The impacts of Airbnb in Athens, Lisbon and Milan: a rent gap theory perspective

Abstract

The 2007-2008 Global Financial Crisis profoundly impacted the housing markets, particularly of the so-called PIGS countries. Main cities in Portugal, Italy and Greece have seen a sharp decrease in house prices and rent value since 2010. At the same time, the rise of Airbnb has contributed to the reframing of housing market demand in cities, with an increase of temporary lettings in prime urban tourist areas. Understandably, this has direct implications for local residents, with renters' displacement, tourism gentrification and raising cases of tourismphobia. This article provides insights from three cities -Athens, Lisbon and Milan -to show how the dynamics in the housing market and the boost of Airbnb over the last decade are steadily changing the urban populations of the aforementioned cities. This research builds upon the Rent Gap Theory and the Lukes' Power Theory to illustrate how Airbnb is fostering a new form of urban displacement at a faster rate than traditional housing gentrification, with the renting of prime residential areas to tourists.

Trust in peers or in the institution? A decomposition analysis of Airbnb listings’ pricing

“…2 As already noted, the Airbnb apartment market in Athens is used as a case study. Athens has been selected to be our case study on the basis that the city is not only a major urban tourist destination for both locals (Asprogerakas, 2007) and international tourists 3 (UNWTO, 2012; Yasmeen, 2019), but also an important and fast-growing Airbnb hub in Southeast Europe and the Mediterranean 4 (Amore et al, 2020;Balampanidis et al, 2019;Katsoni, 2017;Pappas, 2017). According to Inside Airbnb (2018), there were 9122 active listings in November 2018, making Athens the largest listing provider nationwide, which are almost equally shared between single and professional hosts (49.2% and 50.8%, respectively).…”

Regulating Short-Term Rentals: Platform-based property rentals in European cities: the policy debates

“…The exploitation of this new rent gap in desirable neighbourhoods has happened in a rapid manner through a range of different actors -from individual homeowners and tenants, to small-scale amateur landlords who buy and operate one flat (e.g. in Vienna, Kadi et al, 2019), to multi-property landlords (Wachsmuth and Weisler, 2018;Amore et al, 2020), and more recently real estate investment and wealth and asset management companies (see Cócola Gant and Gago, 2019 on Lisbon). The STR market has shifted 'from an individual, unregulated, informal practice to a largescale, strategic management of real estate property' (Balampanidis et al, 2019: 2), although this development is still relatively under-researched and difficult to quantify (for a discussion in the US context, see Hoffman and Schmitter Heisler, 2020).…”

Cambios económicos, movilidad residencial y gentrificación en la ciudad de Valencia (2014-2017)

“…En la actualidad, lo que es indiscutible es que el fenómeno turístico contribuye a la gentrificación, o muy probablemente ambos procesos se refuerzan mutuamente, por lo que es necesario considerarlo en el análisis y cuantificarlo. Un gran número de estudios han considerado el fenómeno del alquiler vacacional como una de las formas de acercarse al proceso de gentrificación en grandes ciudades, lo que ha evidenciado la interdependencia entre turismo y exclusión (expulsión) o turismo y gentrificación (Arias-Sans i Quaglieri, 2016; Duatis et al, 2016;Horn y Merante, 2017;Amore et al, 2020).…”