AirBnB Rentals
produced using: R (packages: tmap, ggplot2, visreg)
Description
This project is based off of data from AirBnB that contains detailed information on all of the approximately 40,000 private apartment listings for rent throughout New York City.
Rental Units by Neighborhoods
This map shows the average availiability of Airbnb rentals per neighborhood in NYC. Initially, I assumed that listings in Manhattan would be up for rent during longer periods of the year since they are more attractive to tourists. However the results from the map suggest otherwise since neighborhoods in Staten Island (such as Port Ivory and Tottenville), the Bronx (such as Unionport and Williamsbridge), and Queens (such as St Albans and Springfield Gardens) appear to have more listings that are (on average) up for rent for most of the year.
Since the cost of living is lower in these boroughs, it’s possible that people are able to afford having an extra place in one of these locations and are able to make a profit for renting them out throughout the year while the higher cost of living in Manhattan could make it harder to break even.
Availability Throughout the Year
I created this Histogram to get a better understanding for how long a typical Airbnb is rented throughout the year. It appears that the vast majority of Airbnb listings are rented for only a few days of the year (based on the chart it looks between 0 – ~ 12 days is the most common). Interestingly, this distribution is bimodal since there is another peak where availability of rentals hover near 365 days. These results suggest that the majority of Airbnb users do use it appropriately (meaning that they actually do live in the house on the listing and rent it out only a few days of the year). However, there is a notable amount of people who most likely do not live in the house/apartment on the listing and rent full-time throughout the year, which could be problematic because it means that they’re displacing actual New Yorkers who need to live in those areas for work/family related reasons.
This is a bar graph that displays the average availability for Airbnb rentals by borough. The boroughs with the highest average rental availability are Staten Island and the Bronx, with Manhattan and Brooklyn having the lowest averages for availability. This graph provides evidence suggesting that more listings in Staten Island and the Bronx are from hosts who do not actually live in the listings that they post on Airbnb.
Listings by Subway Stop – Morningside Heights
These maps display subway stops (as red dots), Airbnb listings (as orange bubbles), subway routes (as blue lines), and border circles signifying the immediate area surrounding each subway stop for Morningside Heights (yellow circles).
The display compares a map that only shows listings within the perimeter of a subway stop (left) with a map showing all the Airbnb listings (right). It appears that while quite a few listings are within the perimeter of a subway stop, the majority of listings are not located within these areas.
The regression results below show that while distance from a subway stop increases, the price for the rental decreases. This effect is controlled for other variables such as number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, and the number of people that the listing accommodates and is statistically significant.
This graph displays the relationship between price and distance by the three different room types available on Airbnb. Unsurprisingly, listings that are the entire home/apt have on average the highest prices compared to the other categories. Apartments that are a shared room have on average the lowest prices.
