r/Eugene • u/Low_Matter_6374 • 2d ago
How much do you think AirBnB is driving the housing shortage here in Eugene?
It's a fact that AirBnB's are affecting the housing supply nation wide, to which degree do you think it is driving up housing prices here in Eugene by taking housing out of the market?
124
u/EUGsk8rBoi42p 2d ago
Heavily, a lot of people are way overhyped on "passive income" so these properties are empty 50%+ of the time or more. Portland changed things so the house can't be a short term rental without at least 1 main resident/owner living there, seems to be having some results to get more properties on thr residential market already.
9
u/sandyyyye 2d ago
I’m curious where you are seeing results with respect to Portland banning STR? The enforcement of the ban has not been very good (article). Portland is also upzoning a lot faster than Eugene which has a much wider impact on affordability than banning STR (we don’t have enough housing stock). I’ve been looking for data on this, but haven’t found any. So if you have any, please link it! https://www.opb.org/article/2023/09/18/portland-airbnb-regulations/
3
u/Full_Blacksmith5736 1d ago
New Orleans does this as well, I hope more cities/states follow suit. Bend really needs to shut down AirBnB; service workers there have to live 5 to a trailer out in the woods.
-33
u/OffTopicBen95 2d ago
Passive income won’t beat invested income ever buuuut working as your own boss to cash in social security by owning rentals and going to work one day a quarter? That is totally a strategy haha
90
u/WinsdyAddams 2d ago
Barcelona has outlawed AirBNB apartments now. I think there should be a cap on capacity somehow. It’s bad for housing. All housing levels.
9
u/UnskilledDeer_8135 2d ago
Many cities do have caps and boundaries. In Hawaii you can only have strs in the Honolulu area- everything else has to be atleast a 30 day minimum. Eugene hasn’t gotten it together yet and they should. Although those rentals would be at market rate but there’s so many people looking who find nothing.
54
u/band-of-horses 2d ago
Like maybe 1%. I mean it's not helping, but it's not the main factor. Neither are corporate owned homes. The biggest issue is simply we don't have enough housing for the number of people who want to live here, and that won't change even if we banned rental houses.
38
u/davidw 2d ago
It's so easy to blame the housing crisis on these random things. But then you look at a zoning map and almost all of south Eugene is single detached unit only. And if you try and change that, NIMBYs will show up to fight you.
36
u/band-of-horses 2d ago
I think people focus on these things because the real solution is hard, if not impossible. More housing is going to mean sprawl, or dense high rises. A lot of people don't want either of those, understandably so. But there's no magic way to create more housing without changing the character or size of our city. And frankly we'd need to change it A LOT, because if we built a ton and made housing more affordable here, then even more people are going to want to move here and drive housing prices back up.
24
u/davidw 2d ago
even more people are going to want to move here
This is, however, something every single place that's somewhat desirable tells itself.
- Boulder, CO
- Bend
- Ashland
- San Francisco (I had a friend tell me it was useless to build more housing there because clearly any rational person would move there if they could... I was like "uh huh"...)
- Austin
- Santa Barbara
- San Diego
- Hawaii
and on and on, and they all use it as an excuse.
And the housing crisis changes "the character" of all these places even if they try and maintain the physical form, because who can live there has changed - radically in many cases.
3
u/SpiceEarl 1d ago
I know the problem Hawaii has can't be solved by building more homes. Even if new homes are intended for local residents, they would be bought up by people from the mainland US or from other countries. The high prices keep out a LOT of people who would like to live there. I live on the West Coast and I have friends who have said they would like to move to Hawaii, but the high cost keeps them away.
8
u/davidw 1d ago
Sounds like a problem that could be solved, even if not 100%, by building more homes, and ensuring they're primary residences rather than vacation homes.
But you see, people always tell themselves that their place is the one that eeeeeeeeveryone would move to. It's not true though! It literally cannot be true for all those places.
I forgot to add Montana to my list, it's the new 'in' place everyone is moving to, and it's kind of the, uh, polar (pun intended) opposite to Hawaii in terms of the climate and a number of other things. And people there claim that building homes won't help!
2
u/SpiceEarl 1d ago
While some people only want vacation homes, many retirees would move to Hawaii full-time, if it were more affordable. Also, people who have work from home jobs. I have an acquaintance who works in tech and did exactly that. He got obsessed with surfing and was able to make it work. He's also brilliant, with in-demand skills, so employers are willing to accommodate his desire to work remotely. Few people can afford to do that. If more people could, I have no doubt they would.
2
u/davidw 1d ago
More people getting to live in a place they love sounds like a win, especially if you have enough housing that some of those people are teachers, rather than only people such as remote tech workers.
The real catch is that land is limited in Hawai'i even more so than Oregon, so while here, we need to build 'in and up' more, we do have the possibility to expand our cities' UGBs some. On the other hand, they're much more limited to denser building.
Some people are going to be fine with that, but some of those retirees and others might prefer a bit more land, so they'll go elsewhere like Arizona or Florida.
8
u/thenerfviking 2d ago
The difference is that there’s somewhat valid arguments for certain zoning styles and reducing things like sprawl. These are issues that have been debated and discussed for decades at this point vs something like AirBnB which has only really been a thing for ten ish years and honestly only at the scale it’s causing problems for seven or eight years. It’s much easier to convince people to reverse a recent negative trend than it is to reverse something that’s much much more complex and has roots going back a generation.
8
u/davidw 2d ago edited 2d ago
I read something wild today:
They were already using land use rules in London in the 1590ies to exclude poor people from 'nice' areas.
https://bsky.app/profile/dereksagehorn.bsky.social/post/3letx66tewc2d
Even fast-forwarding to the modern era, zoning is still very much wielded for that purpose.
And in Oregon, where we can't do Phoenix style sprawl (yuck) to add 'enough' housing, zoning becomes even more important in terms of adding enough housing.
10
u/thenerfviking 2d ago
A big part of it is also that there used to be a lot of options for cheap or semi temporary housing for single people or low income laborers. The type of place where you’d rent a room for around the modern equivalent of ~$12. That’s even a thing you used to be able to do at the Y. Basically all these styles of housing got legislated out of existence by the 50s with some religious affiliated ones lasting until the 70s.
3
4
u/Mikfoz 1d ago
More housing is going to mean sprawl, or dense high rises.
You could build duplexes or townhomes instead of high rises. I know someone is going reply " But I don't want to live that close to my neighbor!" My reply is don't. There are others who would gladly accept that form of housing.
While we are at it, improve the public transit, so buses are not stuck in traffic. Fewer parking lots would go help.
4
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
So are you suggesting we just don't change anything? As if there is no problem.
22
u/band-of-horses 2d ago
Nope, I'm not suggesting that, but I am suggesting I have no clue what a realistic solution is.
11
1
u/Captain_Quark 2d ago
I don't think building a lot more housing by itself would change people's desire and thus willingness to pay to live in Eugene. It just allows more people to be able to afford it. Maybe eventually that would lead to a more attractive city, though.
4
u/Dry_Ad2368 2d ago
Oregon passed HB2001 recently which effectively banned single family zoning. It allows for the construction of duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes in areas previously zoned single family detached.
6
u/davidw 2d ago edited 2d ago
Yes, I'm aware of that, as I advocated for it with my state rep and state senator as part of a pro-housing group. I was kind of oversimplifying, but look at the zoning map of Eugene:
https://mapping.eugene-or.gov/app/eugene-zoning-map-1
All those super-"progressive" folks in south Eugene have ensured that very little land is zoned for actual apartments where people of lesser means might live. And what is zoned for apartments is along the busier streets, which isn't great
https://ronpdavis.substack.com/p/mike-eliason-on-corridor-zoning
5
u/Dry_Ad2368 2d ago
Ah, yeah oversimplification can sometimes lead to miscommunication or misunderstanding, sorry. While apartments would be ideal, according to Eugene city code R-1 zoning can have up to 10 attached townhomes or 8 cottages per lot.
What I really want is Lane county to ease up their restrictions on tiny home communities. Most land outside city limits is limited to one residence, so unless you want to go through the hassle to subdivide you can't do it. Eugene has decent laws, but it's far too expensive to purchase land in city limits.
5
u/Univited_Arbiter 2d ago
100%, short term rentals are an issue in SOME places. But generally speaking this is almost entirely an issue of NIMBYs having too much influence in stalling or stopping development entirely.
7
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago
Yes, it's a small percentage, but the 2% issue it is (see the math in my top level comment), would bring Eugene into the bottom range of healthy vacancy rate for a city. So it doesn't fix the issue, but it is a short term measure the city could implement while we wait for the long term measure of building more units
8
u/Captain_Quark 2d ago
That assumes they stay vacant. In reality they'd probably get snatched up quickly and the vacancy rate would go back to what it is now.
8
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago
Sure, some would fill. But that's all part of helping the demand.
Many people might move from one apartment into one of these new ones that open up, etc. It's not like all 700 would just be gobbled up by currently unhoused our out of state people moving in.
By the same logic, "building a new apartment building wouldn't work because they'll just get filled and the vacancy rate goes back down"
In a crisis, multiple avenues should be explored
2
0
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
So you don't think the homes that are taken out of circulation affect the lack of housing?
20
u/band-of-horses 2d ago
Like maybe 1%.
I mean there are currently 270 "entire home" listings on airbnb and we have around 80,000 housing units. Now that 270 number is probably quesitonable but I'd bet there are less than 1000 properties in eugene used exlusively as short term rentals which is a small fraction of our housing stock.
So yes, it's not helping, but getting rid of them isn't goign to solve the problem or move pricing much.
12
u/davidw 2d ago
It's one of those things that makes people think like they've figured out who the bogeyman is, when the actual bogeyman is their regular old nice neighbors who fight that apartment building next door, multiplied by 100's of apartment buildings across Oregon and 10s of 1000's across the country.
5
u/mangofarmer 2d ago
Honestly it’s probably much less than 270 entire dwellings. I know a few people who post their primary home on Airbnb and stay with friends or family when it books up.
3
u/vaguelyblack 2d ago
Probably more, a lot of places are already filled by people staying longer than a month and less than a year. A lot of people that travel for work, like travel nurses, will get longer term Airbnb's.
0
2d ago
[deleted]
4
u/vaguelyblack 2d ago
How do get Airbnb to show that number?
When I go onto Airbnb's website I see 385 entire home listings in Eugene.
2
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
A 1000 extra houses is not a negligible amount.
7
u/Captain_Quark 2d ago
It's 1/80th of the housing market - 1.25%. Maybe not "negligible", but pretty small.
7
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
There are currently about 421 houses for sale in eugene so idk. Doesn't sound negligible
1
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago
It is much higher than 270. When I look, it's 700-1000 consistently in the entire Eugene area.
7
u/band-of-horses 2d ago
270 is the number of results when I search "entire place" instead of shared rooms. It still says "Over 1,000 properties" at the top of the page but there are only 270 entries to paginate through. Again though I have no idea if that's accurate or if they just cut it off arbitrarly at 15 pages of results.
4
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago edited 2d ago
When I do it on the app, and I click "filter" it listed 1000+ for "any type"
When I filter for "entire home" it says "show 997 homes"
I'll try to screenshot it and show you if I can
0
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago
5
u/mangofarmer 2d ago edited 2d ago
That number includes people renting out rooms in their homes. Makes more sense to choose “entire home”.
Even then, many people rent out their entire house and stay with friends/family for events. These rarely posted homes are still included in the “entire home” total. It also includes backyard cottages that people would never rent to long term renters.
1
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago edited 2d ago
There's two screenshots. "Entire home" is selected in one, and the other is "any". This means 997 is the places not shared with the owner.
There's no current way to know how many of them are people who leave their homes when someone stays or these mother in law cottages. The city should definitely try to track this data though
4
u/GoodAsUsual 2d ago edited 2d ago
There are TONS of mother in law cottages / ADU's in this town. A large portion of Airbnbs are not standalone properties with no owner onsite.
2
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago
Ok, and when you set it to filter to 2+ bedrooms, it's still over 700 listings.
It's not like this number is gonna stop growing either with u of o growing as much as it is.
I hear you, but Eugene needs to regulate this industry. It can't be left to the free market when we're in a housing crisis that's only getting worse.
1
u/Earthventures 2d ago
"Housing Crisis Super-Charged by Billionaire Investors Disrupting Housing Market"
https://ips-dc.org/release-billionaire-blowback-on-housing/
The fact that even in Eugene the investor class gets a pass on the housing crisis shows just how effective their misinformation campaigns have been.
27
u/LabyrinthJunkLady 2d ago
I don't have a problem with a mom and pop supporting their retirement with one or an ADU, but fuck anyone doing it with a bunch of properties trying to live life like the Monopoly Man.
30
u/TheNachoSupreme 2d ago
This is copied from a comment I made on a post a while ago.
The answer is that it's not by any means the main contributor, however, it definitely IS a contributor, despite this being frowned upon as something to bring up to the city. (First hand experience of it getting ignored in meetings)
about 700-1000 listings on airbnb in Eugene are listed as "entire" homes. Some of them are people who live there full time, most are gonna be ADUs or units that could be rental housing.
Eugene has about 75,500 occupied homes, roughly 52% are not owner-occupied. This means about 39,260 units are rentals. (Eugene, OR Household Income, Population & Demographics | Point2 - https://www.point2homes.com/US/Neighborhood/OR/Eugene-Demographics.html)
The rental vacancy rate is around 3% (Low Income Apartments and Affordable Housing For Rent in Eugene, OR. - https://affordablehousingonline.com/housing-search/Oregon/Eugene#google_vignette)
A city with a healthy vacancy rate is around 5% to 10%. (The Importance of Calculating Vacancy Rates and How to Do It Right - BFPM - https://bfpminc.com/vacancy-rate-for-rental-properties-why-how-to-calculate-it/ )
2% of 39,260 is about 780 homes... coincidentally, the amount of increase that would be needed to get Eugene into the BOTTOM range of healthy just happens to be about the entire total number of AirBnBs listed as entire homes in the Eugene area.. this could be something the city could implement quickly to get Eugene into the healthy range of vacancy rates. They just aren't.
Just like the inaction they're taking on the $10 cap on rental application. It's infuriating.
24
u/ilikedabooty69 2d ago
I live in a 2bed1ba just under 900sqft. My neighbors house is basically the same and it sold for 380k. It was turned into a ln Airbnb and it's been empty since football season. It's really only been occupied for game day weekends
18
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
It seems that many people believe it doesn't affect the housing market, i don't understand how it cannot.
12
u/BeeBopBazz 2d ago
People are generally pretty ignorant about elasticities. With something like a fucked housing market with a tiny vacancy gap, a small change in % supply can amount to much larger percentage changes in price.
IE: going from a one percent gap to a two percent gap should theoretically reduce prices by far more than one percent.
Here’s an ancient HUD paper that demonstrates the finding: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Price-Elasticities-of-Housing-Supply.pdf
20
u/hezzza 2d ago edited 2d ago
I know I'm gonna get downvoted for this, but many landlords are looking to avoid long term tenants as the tenants have so many rights it's hard to evict the bad ones. It's easier to keep it short term. I can see four airbnbs from my front door.
-9
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
Lol fuck the landlord. It must be so hard to have turnkey income and to have your serfs have rights.
23
u/stinkyfootjr 2d ago
We just recently had a nightmare property finally get vacated. It was a drug house with dozens of people coming and going day and night, multiple people living there, huge amounts of trash, dozens of broke down bikes, weekly burning of trash, and gunshots every couple of weeks. The list of problems goes on and on. The neighbors were all over the landlord but they weren’t able to evict them until after 3 months because they didn’t pay their part of their section 8 money, about $750. They said it’s almost impossible to evict over cause in Eugene right now. The tenants were given multiple chances to pay, go to arbitration but never showed. They had warrants out for their arrest which is probably why. The house is now empty because it’s been gutted to clean up from drug contamination. Will probably be empty for months, and will probably be bought by a corporate owner because there are 2 houses there. The city employee that took all the complaints about it said these houses are all over Eugene. Fuck tenants like this.
15
u/Greedy_Disaster_3130 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t think it does in a significant or considerable way
If Eugene outlawed Airbnb I don’t think we’d see any noticeable downward shift in rental prices but it sure would help hotels a lot
14
u/OreganoTimeSage 2d ago
Eugene is building about 1000 units per year. Outlawing Airbnb might move us up 9 months worth of construction. Not insignificant but far from a cure.
8
9
u/gingerjuice 2d ago
It’s a factor for sure. I think the biggest one is Lane county and the City of Eugene with their outrageous permit fees. Our neighbors across the road wanted to put in a couple of mobile homes for seniors (the neighborhood is zoned for it) There is already a road, and the sites are there. The county wanted $25,000 each for just the permits. It’s ridiculous.
5
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
So chances are they arent actually trying to solve the problem? What good would that size fee do.
3
u/gingerjuice 2d ago
I would love to know where that money goes.
3
u/OreganoTimeSage 2d ago
It seems like part of the problem is designs have to be manually reviewed by a human and the building code that human has been tasked with implementing is larger than one could read in a year. Permitting fees might also cover inspections.
8
u/LateOnAFriday 2d ago
Correct on multiple fronts. Each design has to be manually received. And yes, inspections are covered with the permit pricing. A project of this scale takes a decent amount of inspections. Minimum of 6 without even looking at the plans. There are also other types of things that are not obvious unless you work around the industry. Anytime you start adding lots of pavement you have to deal with water run off (since you just covered over natural drainage), if you tear up enough ground you have to plan for erosion control, depending on how much is added/subdivided there's emergency services access to review, and on top of all that there are special areas called overlay zones that govern how things can be built and what additional steps need to be taken. For example, there are special rules for subdividing plots in the Santa Clara area that used to be farms, and the UO. Springfield has the Historic district, and they also have special rules when you build close SUBs water supply area. So yes, fees can seem large, but they are rarely without reason, it's just not always obvious.
5
u/gingerjuice 2d ago
Our family have been licensed contractors in Lane County for 25 years. The permit people have too many restrictions to operate. They have so many rules to follow that they can't keep up. No independent contractors (like us) can possibly do projects that create housing without paying tens of thousands of dollars. It's a big clusterfu*k of rules and regulations.
1
u/OreganoTimeSage 2d ago
You seem knowledgeable. I want to know more about this mess. This is my primary source of information right now
10
u/dice_mogwai 2d ago
Significantly. I know people that tried for over a year to buy a house but Airbnb flippers would swoop in with cash offers that were usually 10% or more above asking price every time
6
u/ChudChudley #notallchuds 2d ago
While I haven't got a place that I could rent out, or AirBnB, if I did, I would lean toward AirBnB so that I had less chance of having to deal with a nightmare tenant or eviction. The tenant protections here are way too big here, if you want moms and pops to rent to non-AirBnB tenants.
6
u/stevepiercy 2d ago
We rented a home to a "nice couple". If you don't count depreciation and deferred maintenance, we covered our expenses while it was rented. We needed to replace the cat-pee infused carpet. They vacated just before the City imposed its tenant protections. With those landlord restrictions, the risk of a nightmare tenant was too great to accept. The deal breaker was that we could no longer evict a tenant if we wanted to provide housing for an aging or disabled family member in the future without paying a large relocation assistance fee. We sold the rental home. I am curious whether the City has performed an analysis of the number of single home rentals that have disappeared?
6
u/Low_Matter_6374 2d ago
Uh many of us are forced to rent. What's wrong with being a renter and having rights.
3
u/fizzmore 1d ago
It's a matter of degree. The risk of a nightmare tenant that your can't evict for three months even though they're destroying your house is too high.
1
u/Low_Matter_6374 1d ago
People with extra properties can always sell them
5
u/fizzmore 1d ago
Yep, that's what has happened. So now a much greater percentage of the rental market is driving by corporations. YMMV, but I always found mom and pop owners easier to work with, and those are the ones being driven out of rental ownership.
7
u/oregon_coastal 2d ago
Not as much as on the coast ;-)
The effect is ratio'd by how many people want to stay there for a short stay.
You can look up Census and Community Survey data.
They fall in the "other" category. Or at least they did the last time I looked.
2
u/AccessCompetitive 2d ago
The coast doesn’t have a job market. It’s for retired peoples or tourist peoples
3
u/oregon_coastal 2d ago
We used to, but thanks.
1
u/WhiteGuyBigDick 2d ago
Fellow old coastal resident. Wtf did we ever have? Seafood?
4
u/oregon_coastal 1d ago
How far you want to go back?
And to be clear, some of the changes that happened needed to happen. There needed to be less fishing. And logging.
But states and the feds loose their mind if some industries hit the cliff - and let the rest go right over without lifting a finger - the coast was the latter.
But, yeah, I can wax poetic about the dairies that dotted the coast. The mink farms. Fishing. Boatbuilders. Local stores. Local makers. The logger. And truckers. And mills. The people that worked for the military. Locally owned hotels and motels. And built dings and roads.
Everyone acts like where we are is where we were always meant to be. Or that it was the only place to land.
But it wasn't and isn't.
It was a choice.
And it sets me a bit sideways on the hypocrisy that in a thread about the changes to Eugene due to predatory housing, someone kicks sand at what happened to the coast.
1
5
u/PVT_Huds0n 2d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that there are 400-600 units removed from the market and around 800-900 bedrooms overall. So yeah, a lot, I also know for a fact that there are a couple apartment buildings near the U of O that are dedicated Airbnbs.
6
u/EUGsk8rBoi42p 2d ago
This is becoming far more common, property management using airbnb to turn long term rentals into short term rentals should be prohibited.
1
u/vaguelyblack 2d ago
There are 2300 active units in Lane county, 4-600 units would be a good estimate for Eugene, I would guess another 2-300 units for Springfield.
-1
u/fzzball 2d ago
It amazes me that many property owners think there are 400-600 people a night who want to stay in a Eugene AirBnB. We're not a resort town. If this is all Ducks fans, that's yet another reason UO football is bad for the community.
7
u/PVT_Huds0n 2d ago
They don't need to fill them every night though. A short-term rental only needs to get rented 5-6 days a month to be more profitable than a long-term renter.
0
u/Cheshire-624 1d ago
If the landlord does the cleaning and keeps the cleaning that could potentially be true. If that's not the case I think occupancy likely needs to approach 50%.
6
u/SwimmingWaterdog11 2d ago
It’s not just football. Other regular university events bring in tons of people: parents weekend, graduation, track meets in the summer (including youth meets like high school state). Then it’s people like traveling nurses, people who work remote and travel around, etc.
6
u/Holiday-Aardvark1166 2d ago
Hear me out. What if we built a wall to keep people out?
11
u/Puukkot 2d ago
And Multnomah County will pay for it!
1
u/fake-meows 1d ago
Deport all jaywalkers.
2
u/Holiday-Aardvark1166 1d ago
And people who wear beanies because they are the ones who engage in illegal activity, drugs, and crimes that are bad so very bad.
5
u/benconomics 2d ago
The effect isn't zero, but the main reason rents are up is a lack of construction while the population grows.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/garybarker/2020/02/21/the-airbnb-effect-on-housing-and-rent/
5
u/littlehops 2d ago
It’s usually a small percentage, based on a quick google search it’s around 2500, but not all of those are full time rentals. The last time I did a calculation we need about 30,000 (number based on population and estimate of what’s needed per national housing association) new housing units to relieve the shortage we now have and allow for expanding population, that’s a lot of homes.
6
u/No-Split-866 2d ago
Very little would be my guess. I keep seeing pepole post on how houses are overpriced. They cost what they cost because of the cost of materials. I could be wrong, but a builder shoots for 30% profits. Osb during covid shot up to 90 a sheet up from under 10. People are paying on average 30 k for a new roof on an old home. Even Bring in Glenwood is as expensive as fuck.
7
u/Orcapa 2d ago
This is all true, and unfortunately developers make more money on high end homes. We need to somehow incentivize building apartment complexes with Formica countertops and vinyl or laminate flooring. And we need to incentivize building a lot of them. Everything being built now is luxury this and luxury that.
5
u/HotITGuy 2d ago
I believe Merkley is proposing a bill to prohibit corporations from purchasing single family homes. That would help.
3
4
u/NWTurtle 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not as much impact as being a college focused city.
There’s roughly 700-1000 “entire home” Airbnb listings online, some of which are ADU’s or trailer type rentals.
But there’s 20K students and another 10K of UO/college related service employees. Many students live on campus, in the direct vicinity of campus or have roommates but it still drives up rental costs, home prices, and general service prices.
Then add in the fact the job market in Eugene is not specifically strong and you have this odd dynamic where out of state/temporary demand drives up costs and the locals suffer through it unless they’re high earners in some of the few high paying industries/employees.
3
u/sbayz92 2d ago
There are much more than that. It just shows you the first 375 results (15 pages of 25)
2
u/NWTurtle 2d ago
Your right. I was looking at all pages but for some reason my search window was limiting the results. I updated the comment.
3
4
u/MaraudersWereFramed 1d ago
I believe the rise of remote work is a larger factor. Airbnb certainly does not help as it helps to set a floor price. IE any house below X price is now an investment waiting to be snatched up. Remote jobs that pay higher than the local economy typically pays out causes prices to rise higher.
2
3
u/Former_Berry_8462 1d ago
A former friend/landlord of mine did AB&B during the huge Track & Field events a few years ago. She converted the upstairs portion of her house in North Eugene (while living there, modified so separate doors etc). She made so much money it was disgusting. Then it died down. She now charges renters $2,500 a month for 1,000 sq ft utilities included. Before this...I rented the space for $500 a month. We are no longer friends. Guess we never were.
3
u/kiwijuno 2d ago
The neighbors I have with airbnbs all built them as ADUs as part of their retirement income. I don’t think they would’ve built as ongoing rentals-the return isn’t as high, plus then you always have someone living right next to your house, vs only when you choose to rent.
3
u/Other_Seesaw_8281 1d ago
It’s a huge problem that can be changed by telling the local elected City Council this is important to you. This city is poorly run by the people with money. If enough people tell the politicians they are out, if they don’t step up to restrict short term rentals. They have a shitty self report system that no one enforces.
3
u/belyle 1d ago
I actually know this one and it's not that hard to find out. There are roughly 1000 short term rental properties in Eugene, or about 2% of dwellings. It was recently discussed at the Lane County Planning Commission when the Eugene planners presented the long term growth plan for Eugene.
4
3
u/cooalsice_710 1d ago
I worked HVAC at a local resi company for 2.5yrs, the amount of houses that were bought specifically for AirBnB we renovated was sickening Some of those places were charging like $500/night afterwards I’d say that and landlords thinking a house that’s falling apart with a new coat of paint and new drywall is worth $1300 a month
3
u/Van-garde 1d ago
There is a huuge gap between the proportion of owner-occupied homes here, and both the national and state averages. National and state are somewhere around 61-65%, iirc, And Eugene is around 49-51, I think.
3
u/Broad_Ad941 1d ago
Over 1000 properties listed right now, so absofuckinglutely a contributor if not a driver.
2
u/RosellaDella93 2d ago
Most of the ones in Eugene are illegal. They're either buildings added to properties without permission or trailers that aren't supposed to exist. A lot of them also advertise on the site and then want to deal in cash off site if you want to stay longer than two days.
2
u/RevN3 2d ago
I know of two houses in my neighborhood that are privately owned and lived in but they rent out part of the house via airb&b. I think in that way maybe it might help home ownership as those people might not be able to afford a house without that extra income. That said, these are some pretty expensive houses so maybe it's still making things worse. I don't know.
2
u/stevepiercy 2d ago
Exactly this. Our backyard studio does not qualify as an ADU, so we can't legally rent it. Airbnb is a great option, and has helped pay for our mortgage and property taxes. Without Airbnb, we could not afford to own our home.
2
u/redactedanalyst 1d ago
Not as big as the problem of no low-income housing or greedy devs/landlords.
2
u/Cheshire-624 1d ago
I'm in the Lodging sector (the actual one) and I've had several discussions with local Air BnB entrepreneurs. Their bear market assumptions are absurd quite frankly. I think you can expect many of these homes to become long term rentals soon as these AirBnB entrepreneurs have not properly forecasted for what the incoming demand trough will mean for them.
1
u/dcineug 2d ago
Here’s what I did. You decide if the numbers might be impactful…
go to air bnb website.
set up the filter for 2+ bedrooms, entire home, include a kitchen, and set the dates to the entire month of February, as if renting a house all month.
it looks to me like there are 289 listings available right now for such houses “for rent” in the area. looks like the least expensive is 1800ish for the month. that’s only houses that do not, as of this moment have a single rental booking for february. so there are probably quite a few more out there but it would take a lot of queries and tallying to know.
Obviously some of those places will , for various reasons, always be in the air bnb market, but many of those are there because a property owner thinks they can make so much more … they prolly don’t … but still… that’s what they think. So, maybe they are high vacancy and would be better off in the traditional rental market. lots of variables there.
just hypocritically what would happen if, say, 200 of those went into the regular rental market? legit question. is that number of houses a drop in the bucket in this area, or is that enough to be driving scarcity?
Most of them will not be in the right price range for any given renter… If all those houses were dropped on the regular rental market today they might just get swallowed up and make no difference. i don’t know. is there anyone with a factual basis to know one way or the other?
1
1
1
u/oldswirlo 1d ago
I do a lot of private housekeeping and for a while I worked for a company that assigned cleans for air bnbs and vrbo vacation rentals. The company I worked for had over 150 properties that would stand vacant most of the time until they were booked. It was no secret that this is a huge issue for diverting housing from the public at large to line the pockets of property owners.
1
u/Empty_Pea7412 1d ago edited 1d ago
For purpose of this question, I assume you’re talking about low income and middle income families buying homes here in Eugene. Airbnbs have no affect on this market. The main reason why there is a lack of supply of affordable new homes in the low and middle income housing market is because the cost of constructing a new home is too high and interest rates are too high right now. Just put yourself in the shoes of a real estate developer wanting to build a duplex or triplex here in town on his/her vacant lot. The construction costs are around $350 per square foot with a general contractor doing the job and then there are also soft costs for the architect, surveyor, lawyer, accountant and city permit fees. When all of the soft costs are added in, plus the cost of the land, and the borrowing costs and the real estate broker commissions, there is no room to make a profit on the project for the real estate developer. In essence, the developer would be losing money by constructing a new home to sell. You can go on Zillow and see that existing homes are selling for a lot less than what a developer would need to charge to make a profit and there is also the risk of developing the property and losing money on it. That’s why there is no new construction and why the Federal Reserve can’t solve the housing problem by lowering the Federal Funds rate that it charges banks for borrowing money. The only way you’re going to get more lower and middle income housing supply is by giving local, state and federal tax incentives and lowering permit fees in Eugene and nationwide. Otherwise, why should the developer do these type of residential projects. It’s way cheaper to buy an existing house and fix it up at Home Depot or Jerry’s than buy a new house. Just ask your plumber or electrician and they will tell you the same thing.
1
u/Empty_Pea7412 1d ago
I own an AirBnb and there is no money to be made on renting it for most of the year. The only months to make any money on an AirBnb are in the Summer months and weekend football games here in town.
1
u/BeanTutorials 23h ago
short term rentals are a small portion of the housing stock, and banning them won't increase housing production.
it'll be a small, short term benefit. upzoning and infill is the way to go. i think statewide re-legalization of single stair apartment buildings would go a long way.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/understanding-single-stair-reform-efforts-across-the-united-states/
Oregon was on track to re-legalize it last year, but our building code board was dragging their feet.
1
u/bird-in-ashes 20h ago
The question is, what can we do as a community to raise awareness about it and try to get some change going? Because it seems to be a problem everywhere.
-1
-4
u/Reagans_Dad 2d ago
Houses shouldn’t be rentable. They shouldn’t be someone’s source of income. Leave that door apartments.
-5
-10
u/Late_to_the_movement 2d ago
We should ban them. People have no right to use their property how they see fit. Regulation is needed. I want more restrictions on this. All those homeless would have homes if it wasnt for all these air bnb places.
247
u/BeerMXer 2d ago
My landlord knows a dude who owns 15 of them here in town so yeah it’s a fuckin problem