Marvin Rees has compared Bristol's rental market to the "Wild West" as he calls for "intervention". The Mayor of Bristol appeared on BBC Radio 4 this morning (June 19) following the news that scores of empty homes in Bristol have been "lost" to Airbnb.
Landlords are listing 1,500 rental properties in the city as holiday lets on the site, rather than letting them to local residents desperate for a roof over their head. According to statistics collected by "Inside Airbnb", there is a total of 2,329 Airbnb properties currently being advertised on Airbnb in the City of Bristol - a total of 1,494 of these are "entire homes or apartments", as opposed to the 835 listings that are a single room or part of someone's home.
One house hunter told Radio 4 this morning that they had been looking for somewhere to live since March, and "you have to phone within 20-30 minutes of the property going online, otherwise it's gone". During an appearance on the radio station morning, Marvin called for an "intervention" in Bristol's housing market.
Read more: Bristol's 1,500 empty homes 'lost' to Airbnb
When asked what his views on rent controls are, the Mayor replied: "Well, I recognise that there's a complexity, but what we certainly need is intervention in the rental market. And whether you call that control or not is up to you, but there needs to be an intervention because allowing this Wild West of the rental market with rents growing out of pace to people's income.
"So what we have at the moment in Bristol is, over the last decade, rents have gone up about 52 per cent, wages have gone up 24 per cent, so you can see that there is a huge price to be paid for that, not just in the individuals impacted. By the way, a good quality home is one of the most significant public health interventions we can make that would give us resilience against future pandemics, such as Covid. It means we can actually recruit teachers, nurses to Bristol, which we're struggling to."
The council ward with the highest number of Airbnbs in Bristol is Ashley, which has 273 listed, with almost 200 listed as entire homes or apartments. Ashley has the most partly because it is one of the biggest council wards in the city, covering an area from the Bearpit to the railway line at the far side of St Werburghs, and from halfway up Gloucester Road near the cricket ground to the M32 junction for St Pauls, but also because it's one of Bristol's 'hippest' areas close to Stokes Croft, Gloucester Road, St Werbugh's, St Paul's and the city centre.
Marvin also said that he had sympathy with landlords, some of whom have expressed the difficulty they have faced due to "mortgages rising and differences in tax law". One letting agent told BristolLive that some landlords already were looking into the possibility of taking their homes off the rental market and going to Airbnb instead.
"With the increasing amount of bureaucracy and cost associated with renting out a home, it could well be that there are some landlords in Bristol who opt for Airbnb, which is a market that has a lot more lighter regulation," she said.
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