Weekly Data Story
How did the pandemic impact San Francisco’s Airbnb listings?
For this analysis, we obtained our raw data from Kaggle and Inside Airbnb (great data). We used ESRI web maps to display the maps. We crosschecked our sources with information from articles, data science blogs and other research sites to make sure that the data was reliable. We selected the years, 2019 and 2021, to do a comparative analysis.
The pandemic had a severe impact on San Francisco’s Airbnb listings. For 2019 Airbnb’s listings were 7,576 while for 2021 they were 6,415, this represents a 15.3% decrease in listings for the city. In those two years, the average Airbnb listing price from 2019 to 2021 went from $215 to $228, a 6% percent in increase. If we compare San Francisco and New York total listings from the previous posts, New York had more than 9% percent decrease in listings. There are a number of reasons that can account for that delta. It can also be simply that fewer people want to leave the great San Francisco weather and scenery.
As for the spatial pattern, one thing that is obvious Airbnb’s listing are super concentrated around Chinatown. It would be interesting to hear explanations why the dense concentration. Another interesting spatial pattern is the difference between 2019 and 2021 that the concentration for the other highest density areas has been substantially reduced.
Overall, the trend seems to correlate with the pattern that some major urban centers across the United States, specifically cities in the north, experienced with some depopulation. It is not surprising that this depopulation would correlate to lower Airbnb listings too. Urban centers in the south or southern states experienced an increase in population. We theorize that total Airbnb locations in southern urban centers probably increased. In subsequent posts, we will examine other cities.
By: Jose Pillich and Ryan Kmetz
