West 11th Residential Area, A luxury building in downtown Miami is scheduled to break ground this summer, promising “endless enjoyment.” It will feature an entertainment center, food hall, and resort pool with private lounges, all with no expense spared. But the apartments are designed to attract more than just Miami residents. The tower is part of a new trend of developers building apartments for Airbnb so they can be rented out 365 days a year. The project even has a short-term rental platform as a brand partner.
The concept of an apartment tower built for Airbnb appears to be winning over investors: West Eleventh’s 659 units are nearly sold out, with an average price of about $800,000, said Ryan Shear, managing partner of Property Markets Group, the building’s developer. Buyers can choose to live there full-time, but their apartment fees are paid for by a concierge who handles the logistics of renting an apartment on Airbnb for short-term stays, from check-in to cleaning.
Miami is ground zero for a new experiment in urban development driven by Airbnb. There are more than 10 apartment buildings under development or already open in the city, which, such as West Eleventh, will offer stylish apartments that owners can rent out on a short or long-term basis. A January report from ISG World, a Florida-based luxury real estate company, showed that nearly 8,000 units in Miami’s downtown neighborhoods could become short-term rentals. The developer’s goal is to achieve escrow without the hassle and generate passive rental income that truly requires no lifting from the property owner.
To travelers, the resulting package may sound like a familiar concept: hotels. But this is a sign that Airbnb is promoting a new kind of accommodation. The platform started out as an affordable way for travelers to stay in a spare bedroom, but it’s since grown into a community-changing behemoth, offering stylish whole-home rentals that appeal to luxury travelers, spring breakers, and bachelorette parties.
That’s good for Airbnb’s bottom line, but it also angers many locals, who complain about rising home prices and rents, as well as trash, noise and sometimes dangerous parties brought by guests. The buildings in downtown Miami — an experiment in a new kind of hotel — are underway as cities around the world seek to limit short-term rentals in response to rising housing costs. They might offer a way to get around regulations that ban short-term rentals and their landlords in some places, and create new types of properties for guests instead of cannibalizing the current housing supply. But in this untested experiment, some housing experts say developments built for Airbnb could also end up reducing the supply of new housing for long-term residents.
Jesse Stein, Airbnb’s head of global real estate, said the company doesn’t view the developments as a reversal of a unique type of accommodation where check-ins are done by hosts rather than concierges. “You still live with the owner,” Stan said. “We don’t view it as a hotel. We still view it as a stand-alone residence.”
Stein said the fact that purpose-built Airbnb apartments were selling quickly showed how many people wanted the opportunity to become short-term rental landlords. “This demonstrates the huge demand for flexible lifestyles,” she said. For Airbnb, more hosts mean more bookings and fees, and the company is working hard to sustain growth and reported 2023 revenue up 17% from the previous year.
short term rental Business in Miami is already booming, making the city a testing ground for new ideas like Airbnb towers. The U.S. is Airbnb’s fourth-fastest-growing market, according to data from AirDNA, a platform that tracks short-term rentals. Perfect weather in winter and summer and a thriving arts and technology scene give you plenty of reasons to visit. For snowbirds, part-time living has always been common in Miami, a city that also has many real estate investors from Latin America and Europe.