> This tells me that you think that treating housing supply as a relevant factor to the price of housing is a stupidly obvious error.
Nah it's just that we've had trolls in here before who try to make bad faith arguments about AirBnB, by pretending they don't see the problems created by turning housing into short-term rentals.
> > So they don't necessarily "prevent housing construction" (what housing gets built is a topic a bit too complex to get into here) but they absolutely do reduce available housing in large cities and in-demand areas, in the ways outlined above.
> That you for agreeing that they do not prevent housing supply from increasing to meet the increased demand.
I definitely don't agree with that. I said "necessarily" for a reason, meaning it's not the _only_ factor, nor it is _always_ a factor (depending on location etc) but it certainly is one of the major impacts on housing supply.
As for meeting demand, here's one way AirBnB is "preventing" supply from meeting demand:
Builders build what sells, and what buyers want. For the last while in many/most large western cities (I only know Canada and the US mostly, making a few loose assumptions here about elsewhere), real estate investors have been pushing for lots of single-bedroom condo units because those are the kinds of units that are popular as short-term rentals.
So builders prioritize these kinds of units for sale to investors who have no intention of making them available as housing, even though they are zoned and built as housing.
So... I think you can draw a pretty solid line between this kind of economic incentive and a lack of housing to meet demand, since there is a finite capacity for building housing (based on available builders - i.e. capital and manpower).
Secondly, remember impacting supply is not just about adding new housing but also about how affordable the available housing is.
When people convert existing housing to short-term rental, it reduces the total supply. And when you squeeze the supply, prices go up, and people get priced out of the places they live.
A few links for you:
https://ricochet.media/justice/housing/how-airbnb-and-short-...
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2024010...
p.s. If you want to reply again and discuss, try not to cherry-pick a few low-relevancy sentences out of context to ignore my broader point.
