Not gentrification, not touristification: Short-term rentals as a housing assetization strategy

ABSTRACT

The rapid growth of short-term rentals (STRs) is leading researchers to frame these urban transformations indifferently as gentrification, touristification or tourism gentrification. This paper proposes that these concepts, though closely related, are not best suited to explain the urban transformations created by STRs. Using a theoretical and empirical approach, it attempts to delve into this theoretical debate. Since housing assetization is what ultimately drives the process, STRs should be framed as a specific form of housing assetization. It is suggested that the term that best captures this urban accumulation strategy and has greater explanatory power is that of STR housing assetization. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to theoretically justify the suitability of the STR housing assetization concept and specify its particularities as an urban accumulation strategy. Secondly, this accumulation strategy can be empirically observed by analyzing how STR markets develop in particular cities. For this purpose, the Spanish city of Valencia has been chosen.

KEYWORDS:

• Airbnb
• short-term rentals
• housing assetization
• housing financialization
• touristification
• displacements

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers and to professors Miguel A. Martínez and Jorge Sequera for their valuable comments on previous versions of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. During the pandemic, STR activity in Spain came to a complete halt. It has recovered since then, but STRs have not yet reached pre-pandemic level. In order to ensure that the occasional changes introduced by the pandemic do not disrupt the results, the last pre-pandemic scrape has been used to conduct the research.

2. Generally, it is stipulated that a studio has 30 m², to which 12 m² per bedroom plus 15% of common spaces are added. Thus, a three-bedroom apartment would have about 76 m².

3. https://help.airdna.co/hc/en-us/articles/6581405525773-How-Does-AirDNA-Calculate-Occupancy-Rate-#how-does-airdna-calculate-occupancy-rate–0-0.

4. http://pegv.gva.es/es/noticias/-/asset_publisher/CWK0IEKbs79H/content/estimaciones-de-hogares-a-nivel-subprovincial-2019#:~:text=El%20tama%C3%B1o%20medio%20de%20los,6.500%20durante%20el%20a%C3%B1o%202018.

5. In four other districts (Poblats del Sud, L’Eixample, Extramurs and Camins al Grau), STR represent over 10% of the districts’ residential rental housing stock. Although these figures are not as high as in the case of Ciutat Vella and Poblats Marítims, this concentration of STRs is probably in the earlier phases of producing exclusionary displacement.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Universities.

Notes on contributors

Javier Gil

Javier Gil is a researcher at the Department of Sociology II: Social Structure and member of Critical Urban Studies Research Group (GECU) at UNED. He leads the project “Generation Rent: Socio-economic and political impacts of the changes in the housing system in Spain after the 2008 crisis” (funded by the Ministry of Universities and the European Union-NextGenerationUE).