Spatial Airbnb Rent Indices for Cities Around the World: Insights for Long-Term Rents and Housing Affordability

Robert Hill (), Norbert Pfeifer () and Miriam Steurer ()
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Robert Hill: University of Graz, Austria
Norbert Pfeifer: University of Graz, Austria
Miriam Steurer: University of Graz, Austria

No 2025-14, Graz Economics Papers from University of Graz, Department of Economics

Abstract: Housing rents are one of the most important and difficult elements of spatial cost of living comparisons. The main difficulty arises from the lack of sufficiently detailed and harmonized data, especially at the international level. The emergence of Airbnb has created a valuable new source of internationally harmonized, micro-level rental data that circumvents this problem. In this paper, we combine hedonic regression and multilateral price index methods to construct an Airbnb spatial rent index for 60 cities across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia. We then use this index to investigate three main issues: (i) How Airbnb rents differ across cities; (ii) How Airbnb and long-term rents are related; (iii) How housing affordability varies across cities. In particular, our Airbnb rent indices shed light on the extent to which two alternative long-term rent indices are quality-adjusted and highlight two different concepts of housing affordability: rent divided by income versus quality-adjusted rent divided by income. We find that housing affordability is worse in poorer cities according to the latter but not according to the former.

Keywords: Spatial hedonic rent index; Airbnb rent premium; Housing affordability; Quality-adjusted rent/income ratio (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 C43 L85 R31 R52 Z32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
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