That's misdirection. 87% of hosts, sure, but what percentage of rentals? Does it matter if there are a lot of accounts that only list a few days a year?

Notice that 2/3 of rentals are for entire apartments, the hosts that share their own home clearly can't do that very often.

I agree. I'm curious why you chose to reply to my comment with this complaint when I was directly responding to the claim, which you quite reasonably view to be "misdirection," in the parent comment.

frobozz wrote:

> Most AirBnB hosts and Uber drivers are not just occasionally letting spare space in their homes

you replied:

> I don't believe this is true for Airbnb, both anecdotally and from Airbnb's own statement about NYC

and provided as evidence:

> "87 percent of Airbnb hosts in New York share only the home in which they live."

ric2b replied:

> That's misdirection. 87% of hosts, sure, but what percentage of rentals?

My reading is that ric2b's was implying that whilst 87% of _hosts_ might be sharing their own home, if you were to look at rentals then there would be a different picture, presumably on the basis that the other 13% are "sharing" multiple properties.

ric2b's accusation of misdirection was aimed at your 87% claim, because, whilst it was technically accurate (unlike what frobozz said), it "misdirects" from the more important picture, which is that, to quote frobozz opening sentiment:

> Calling it "sharing economy" is doublespeak.

That being the case for aforementioned reasons.

That article is from 2014. This one from 2017 says otherwise.

https://skift.com/2017/03/10/airbnbs-growth-is-being-driven-...

In the US as a whole, 64% were renting out an entire home unit. Obviously, some of those could be owner-occupiers letting their own home whilst on holiday themselves.

I have no trouble believing that Uber and AirBnB may have started out as facilitators of sharing. However, that is not what they have become.

I may be wrong in saying "most hosts". There is a potential long tail of thousands of not-very-active spare-room hosts. However, do such operators count much terms of numbers of stays and money spent?

A) That’s from 2014. The market has changed

B) I do not trust AirBnB to not lie or twist the numbers; they have an enormous incentive to do so

C) This does not align with my experience, having both rented and lived near units that were clearly taken off the market for purely short term rental.

B - They have done so.

Their 2015 NYC stats had several commercial hosts excluded, making it look as though they were still just a way to make a bit of pocket money from your spare room.

And the other 13% make up what percent of new York Airbnb stays (for, say, 2019)?

Yes, and NYC is among the most expensive real estate markets in the world. I'm not surprised most people renting out an Airbnb can't afford a second property. I'm positive that outside of NYC the numbers look different.