Capital Crashpad

Washington, D.C. Short-Term Rental Market — After Platform Verification

Data last scraped:
In 2023–2024, Airbnb rolled out stronger identity and listing verification rules. Thousands of listings were removed nationwide. This dashboard examines what remains in Washington, D.C.
Short-term rentals affect housing availability, neighborhood dynamics, and local revenue. Changes in platform enforcement can reshape the market as much as formal regulation.
About This Dashboard
Use the map and controls to explore licensing, pricing, demand, and host structure in the Airbnb market at the neighborhood-level. Summary statistics, rankings, and distribution plots provide additional context.
Individual Airbnbs (Optional):
Show Values As:
Absolute Relative
Average License Compliance
Share of listings connected to a valid D.C. Short-Term Rental (STR) license. In Washington, stays under 30 nights generally require such a license unless exempt (such as certain hotel properties).
Median Nightly Price
The median advertised nightly rate among active listings. The median is used instead of the mean to reduce distortion from luxury outliers and better represent the typical price point.
Reviews per Month
Average number of reviews per month over a listing’s lifetime. While not a direct booking count, review frequency is commonly used as a proxy for demand.
% Multi-Property Hosts
Share of listings whose hosts operate two or more properties within the current Washington, D.C. dataset. This metric captures the presence of portfolio operators relative to single-listing hosts.
Listing Density
Active listings per 1,000 residents, using neighborhood population data from Census Reporter. This normalizes supply relative to local population size.
Total Listings
Number of active listings in each neighborhood. In relative mode, values are shown compared to the average neighborhood share of the city’s total listings.

Neighborhood Snapshot

Market Scale

  • listings
  • per 1,000 residents
  • of city supply

Compliance

  • STR licensed
  • entire home listings
  • 31+ night minimum

Utilization

  • estimated occupancy
  • reviews per month
  • median available days

Host Structure

  • multi-listing hosts
  • Top 10% of hosts control of listings

Minimum Nights Distribution

Listings cluster at two thresholds: 1–3 night stays and 31-night minimums. The 31-night group is predominantly unlicensed, reflecting a structural shift toward medium-term rental positioning. Shorter minimums represent traditional short-term rental activity. The split highlights strategic differences in compliance and operating model.

Price Distribution

The vertical violin shows the full distribution of nightly prices. Taller and wider sections indicate greater density at those price levels, while extended upper tails reveal high-end outliers. Median markers allow direct comparison to the city baseline and expose neighborhood-level pricing spread.

Occupancy Scatter

Availability over the upcoming year serves as a rough proxy for occupancy. Listings with fewer open days tend to generate more reviews. Many hosts only open calendars three to six months in advance, which helps explain the clustering at lower availability levels.

Lorenz Curve — Revenue Concentration

The Lorenz curve measures revenue concentration across hosts. The gray diagonal line represents perfect equality. The farther the curve bends away from that line, the more revenue is concentrated among a small number of hosts. The Gini coefficient sums up this inequality: 0 means perfect equality, 1 means total concentration.

Density Bubble Plot

Listings per 1,000 residents measures short-term rental intensity relative to neighborhood population. Bubble size reflects total listings. High per-capita density with large bubble size indicates structurally concentrated short‑term rental markets.

Pareto Concentration

Neighborhoods are ranked by total listings. The cumulative curve identifies how quickly supply concentrates across the city. Neighborhoods to the left of the 80% marker account for the majority of active listings, illustrating the uneven spatial distribution of supply.

Absolute Relative
Neighborhoods ranked by selected metric.
Baseline shown in both absolute and relative views for comparison.
Data sources: Inside Airbnb (listing data) and Census Reporter (population data).