This is categorically false in the US at least. Average disposable income in the US is $58,947 in 2023 to date (the median number is not easily found unfortunately). This number is up slightly from 2022.
Disposable income was WAY up for about a year from mid 2020 to mid 2021 and people in white collar jobs had broad flexibility. I think it's broadly understood that this combined with low interest rates caused a boom in short term vacation rentals. With interest rates up and people returning to offices, it seems natural that short term rentals as a business would suffer.
In addition, this is the definition:
> "The US Disposable Personal Income per Capita indicates American household income net of taxes for each person."
This number doesn't reflect costs in any way at all. It isn't "disposable income" as most people would use it for day to day conversation i.e. the amount left after I've paid all my fixed costs (and possibly some non-fixed costs like food).
Americans on average have plenty of money to do so. You're just arguing with the BEA definition of disposable income... which I guess is a perspective, but IMHO not a useful one. We could look at real household median income, which is also up https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N.
(emphasis mine)
If income increases, but fails to increase enough to match a parallel increase in expenses, the "extra money to travel and stay in AirBnBs" has gone down.
They seem to match this graph for personal savings rate which is down at 4.1% now from highs of 20-30% in the 2020-2021 era.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/banking/savings/american-savi...
It depends on the location. In my experience, Airbnb seems to be booming in some places since remote work is the norm. Lots of people now use it as their main provider of housing and for longer periods.
Citation needed.
Airbnb is pretty much the only option for the gap between “stay a few nights” where a hotel makes sense and “stay for 4+ months” where renting a place makes sense.
Usually I don't like renting but we are in between houses after selling ours and the mortgage on this house would be 1.6x what we are paying in rent with current interest rates, etc. It is hard to justify buying right now.
Agreed. It really irks me when a vacation home that I rented for a lot of money hands me a list of chores at the end of the stay, then has the gall to charge me a cleaning fee on top of it. These days I stick to a hotel other than for exceptional use-cases.
This is wrong as a general statement: what’s happened is that people have become more discerning about value, and it takes more than dropping $50 at IKEA to make a place cool enough to earn a premium. If your house is in a cool neighborhood close to something unique, that might work but if it’s a car-dependent suburb near a ton of hotels it’s probably not going to command much of a premium. Being near Disney is something but there are thousands of competing options capping how much you can charge.
AirBNB: All those, plus clean up, worry about neighbors, half the time it's more expensive than a hotel, with a better chance of spy cameras.
I suspect many wanted an arm's length almost passive investment, and so they are putting the maintenance burden on to their guests.
Expecting cleanup for a three month summer rental tenant is one thing.
Expecting that for a three day guest is another.
In an area like Silicon Valley, someone who buys a small property new and tries to rent it most definitely will not make the mortgage from rent, especially a single family house.
The mania has passed I think. No one has extra money to travel and stay in Airbnbs. Plus I despise the Airbnb experience. It turned into a list of chores I need to do to make them money. Nah, give me a hotel with professionals paid to clean and do those chores and that know how to do it well. When I travel I want to go out and experience the city, and I noticed that when my family would stay in an Airbnb we would just stay in the stupid house instead of experience the new city. Hotels fix this also.