Using the collected data on Airbnb listings, we charted the monthly changes in listings by unit type, as described by Airbnb (Table 1.1). Each unit type displayed different patterns of change over the study period. Private room listings remained relatively stable between October and January before decreasing by 96 listings between February and April. Entire homes/apartments saw a steady climb in number over time before seeing a sharp decrease of 138 listings for April. Shared rooms were the most volatile in terms of listings count, but that is to be expected based on the nature of the rental type. The most interesting series of changes can be seen in hotel room listings which saw numbers almost halved from November to December. This early decrease could be explained by a rapid response from hotels regarding COVID-19, whereas private hosts were slower to make adjustments.

Table 1.1: The number of listings available for each short-term rental category between October 2019 and April 2020

Another point of interest in this study was the pattern of behaviour of different hosts. We examined the changes in the number of hosts over time. They were classified into groups based on how many listings they had posted with the classes being one listing, two listings, three listings, four listings, and five or more listings (Table 1.2). Single-listing hosts saw steady growth over the study period before experiencing a dramatic 15% decline in April. Double-listing hosts were stable in count before gradually reducing 12% from February onwards. Change patterns for 3 and 4-listing hosts were relatively similar to single-listing hosts in timing and severity (-14% and -17% respectively). The main distinction with these two classes is a small dip in hosts in December which we have no current explanation for. Finally, hosts with 5+ listings displayed similar behaviour to the rest of the classes, with the count holding relatively steady from October to February before seeing decline in March and April.

Table 1.2: The number of hosts who own several properties and the change this trend experiences between October 2019 to April 2020

We tabled the prominent changes in listings in each neighborhood and complied them into a sheet. Changes_In_Listings