Dublin: A web app, Wherebnb.io, has been produced by four Irish software developers as it aims to maximise short-term letting opportunities for Airbnb users in Dublin.
The app’s developers have said that it could help to partially alleviate the shortage of available rental properties in the Irish capital, with the housing crisis in the city currently in the public spotlight.
The app generates a map through a web portal and draws on all of the locations of Airbnb-listed properties in Dublin.
One of the developers, Sam Heavey, said users can find out things like the ‘relationship between Airbnbs and the minimum nights you can book for, the price per night’.
Heavey believes the app has the potential to address people’s habits with regard to how they use Airbnb.
He said: “It’s simply the raw data visualised in which case you can either, as a user find somewhere appropriate for you, or as someone who’s trying to let an Airbnb, maybe potentially see the competition in the area.”
He said the app can also work out whether an area is high or low density and what the value of an area is for people looking to rent out their property on the platform.
With regard to helping to free up accommodation through the app, Heavey said: “You can filter by various parameters, one of which is the minimum number of nights, so if you maximise or minimise some of the filters you can see certain properties have minimum nights of 30 days, 365 days, 450 days in some cases.”
The app currently has around 16,000 unique users and Heavey said there had already been strong feedback from its user community.
He added: “It allows people to get their own information easily.”
The app currently only shows Airbnb data but the developers are hoping to branch it out in the future.
Heavey said: “It already includes some basic census information, population per square km, but we might include things like socioeconomic conditions and then for example we might include properties for sale, properties to rent, that kind of thing.”
The developer said the app could be useful for identifying essential features such as property prices or socioeconomic trends.
Heavey also added the app currently works best in the Google Chrome browser but the developers are looking at developing a mobile version of the app.
