A website founded in 2008 is proving popular with landlords in London, despite the fact it was designed as a holiday let tool. Airbnb lets homeowners list a spare room or even their entire house as a cool place to stay in one of many cities across the world, the idea being that they use the website to earn some extra cash. However, all is not as it first appears…
The Guardian has analysed data from Airbnb and discovered that a large number of ‘homeowners’ listed on the website are in fact professional and semi-professional landlords. Of the 13,000 listings on Airbnb, just over half relate to an empty property rather than a single room. More than 1,500 of the people using the website have multiple property listings; some have more than five properties.
Worried Hoteliers
This is causing concern amongst hoteliers in the city. The British Hospitality Association (BHA) says: “We are very concerned that large numbers of private homes are being let on a semi or even permanent basis to tourists because it’s unlikely that any of these properties have ever had any fire risk or health and safety checks.”
Buy to Let Investors
The BHA believes that many of the properties are being run by buy to let property investors who are trying to pull the wool over the tax man’s eyes by not declaring that they are running a lettings business.
However, Matt Griffith, associate fellow at the IPPR thinktank isn’t too concerned: “If Airbnb is being used by a professional group of landlords to provide hotel accommodation using residential property then this could potentially have implications for the housing market. But it would have to grow a hell of a lot to have any significant displacement effect.”
