep Luther, who also featured in the BBC report, is one such UK victim of Airbnb delisting. Guneep had 14 of his 17 properties on Airbnb delisted with just two weeks’ notice. His rental income of up to £45,000 a year was mostly dependent on Airbnb guests. ‘Initially I had nothing but praise for Airbnb’, he told the BBC. ‘The website is incredibly easy to use, customer service were very friendly and replied to any questions instantly. Now, I feel as if Airbnb has completely ruined my business. They have not only left me in the dark, I have many bills to pay for all properties and I employ two cleaners and I am very concerned about their future.’

How to avoid the dependency trap

Here at Homes and Rooms we urge all vacation rental owners to avoid falling into the trap of dependency on any one listing site. When founder and CEO Barry Sacks set up Homes and Rooms, his aim was to help and support vacation rental owners like himself to achieve profitability and sustainability while retaining independence. We’ve seen before how reliance on a single marketing channel can spell disaster for the private vacation rental owner. Owners in this position are vulnerable to the fallout from changes at the top of the industry beyond their control. How many Dwellable subscribers could have foreseen the HomeAway takeover of that listings site last October? And how many of them were dependent on Dwellable for their bookings? Not only can Homes and Rooms help owners avoid the dependency trap, but it can also help owners run their business more efficiently. So that they keep more of their profits, too. Better still, any owner can start realising the benefits immediately by signing up for a free 14-day trial. Having their own website is vital to owners who want to remain independent – Homes and Rooms provides a website free to all its subscribers. They can take their own bookings and payments go direct into their own bank accounts – not via a third party who will often delay payment. Homes and Rooms subscribers can still use the big listing sites, including Airbnb, for their wide marketing reach and coverage. But they do so on their own terms: as independent vacation rental owners with few worries about delisting.