The City of Alexandria could be moving forward with regulations on short-term rental properties like Airbnb this fall, but a staff report on the topic revealed interesting statistics on who rents in Alexandria.
There are around 725 short term rentals operating in Alexandria. There are 460 registered with the city and another 265 are probably unregistered units — either not registered with the city or granted an exemption. That’s 0.88% of the available housing stock, which the report said isn’t enough to affect housing prices.
Airbnb accounts for around 70% of bookings for Alexandria and provided the city with data on both renters coming into the city and hosts:
- Statistics show that 83% of rentals rent out the entire home, while 17% rent out a portion of their home
- 69% of rentals are in single-family homes
- Nearly 80% of guests are over age 30 and 61% are female
- 91% of hosts in Alexandria are over the age of 30 and most (81%) only list one home
- Roughly 94% of renters come from within the United States
- The typical stay in an Airbnb in Alexandria is around five nights, but 20% of bookings are for over 30 days
- The average rating for an Alexandria Airbnb is 4.9 stars, the second highest rating in the state behind Charlottesville
The staff report also indicated that short-term rentals accounted for $3.5 million in transit occupancy tax and local sales tax in 2023, making up 75% of the local transient tax.
The city is currently gathering feedback on short-term rentals with a set of draft recommended regulations expected to come forward sometime this month or next, with the Planning Commission reviewing the proposed text amendment at their Sept. 20 meeting. The proposed changes will go to Planning Commission and City Council public hearings in December.
