630 CHED AM – Airbnb says it isn’t affecting Vancouver vacancy rates. Is it true?

July 7, 2016
A new report from short term rental website Airbnb claims the service isn’t contributing to the rental vacancy problem in Vancouver. But a UBC student who just completed a research project on the rental site says he doesn’t believe the numbers. The Airnb report says the average host ‘typically’ makes an income of about $6,500 a year by occasionally renting space and using that money to pay for their rent or groceries. But Iian Marjoribanks who studies housing at UBC says the devil is in the details. “‘Typical’ means that they are using the median and not the mean average, which is what you would normally use in a report like this. That’s misleading because that means there are a lot of people making very little money and then you have a few people who are making most of the money which is what I found in my research.”…
Source: http://www.630ched.com/syn/112/200718/airbnb-says-it-isnt-affecting-vancouver-vacancy-rates-is-it-true