Israel: Between five and seven thousand apartments in Tel Aviv are reportedly being rented out on platforms like Airbnb, leaving a shortage of housing, according to Yes In My Back Yard Tel Aviv (YIMBYTLV).
YIMBYTLV is a movement that seeks to fight against the supposed rising prices of housing in Tel Aviv, as well as to advocate regulation against properties that have been converted into hotels.
The report concerned appeared originally in Hebrew.
According to the report, just over two per cent of the homes in the city have been converted into permanent Airbnb rentals; a figure that is five times lower in New York and 12 times lower in Berlin.
Meanwhile, some quarters are reported to have significantly higher proportions, with 16 per cent of apartments being permanent Airbnb rentals in the central neighbourhood of Kerem HaTeimanim and eight per cent in the upmarket Neve Tzedek district.
YIMBYTLV says that the majority of the apartments rented out permanently in this way contain two to three rooms. As a consequence, it believes prices are making incremental gains as the supply of available-to-hire rentals goes down.
The movement is now calling on the Tel Aviv Municipality to place a maximum limit on the number of days that apartments in the most desirable parts of the city can rented out via Airbnb to 60 per year.
YIMBYTLV says it aims to deter investors from buying apartments for tourists to rent instead of the local residents in Tel Aviv.
