Airbnb phoenix neighborhoods full#

According to Sara First, a property manager who works with nearly 70 Airbnb hosts in Sedona’s city limits, short-term rentals are simply too profitable, and the Rent Local kickback can’t compete.

To understand why it’s been a flop, you need to understand the economics of Airbnb. Three months since the pilot launched, the city has received just three applications.

Airbnb phoenix neighborhoods full#

At full tilt, the pilot could free up 35 rental units-but, according to Steve Segner, president of the Sedona Lodging Council, the acute need for housing in Sedona is more like 500 units. Sedona has set aside $240,000 to pay out to homeowners, with incentives going up to $10,000 for a three-bedroom property. The pilot, known as Rent Local, was announced in August. But those tourists are increasingly strangling the life out of a city that depends on them for its survival.Īnd so, pushed to the brink by short-term rental profiteers, Sedona has come up with a novel solution: paying Airbnb hosts to turn their properties back into long-term rentals. “Tourism is always going to be our economic engine, whether we like it or not,” says Sandy Moriarty, the former mayor of Sedona. Along its main drag, healing centers and crystal shops are tucked between bars and restaurants. Tourists flock to Sedona for its breathtaking vistas and walking trails, and the city has made a name for itself as a new age spiritual heartland of the American West. Camping on the city’s outskirts as a way to live-not for vacation-is damaging the pristine national forest that surrounds it. Stories of people living out of cars have become increasingly common, says Shannon Boone, housing manager for the City of Sedona. As in many cities around the world, house prices in Sedona soared during the pandemic: The median price for a single-family home rose 64 percent over a two-year period from October 2020 to 2022. More than 15 percent of available housing in Sedona is now listed on short-term rental sites like Airbnb or Vrbo, according to a 2021 study by local firm Elliott Packer & Co. But when the law passed, investors flooded the market. Legislators had pitched the law as an embrace of the new sharing economy and a boon for Arizonans looking to make some extra money by renting out their spare bedrooms. But in 2017 an Arizona state law, SB1350, blocked such curbs. Sedona banned short-term rentals way back in 1995.