Understanding the World of AirBnB

Tom McCabe

Data & Question

Data

Airbnb Listings (2024 Snapshot) Four metros: Austin, Chicago, Columbus, Los Angeles — with variables on nightly price, latitude/longitude, availability, property type, and guest capacity. Source: Inside Airbnb (accessed Dec. 2025) https://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html

Zillow Rent Index (ZORI) Metro-level median asking rents used to benchmark long-term rental markets against estimated Airbnb revenue. Source: Zillow Research (accessed Dec. 2025) https://www.zillow.com/research/data/

Why This Data? These sources together let me examine both the structure of each Airbnb market and the economics of hosting relative to long-term renting, enabling meaningful cross-city comparison.

Guiding Question What explains the significant differences in Airbnb market behavior across major U.S. cities?

Forthcoming Analysis

My visualizations explore how cities differ in:

Urban geography of price — where premium listings cluster

Price distributions — how each market’s pricing shape diverges

Market structure — dominant property types & guest capacity

Host strategy — how minimum-stay rules affect availability

Economics — whether Airbnb revenue outperforms local rents

Prices Across Cities

  • Chicago and Los Angeles have higher medians and long right tails, indicating deeper luxury segments.
  • Columbus is clearly the most affordable market with a tight, low-price distribution.
  • Austin sits in the middle but shows wide spread at the high end, suggesting a mix of budget and premium supply.
  • Seeing the full distribution helps compare “price cultures” across cities, not just averages.

Mininum Stay: Casual versus Serious Renters

  • Short minimum stays (1–3 nights) tend to be paired with lower annual availability: these look like casual or part-time hosts.
  • Longer minimums (7+ nights, especially 15+) are associated with much higher availability, consistent with more professional or investment-oriented hosting.
  • Los Angeles shows the sharpest increase in availability as minimums rise, suggesting strong segmentation between casual and serious hosts.
  • Minimum-stay rules are not just a policy choice; they reveal how intensively a listing is used.

Types of AirBNBs

  • Private rooms cluster at low capacities with very little variation: they mainly serve solo travelers or couples.
  • Entire homes and condos host much larger groups and display wide spreads, reflecting family or group travel.
  • Property type strongly structures how many guests a listing can serve, showing how Airbnb supply combines spare-room hosting with more commercial-style inventory.

Bedrooms Across Cities

  • Across all cities, nightly price generally increases with bedroom count, but not at the same rate.
  • Los Angeles and Chicago show steep price scaling after 3 bedrooms, indicating strong demand for large homes.
  • Columbus has a flatter relationship, suggesting weaker willingness-to-pay for size.
  • Austin exhibits wide variation for larger homes, hinting at a more fragmented or niche high-end market.

Geo-Structure: Chi-town Premium AirBNBs are Concentrated!

  • Chicago shows a sharply concentrated premium zone: the highest-priced listings cluster tightly along the lakefront, downtown, and near major tourist and business corridors.

  • There is a clear east-to-west price gradient — prices fall quickly as you move away from the shoreline and central neighborhoods.

  • Compared to cities like Columbus, Chicago’s spatial market is much more centralized, reflecting its dense tourism, convention traffic, and high-amenity districts.

  • The concentration pattern suggests that location is a dominant driver of pricing in Chicago, and that hosts near the Loop and North Side capture a disproportionate share of the high-end market.

Geo-Structure: Columbus Premium AirBNBs are Spread Out

  • Premium Columbus listings are scattered across Franklin County rather than clustering in a single downtown hotspot.

  • Higher-priced Airbnbs appear in multiple suburban neighborhoods, suggesting a more neighborhood-driven market than a tourism-core market.

  • The map shows a weaker price gradient than Chicago: there is no clear “premium strip,” and mid-priced listings are mixed throughout the city.

  • Columbus’s spatial pattern implies that hosts are catering more to local demand pockets (schools, suburbs, job centers) than to a single central attraction zone.

Overall, Renting versus AirBnBing?

  • In all four cities, the median estimated Airbnb revenue meets or exceeds the cost of annual rent (ratios ≥ 1).

  • Austin and Chicago stand out with the highest revenue-to-rent ratios, indicating especially strong economics for hosts in those markets.

  • Columbus and Los Angeles still clear the breakeven line but with a smaller margin, suggesting more modest financial upside.

  • The chart reframes Airbnb hosting as a financial decision: in these metros, a typical host can at least cover long-term rent and often earn a premium over traditional leasing.