The Threat of Short-Term Rentals to Housing: A Critical Perspective on Airbnb’s Global Expansion

This report examines how short-term rentals, driven by Airbnb’s global expansion since 2008, have become a structural threat to housing systems worldwide. It brings together platform data from 224 countries and territories, including 218 with active listings, detailed national analyses of 16 countries, and mapped datasets covering 165 cities and regions. It examines housing impacts, commercialisation, inequalities in the Global South, the role of events, disputed territories, and regulatory responses.

Written by Aline Cruvinel, a Brazilian architect, urbanist, and researcher, and Murray Cox, the community activist behind the Inside Airbnb data project, ‘The Threat of Short-Term Rentals to Housing: A Critical Perspective on Airbnb’s Global Expansion’ looks at how Airbnb has expanded throughout the world and its characteristics that threaten the world's housing systems.

It demonstrates that Airbnb is no longer primarily a platform for “home sharing”, but a global system of commercialised, unhosted short-term rentals that is structurally incompatible with, and poses a systemic risk to, long-term housing.

At the core of this transformation is the double threat to housing systems.

First, the vast majority of Airbnb listings are entire homes (referred to in this report as ‘unhosted’, to reflect the absence of a resident host). Globally, entire-home listings account for 82.4% of all listings, representing approximately 6.88 million housing units potentially removed from long-term residential use. In 92% of active countries and territories (200 of 218), entire homes dominate the platform. These are not spare rooms. When rented without a primary resident present, they remove housing from long-term residential use and function as full-time tourist accommodation.

Second, Airbnb is increasingly controlled by commercial operators. Multi-listing hosts manage 62.9% of all listings worldwide, and in 86% of countries (187 of 218), they represent the dominant form of hosting. These actors often operate at national and international scales, managing large portfolios that function more like corporate accommodation businesses than informal home sharing.

Together, these dynamics converge into a single dominant model, entire homes managed as commercial assets posing high risks to long-term housing markets. In 78% of Airbnb’s global markets (169 of 218), both conditions prevail simultaneously.

This is not a marginal feature of the platform, it is its defining structure.

Key Findings

A Global System at Scale

This model operates at an unprecedented global scale. Airbnb currently lists approximately 8.35 million properties across 218 active countries and territories, generating an estimated 436.78 million nights booked annually.

While Europe and the Americas account for the majority of listings, the platform’s expansion is increasingly pronounced in Asia and Africa. In many regions, listings are highly concentrated relative to population, particularly in tourism-dependent and small-island economies. At finer spatial scales, the intensity of short-term rental activity becomes even more visible.

In cities such as Rio de Janeiro, thousands of listings can be found within a few hundred metres, reflecting the deep saturation of local housing markets.

Intensifying Inequality in the Global South

The impacts of this model are especially pronounced in the Global South, where Airbnb’s expansion intersects with existing structural inequalities.

The growing participation of short-term rental platforms based in the Global North in the economies of the Global South reinforces patterns of economic dependency between countries, intensifying inequalities and extending them territorially (Cruvinel, 2025).

Through the combined action of platforms such as Airbnb, commercial hosts, and local real estate markets, profits expand via flows of resources, investments, and people that reproduce and deepen structural asymmetries, including disparities in purchasing power, currency strength, international mobility, and broader economic inequalities.

This dynamic also deepens inequalities within cities. While property owners and segments of the real estate sector increase their revenues, lower-income residents face rising housing costs, displacement pressures, and reduced access to long-term rentals.

By strengthening the influence of global tourism over previously more locally driven housing markets, the combined expansion of Airbnb and commercial hosts from the Global North reshapes local housing systems and reinforces both external dependency and internal inequality.

Measurable Impacts on Housing

Empirical evidence confirms that these dynamics translate into significant housing impacts.

In New York City, Airbnb activity prior to regulation generated an estimated USD$2.7 billion in aggregate renter welfare losses, primarily through higher rents (Calder-Wang, 2022). In Ontario, Canada, short-term rentals added approximately CAD$2.6 billion in additional rent payments (Wachsmuth and St-Hilaire, 2024).

Research also shows that regulation can reverse these effects. Across Ontario, local short-term rental regulations are currently saving renters more than CAD$1 billion annually, and extending principal residence requirements to other municipalities in the province would generate at least CAD$566 million in additional annual savings (Wachsmuth, 2024).

In other cities that were early to regulate, including Amsterdam, Montreal, New York City, Paris, San Francisco, and Toronto, a consistent pattern emerges. In the absence of effective regulation, Airbnb listings expand rapidly. When enforceable measures are introduced, listing volumes decline and housing pressures ease.

A Regulatory Gap at the Global Scale

Despite these impacts, effective regulation remains limited.

Using the presence of license or registration systems in the data as a proxy for regulations, only a small minority of countries have meaningful regulatory coverage. Just 16 out of 218 active countries and territories (7%) have licensing or registration systems that apply to the majority of their entire-home listings.

In most countries, regulation is either partial or effectively absent. In 82% of countries, fewer than 1% of entire-home listings are licensed or registered.

This regulatory gap allows the dominant and highest-risk category, unhosted, commercial short-term rentals, to expand largely unchecked.

The report identifies four core policy tools that are consistently associated with effective outcomes:

• Primary residence requirements
• Mandatory registration systems
• Platform data sharing
• Platform accountability

Where these measures are implemented together, evidence shows us that short-term rental markets contract and housing policy objectives are achieved.

Catalysts of Platform Expansion

Airbnb’s growth is accelerated by specific events that generate sudden increases in demand. Major international events significantly accelerate short-term rental expansion by driving rapid host entry and the conversion of housing into tourist accommodation, often producing lasting impacts on cities and local communities (Cruvinel, 2025).

The Olympic Games illustrate this dynamic clearly. In Rio de Janeiro (2016), Airbnb listings increased by +96.52%, and in Paris (2024) by +92.66%, nearly doubling supply in the lead-up to the Games.

This expansion extended short-term rental activity into neighbourhoods that had previously shown little or no presence on the platform, leaving lasting impacts on local housing systems.

Temporary demand shocks encourage rapid host entry, normalise short-term rental activity, and entrench platform presence beyond the duration of the event.

Airbnb in Disputed and High-Risk Contexts

Airbnb also operates in politically sensitive and high-risk environments. The platform is active in at least 33 disputed areas, with more than 50,000 listings overall, including more than 10,000 listings concentrated in the most active disputed areas. These areas are marked by settlement activity, recurring violence, large-scale displacement, militarisation, and the presence of foreign troops.

Airbnb has been cited by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for its involvement in illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

These contexts raise significant concerns about the role of digital platforms in contested territories and their potential involvement in systems of dispossession and inequality.

Conclusion

This report provides the first global evidence that Airbnb’s dominant operating model is structurally incompatible with long-term housing protection.

Across most of the world, housing is being converted into a global, tradeable asset for short-term use, driven by entire-home rentals and concentrated in the hands of commercial operators.

This transformation generates significant economic gains for a minority of actors, while imposing substantial social and economic costs on residents, particularly renters.

However, these outcomes are not inevitable. Where enforceable regulations are introduced, combining registration, primary residence requirements, data sharing, and platform accountability, short-term rental markets can be contained, and housing systems can be effectively protected.

Join the Discussion

Later in April, we will host a virtual event on The Threat of Short-Term Rentals to Housing: A Critical Perspective on Airbnb’s Global Expansion, bringing together researchers, journalists, organisers, and policymakers to discuss the report and the global expansion of short-term rentals, with particular attention to the Global South.

If you would like to hear about the event when registration opens, please register your interest here.

The Report

The full report can be downloaded here.