Checking In On Airbnb In The Western Addition And Alamo Square

Checking In On Airbnb In The Western Addition And Alamo Square

Photo: Airbnb

Nuala Sawyer
Published on January 22, 2015

Last summer, we took a look at the reach of Airbnb into the neighbohoods around Alamo Square and the Western Addition. In light of recent city legislation surrounding short-term rentals in the city, we thought it was time to revisit our neighborhood and check in on what's available to Airbnb users. 

For those who missed the recent news, San Francisco is making changes to the ways Airbnb hosts can offer listings. As Consumerist succinctly put it in a headline, "It's About To Get A Lot More Difficult To Run An Airbnb Empire In San Francisco." 

San Francisco had previously held a ban on residential rentals for periods of less than 30 days, although the rule was largely unenforced. On February 1st, a new law is coming into play allowing residential rentals, defined as "a rental of all or a portion of your residential unit for periods of less than 30 nights." 

But with this relaxing of rules comes some tighter requirements. Airbnb hosts will now need to make an appointment with the San Francisco Planning Department in order to register their rental. An in-person meeting with planning department staff is now required in order to submit an application, and there is also a strict and long list of conditions that all renters must abide by in order to be approved. 

A new map showcasing the "proliferation of vacation rentals" was released last week by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.  Combining data from both Airbnb and Vrbo, the group concluded that there are currently 6,788 vacation rental locations in San Francisco. The map shows a dense spread that encompasses most of the city—though as the map creators point out, the locations are approximate (no, there are no vacation rentals in Alamo Square park itself, for example).

With Airbnb rentals soon to become legal, we went micro and revisited some of the neighborhoods we focused on in June of last year. Here's what we found:

101 Airbnb units were registered in Alamo Square in June 2014. Today, there are 89 rentals, showing a slight drop in listings. Of the previous 67 "entire places" for rent, only 58 are now available. 

But increases are taking place right next door. In the Western Addition/NoPa area, 332 units appeared during our search last year. Today, 548 rentals are available.  Of those, 323 units were "entire places", meaning a full apartment or house. In other words, in the past seven months, 216 new Airbnb rentals have appeared in Western Addition/NoPa.

Only time will tell, however, whether the new legislation means more or less growth for Airbnb's short-term rental services in the area.