Project description
A closer look at the links between short-term rentals and housing financialisation
The home-sharing site Airbnb has been used by more than 500 million people in over 100 000 cities in 191 countries since 2008. No doubt, digital platforms like Airbnb have rocked the market of short-term rentals and given rise to various issues, concerns and debates on local and national levels. One ongoing debate stems from the fact that short-term rentals have become professionalised – they are no longer covered by the ‘sharing economy’ in which hosts occasionally share their homes with visitors. The EU-funded POLIS project will study cases in two EU cities, Lisbon and Leipzig, to understand relations between short-term rentals and housing financialisation. It will investigate to what extent Airbnb channels financial investment into the housing market.
Objective
The success of digital platforms such as Airbnb and the subsequent proliferation of short-term rentals in cities have caused many challenges for local authorities, especially regarding the regulation and mitigation of their social impacts. Current attempts to regulate short-term rentals assume that Airbnb and similar providers are part of the so-called ‘sharing economy’ in which hosts would occasionally share their homes with visitors. However, there is increased evidence that short-term rentals have become professionalised, and that individual and corporate investors have started to channel substantial investment into this market. In this regard, POLIS explores the links between short-term rentals and housing financialisation and, in doing so, will provide innovative understandings of the Airbnb-led restructuring of local housing markets. POLIS draws on the principles of evidence-based policy making with the aim of advancing policy innovation for the regulation of this emerging economic sector. In particular, POLIS will address three research objectives: it will (i) examine the professionalisation of the short-term rental market; (ii) investigate to what extent Airbnb channels financial investment into the housing market; (iii) elaborate alternative policy proposals for positive change. POLIS is a gender-sensitive project and has an intrinsic gender dimension in all phases of the research. The project will explore the cases of two European cities: Lisbon and Leipzig. It will provide comparative insights into a topic that has proved to be of significant political, economic and spatial relevance. Research objectives will be addressed using a mixed-method design that collects and analyses data from a variety of sources, especially in-depth interviews and critical policy analysis. With short-term rentals on the agendas of local authorities in different contexts, the POLIS project will produce high quality transferable outcomes for other EU cities and beyond.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
LS2 9JT Leeds
United Kingdom