The City Planning Commission is finally voting on the latest set of short-term rental regulations today. Just in time for that, Airbnb released a rosy report saying whole-home rentals—which have become the flashpoint of the short-term rental debate—only account for less than two percent of New Orleans housing stock.
An April 2016 report by the site InsideAirbnb.com says that whole-home rentals account for a whopping 72 percent of short-term rentals. Airbnb’s study, however, weighs the number of whole-home rentals on its site against the 191,310 total housing units in New Orleans—not the 3,390 Airbnb listings in New Orleans (the InsideAirbnb study said there are "about 4,000" Airbnbs in New Orleans).
Additionally, "full-time" rentals, defined as being rented out at least nine months of the year, represent less than one percent of the short-term rental stock, according to the Airbnb study.
The Airbnb report obviously doesn’t include listings from HomeAway and VRBO, other short-term rental sites with listings in New Orleans.