Are Rental Listings Numbers Seeing a Resurgence in Big Cities Around the World?

As we reported on Tuesday, Airbnb has its fair share of coronavirus PR problems, as the short term rental giant compared the crisis to a hurricane and overrode hosts’ cancellation policies.

Now it seems that there may be more trouble on the horizon for the bay-area company as its listings providers move their properties from the short-term to the long-term markets. With any sort of travel strictly off the cards for the foreseeable future, reports are coming in that more long term rentals are coming to market in city centres traditionally dominated by holiday rentals. 

The Irish times reported yesterday that Irish #1 portal Daft.ie have seen an 83% jump in rentals available on the site in some of Dublin’s most trendy inner city neighbourhoods. The Irish market has been notoriously bereft of this kind of letting opportunity for years and this trend is not only confined to the capital, with Galway also reported as seeing a 40% increase compared to last year.

Spain’s population has been among the hardest hit in the COVID-19 epidemic. Yet in central neighbourhoods of Madrid the number of rental listings on leading portal idealista on Monday had increased by 10% according to a local paper.

As the truly essential takes precedence over the ‘nice to have’ all over the world, we may be seeing a shift away from property owners listing on vacation websites and instead choosing the long term option available through property portals.