Black hosts who offer their places for temporary rent in New York City via Airbnb don’t get as much for their rentals as non-black hosts, even though the places maybe in equally good neighborhoods, and have just as many amenities, according to a new study. The findings are from a paper written by an associate professor and an assistant professor from the Harvard Business School. For their study, which has not yet been published or peer reviewed, Ben Edelman and Michael Luca analyzed all of NYC’s Airbnb landlords, looking at the hosts’ pictures, which are commonly posted on the website and the quality and location of their accommodations, as judged by a panel of non-experts who gave each one a rating. “We find that non-black hosts are able to charge approximately 12% more than black hosts, holding location, rental characteristics, and quality constant,” they write. “Moreover, black hosts receive a larger price penalty for having a poor location score relative to non-black hosts.” (There aren’t enough hosts of other races to do a meaningful study.) Edelman and Luca suggest that online marketplaces, like Airbnb, which have mechanisms for hosts to reveal their identities so that people trust them, are, perhaps unwittingly, more susceptible to discrimination than had been believed. For the uninitiated, Airbnb is a website where people can rent out their homes or part of their homes. Sometimes empty nesters have a spare room, sometimes people have a vacation home they don’t use as much, sometimes people just need help making the rent, so they offer up a couch or go and stay with a friend for a few nights. Because of the inherent danger of staying with a stranger or inviting a stranger to stay, Airbnb members reveal quite a lot of detail about themselves upfront, including a picture. New York City is Airbnb’s biggest market, and no wonder. Hotel rooms are expensive and the city is so jam-packed, it rewards those who have a source of local knowledge, like a friendly host. On the supply side, rents are![]()
